6

 

ROYALTY

 

• Greenwich Palace was Henry VIII’s favourite residence.

• Henry VIII was probably the most athletic monarch, enjoying tennis, archery and wrestling.

• In the 17th century, the Great Hall at Westminster Palace was used as a shopping precinct.

• The first prisoner in the Tower of London, Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, escaped down a rope smuggled to him in a flagon of wine.

• George III said he didn’t like Hampton Court, due to memories of being hit on the ears by his grandfather there as a boy.

• Hot water and clothes were sent to Prince Albert’s room every morning after his death. The glass he sipped his last medicine from lay unmoved on the table next to his bed for 40 years.

• Charles II was a keen tennis player and would weigh himself before and after every game to see how much weight he had lost.

• William III and his wife Mary hated Whitehall Palace, as it was bad for William’s asthma.

• The Tower of London was once used as a zoo.

• A cannonball, fired in salute, accidentally crashed into Greenwich Palace. It fell into the very room where Mary I was sitting, but she was unharmed.

• Extensions to Greenwich Palace conflicted with the main road from Deptford to Woolwich, so it was built on either side, with a bridge joining the two halves until the road was diverted.

• Queen Anne is said to have died from a fit of apoplexy, due to overeating, while at an outdoor supper party at Kensington Palace.

• The drains at Windsor Castle were faulty, allegedly causing the death of Prince Albert.

• A man attempted to assassinate Queen Mary I by climbing atop St James’s Palace and using a large lens to focus the sun’s rays on her walking below. It failed.

• It was quite common for Westminster Palace to flood with mud and fish from the River Thames, and once rowing boats had to be used in the Great Hall.

• Whitehall Palace once contained a chemical laboratory.

• George II died in his water closet at Kensington Palace, deterring later monarchs from living there.

• Henry III kept a quartet of lions in the Tower of London. They were called Fanny, Miss Fanny, Miss Howe and Miss Fanny Howe.

• James I introduced a swear box to St James’s Palace, and all the money was given to the poor.

• King Charles I’s dog accompanied him to his execution.

• Queen Anne banned the wearing of spectacles, inappropriate wigs and the smoking of pipes from St James’s Palace.

• Queen Victoria referred to Kensington Palace as ‘the poor old palace’.

• George II sold tickets to allow the public to watch the King and Queen eat.

• Prince Albert was Queen Victoria’s first cousin as well as husband.

• King James VI banned the use of the surname MacGregor.

• At royal banquets, the salt cellar was always the first thing to be laid on the table.

• Henry III received a polar bear from the King of Norway. It was allowed to hunt for fish in the River Thames on the end of a long rope.

• The first elephant in England was a gift to King Henry III from the King of France.

• William IV considered turning Buckingham Palace into army barracks.

• Charles II had many dogs, and at official meetings of state he preferred playing with them to listening to the discussion.

• Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the same plane as a precaution against a potential crash.

• The only house in England that the Queen may not enter is the House of Commons, as she is not a commoner.

• When the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels were going on the auction block in 1987, Sotheby’s sold 24,000 of its pricey catalogues.

• There are 1,783 diamonds on Britain’s Imperial State Crown. This includes the 309-carat Star of Africa.

• ‘I want to make certain that I have some plants left to talk to.’
Prince Charles, opening the Millennium Seed Bank

• ‘You were playing your instruments, weren’t you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?’
Prince Philip, ‘congratulating’ a school band on their performance in Australia, in 2002

• ‘Most people call their dogs Fergie. I’m kind of proud. You hear it in the park, “Fergie, come here.”’
Sarah Ferguson, on dogs

• ‘I talk too much about things of which I have never claimed any special knowledge; just contemplate the horrifying prospect if I were to get my teeth into something even remotely familiar.’
Prince Philip

• ‘A leper colony.’
Princess Diana, on the Royal Family

• ‘Just as we can’t blame people for their parents, we can’t blame South America for not having been members of the British Empire.’
Prince Philip, at the British and Latin Chambers of Commerce

• ‘I expect a 30-year apprenticeship before I am king.’
Prince Charles

• ‘I declare this thing open – whatever it is.’
Prince Philip, at the opening of Vancouver City Hall’s new annexe

• ‘Sometimes as a bit of twit.’
Prince Charles, responding to David Frost’s enquiry as to how he would describe himself

• ‘Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.’
The Queen

• ‘Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.’
Prince Philip, to deaf people, in reference to a nearby school’s steel band, playing in his honour

• ‘I have never drunk and never wanted to. I can never understand how anyone can get past the taste.’
Princess Anne, on alcohol

• ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.’
The Queen Mother

• ‘I now complete the process of helping my father to expose himself.’
Prince Charles, unveiling a sculpture of Prince Philip 

• ‘If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, are you going to ban cricket bats?’
Prince Philip, responding to calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane massacre

• ‘Being a princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
Princess Diana

