The Family Myth

We grew up believing that we were related to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Gran used to tell us this fact on a semi-regular basis, as if reminding us of what we should aspire to. There wasn’t a story behind it, just a simple fact. Which obviously wasn’t really a fact, just heresay.

I never told anyone at school. By staying quiet I always hoped to stay invisible. If I’d gone around shouting the slogan “Hey if the Catholic Ascendancy Reclaim Its Rightful Position, I Will be King!” it would not have made me very popular with the likes of Kid Jimmy McKay, Kenny Groswin, Snowy Ginfisten, Billy Black, the kids you needed to be in with to have a quiet life. In fact, “Hey if the Catholic Ascendancy Reclaim Its Rightful Position, I Will be King!”  is not the sort of phrase you would bandy about in a school playground on a regular basis unless you wanted a serious recreation of the Battle of Culloden except fought with conkers, fists and monkey-booted feet. As an 8 year old, it was tempting to try to raise my popularity profile by telling those I wanted to impress – Suzy Fry, say - that I was the rightful ruler of the UK. It was later that year that Rob and Rich returned from six years away in Trinidad to live in Britain permanently. While I was thrilled to see them again it also meant that I would not be King. Their dad, Tim Snr. was older than my father, which meant that Rob would be the new monarch. Shite.

But you get over these things pretty fast. At least I would probably be part of the royal entourage. Going hunting, feasting, fighting. Another problem was that Grandad Bradford, Dad’s father, had been the youngest of eight children. There were many more candidates ahead of us in the queue. And that was just this generation. I hadn’t really thought it through.

I didn’t think much about the Bonnie Prince Charlie story until a few years later, when  I asked Gran for more information. She told me that we were actually related to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s right hand man and that I must have got the wrong end of the stick. What about the world “related”? How do you get the wrong end  of the stick about that? But Gran was tougher than me, plus she had a wooden spoon, so I didn’t push it. 

By the time I was 15 I was not into being royal any more and was glad Rob was off the hook as well. Why do we need Kings anyway, I thought? The only explanations anyone could give were:

1) Oh but it brings in the tourists

2) The clothes are pretty

But it does seem that some of the family myth might be true. There was apparently a great aunt who did the research at the end of the 19th century and found that we were related to the Forsters, a Scottish/Northumbrian clan,  through my Great Great Granny Bradford. The Forsters were apparently allied to the Stuarts. The Great Aunt who did the research also apparently ordered some of the Forster family tartan. Much of our history disappeared in the German incendiary bomb that destroyed the Bradford family home in Exeter in World War Two, but gratifyingly the family tartan was lost too. We don’t have a coat of arms either. If we did it would just be a picture of a very scary looking wooden spoon.