• ‘A few years ago everybody was saying, “We must have more leisure, everybody’s working too much.” Now that everybody’s got more leisure, they’re complaining they’re unemployed. They don’t seem to be able to make up their minds what they want, do they?’
Prince Philip, on the recession

• ‘Your work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth.’
The Queen Mother

• ‘The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism, then we could stop the congestion.’
Prince Philip, on London’s congestion charge

• ‘What a po-faced lot these Dutch are.’
Prince Philip, on a visit to Holland

• ‘If I’m deciding on whom I want to live with for 50 years, well, that’s the last decision on which I would want my head to be ruled by my heart.’
Prince Charles, speaking in 1972

• ‘I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.’
Prince Philip

• ‘I don’t even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.’
Princess Diana

• ‘I sometimes wonder if two-thirds of the globe is covered in red carpet.’
Prince Charles

• ‘I’m doing pretty well considering. You know, in the past, when anyone left the Royal Family they had you beheaded.’
Sarah Ferguson

• ‘I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.’
The Queen

• ‘You can’t have been here that long, you haven’t got a potbelly.’
Prince Philip, to a Briton residing in Hungary

• ‘If you have a sense of duty, and I like to think I have, service means that you give yourself to people, particularly if they want you, and sometimes if they don’t.’
Prince Charles

• ‘Are you Indian or Pakistani? I can never tell the difference between you chaps.’ Prince Philip, at a Washington Embassy reception for
Commonwealth members

• ‘I’m as thick as a plank.’
Princess Diana

• ‘I suppose, I’ll now be known as Charlie’s Aunt.’
Princess Margaret, after the birth of Prince Charles

• ‘Dig that crazy rhythm.’
Prince Charles, trying to get down with the kids at a Prince’s Trust shelter

• ‘The thing I might do best is be a long-distance truck driver.’
Princess Anne

• ‘I couldn’t believe it the other day when I picked up a British newspaper and read that 82 per cent of men would rather sleep with a goat than me.’
Sarah Ferguson 

• ‘If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.’
Prince Philip, commenting on Chinese eating habits to a WWF conference in 1986

• ‘All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury.’
Prince Philip

• ‘People think that at the end of the day a man is the only answer. Actually, a fulfilling job is better for me.’
Princess Diana

• ‘I’m no angel, but I’m no Bo-Beep either.’
Princess Margaret, after the birth of Prince Charles

• ‘The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights”. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘Awkward, cantankerous, cynical, bloody-minded, at times intrusive, at times inaccurate and at times deeply unfair and harmful to individuals and to institutions.’
Prince Charles, on the press

• ‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’
Prince Philip, to a wealthy resident of the Cayman Islands

• ‘You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand.’
Princess Anne

• ‘An ugly baby is a very nasty object – and the prettiest is frightful.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘Are you still throwing spears at other tribes?’
Prince Philip, to an Aborigine elder, on a royal visit to Australia

• ‘The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘It’s like swimming in undiluted sewage’
Prince Charles, emerging from the sea in Melbourne.
His remarks didn’t earn him any brownie points with the Australians and the press went mad

• ‘I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.’
Prince Philip

• ‘We’ve never had a holiday. A week or two at Balmoral, or ten days at Sandringham is the nearest we get.’
Princess Anne

• ‘I must confess that I am interested in leisure in the same way that a poor man is interested in money.’
Prince Philip

• ‘I’m the heir apparent to the heir presumptive.’
Princess Margaret

• ‘Ghastly.’
Prince Philip, on Beijing, China, in 1986

• ‘Unless one is there, it’s embarrassing. Like hearing the Lord’s Prayer while playing canasta.’
The Queen Mother, speaking of the National Anthem

• ‘Dontopedology is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it.’
Prince Philip

• ‘Everybody grows but me.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘If I hear one more joke about being hit in the face with a carnation by a Bolshevik fascist lady, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m very glad it’s given pleasure to everybody. It’s what I’m here for.’
Prince Charles, referring to an incident in Latvia when a 16-year-old schoolgirl slapped him in the face with a bunch of carnations

• ‘My children are not royal; they just happen to have the Queen for their aunt.’
Princess Margaret

• ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test?’
Prince Philip, quizzing a Scottish driving instructor

• ‘Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘The biggest waste of water in the country is when you spend half a pint and flush two gallons.’
Prince Philip

• ‘Make a friend of your mind. Free your mind, and your bottom will follow.’
Sarah Ferguson, giving slimming advice

• ‘It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.’
Prince Philip, pointing at an old-fashioned fuse box while on a tour of a factory near Edinburgh in 1993

• ‘The Queen is the only person who can put on a tiara with one hand, while walking downstairs.’
Princess Margaret

• ‘You never know, it could be somebody important.’
Queen Elizabeth II, advising an embarrassed young woman to answer her mobile phone which rang while they were in conversation

• ‘I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘Who is Llewellyn?’
Prince Charles, questioning the name on a banner at his investiture in Wales. Llewellyn was the previous Prince of Wales.

• ‘I rather doubt whether anyone has ever been genuinely shocked by anything I have said.’
Prince Philip

• ‘We live in what virtually amounts to a museum, which does not happen to a lot of people.’
Prince Philip

• ‘I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous.’
Queen Victoria

• ‘You managed not to get eaten then.’
Prince Philip, to a student who had just visited Papua New Guinea 

• ‘Manchester, that’s not such a nice place.’
Queen Elizabeth II

• Saul, the first Hebrew king, was selected by the prophet Samuel to be king simply because he was very tall.

• Tsar Peter the Great made Russian peasants dig the foundations of St Petersburg with their bare hands.

• Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.

• Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young or been dethroned.

• Queen Elizabeth II was an 18-year-old mechanic in the English military during World War II.

• King Edward VII was so enthusiastic about his shooting that he arranged for all of the 180 or so clocks on the Sandringham Estate to be set half-an-hour early to allow him more time for his sport. Anyone having business with the King needed to ensure they kept their appointment to ‘Sandringham Time’. George V maintained this same tradition throughout his reign. However, when Edward VIII took the throne in 1936, he arranged for all of the clocks to be reset and kept in line with those in the rest of his kingdom.

• Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not.

• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades – King David, Clubs – Alexander the Great, Hearts – Charlemagne, and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.

• The Madness of King George III was released in America under the title The Madness of King George, because it was believed that American moviegoers would believe it to be a sequel and would not go to see it because they had never seen The Madness of King George I and II.

• King George I of England could not speak English. He was born and raised in Germany, and never learned to speak English even though he was king from 1714 to 1727. The King left the running of the country to his ministers, thereby creating the first government cabinet.

• Queen Anne had a transvestite cousin, Lord Cornbury, whom she assigned to be governor of New York and New Jersey. The colonists were not amused.

• Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I’s mother, had 6 fingers on one hand.

• In the 14th century, King Edward II was deposed in favour of his son, Edward III, and later killed. In order not to mark his body, and hide evidence of murder, a deer horn was inserted into his rectum and a red-hot poker placed inside that. His ghostly screams are said still to be heard in the castle.

• Queen Anne (1665–1714) outlived all 17 of her children.

• Sir Walter Raleigh financed his trip to America to cultivate tobacco by betting Queen Elizabeth I that he could weigh the weight of smoke. He did so by placing 2 identical cigars on opposite sides of a scale, lighting 1 and making sure no ashes fell. The difference in the weight after the cigar was finished was the weight of smoke and Raleigh was on his way to America.

• Prince Harry and Prince William are uncircumcised.

• King Alfonso of Spain (1886–1931) was so tone-deaf that he had one man in his employ known as the ‘Anthem Man’, whose duty it was to tell the King to stand up whenever the Spanish national anthem was played because the Monarch couldn’t recognize it.

• The Spanish kingdom of Castile once had a reigning queen who had been a nun. She was Doña Urraca of the house of Navarre, daughter of Alfonso the VI of Leon and Castile, and reigned from 1109 to 1126. Eventually she married and had a son, who took the throne when she died.

• King Louis the XIV, also known as the Sun King, was almost certainly not the son of Louis the XIII, but the son of the Danish nobleman Josiah Rantzau, who served in France as a general and marechal of France. He had to leave France when the boy grew up because Louis was his spitting image.

• Pepin the Short, King of the Franks (751–768 AD) was 4ft 6in tall. His wife was known as Bertha of the Big Foot.

• In her entire lifetime Queen Isabella of Spain (1451–1504) bathed twice.

• When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two or even three times an evening.

• Czar Paul I of Russia banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

• Catherine the Great of Russia, known as ‘The Enlightened Despot’, relaxed by being tickled.

• King Louis XV was the first person to use a lift; in 1743 his ‘flying chair’ carried him between the floors of the Versailles Palace.

• The reign of Czar Nicholas II of Russia ended in tragedy in 1918, when he and his family were murdered, but it had started badly as well. At his coronation, presents were given to all those who attended. But a rumour started that there weren’t enough to go around and, in the stampede that followed, hundreds of women and children were killed.

• Queen Supayalat of Burma ordered about 100 of her husband’s relatives to be clubbed to death to ensure he had no contenders for the throne.

• While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.

• After Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England in the early 17th century, King James I wrote a booklet against smoking.

• Queen Elizabeth II was Time magazine’s ‘Man of The Year’ in 1952.

• King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V and VI never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448–57).

• If the arm of King Henry I had been 42in long, the unit of measure of a ‘foot’ today would be 14in. But his arm happened to be 36in long and he decreed that the ‘standard’ foot should be one-third that length: 12in.

• Queen Lydia Liliuokalani was the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian Islands. She was also the only Queen the United States ever had.

• Queen Victoria used marijuana to help relieve menstrual cramp pain.

• When Queen Elizabeth I died, she owned over 3,000 gowns.

• Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, names his dogs after orchestral conductors.