30 June 2016
DNA or The Rabbit Skin Coat Test?
Harsh truths for the nobility.
By Chin Chin
Damn and blast it all. I was born just a little too early. A few years later and I’m sure it would have been a coronet; not a princely one, of course, but one of the rather nice ones that lords get. You know the sort of thing. You see them in films. They are usually round (square heads being comparatively rare among the nobility) and have little bobble things on top.
You see, your correspondent has a very common English name (it is not, in fact, Chin Chin, which is a nom de plume designed to put Chinese readers at their ease) and that name is also borne by a well-known aristocratic family whose marquessate has long been extinct for lack of an heir. Throw into the pot the fact that in a moment of Victorian optimism we had started using their crest and, hey presto, we can all guess who the true marquess must be. We made contact with them in the late 70s.
If it had been a matter of trade, it could have been sorted. They seemed to be missing a marquess and we would have rather liked to own an eleventh century castle together with “lands and appurtenances”. Deal, you might have thought – with a possible commission to the College of Arms to cover “disbursements”. Unfortunately, however, Heralds are an old-fashioned bunch and rather like some evidence before they will accept a claim to the peerage. We didn’t have any of that – or not the sort of thing that they would have called evidence anyway. Apparently the fact that you get a warm feeling from putting your grandmother’s rabbit skin coat round your shoulders and addressing yourself as “my lord marquess” in the mirror just isn’t quite enough. Actually it was worse than that. We had a look at their family tree and there just weren’t any black sheep from whom we could have been descended. So much for the famously degenerate Regency period!
It was while I was reading the judgement of the judicial committee of the Privy Counsel in the Pringle baronetcy case that I realised how we had been cheated by time. Pringle of Stichill is a Scottish baronetcy created by Charles II and flows down the male line. At least that is what should have happened but there have always been doubts as to the legitimacy of the ninth Baronet. Still, originally they were no more than doubts. Then the tenth baronet provided his DNA in a project to establish the chieftainship of the Pringle clan (apparently a different matter from the question of who should be Baronet) and, whoops, out came the bad news that the ninth Baronet had not been the son of the eighth baronet after all.
Now there is nothing new about illegitimacy among the upper classes. William the Conqueror himself was famously a bastard, and those grand families whose surname begins with “Fitz” generally began in the same way. So, in order to prevent society being destabilised by continuous claims from junior branches of great families, the courts in England and Scotland introduced “presumptions of paternity” under which a child born to a married woman is regarded as legitimate unless the contrary is proved, beyond reasonable doubt in Scotland and to a slightly lower standard in England.
Historically, evidence on such matters was hard to come by, so the presumptions decided the matter (save in the most extreme cases). DNA evidence has changed all that because the results of testing are now certain enough to meet the burden of proof necessary to upset the relevant presumption. Since, in the Pringle case, the DNA evidence could not be disqualified under any of the highly technical arguments put to the Judicial Committee (which comprised no less than 7 supreme court judges), the Pringle baronetcy has now passed to a more junior branch of the family.
Well, imagine what would have happened if DNA evidence had been available back in the 1970s. A quick test, the results coming back in a gilded envelope, perhaps on a cushion, and me swapping the moth-eaten rabbit fur coat for a marquess’s cape. In fact, having started down this road, it would have been tempting to go further and I could have had my DNA compared on a speculative basis with the descendants of one or two others whose title and estates I would rather like to have inherited. Charlemagne, say, or possibly Louis XIV. I have always been particularly discriminating in the matter of French cheeses and I believe that Louis was too.
It would have been a high risk strategy though. What would have happened if it had all gone wrong? What if the tests didn’t even show a sprinkling of John of Gaunt or the Romanovs, leave alone a claim to the peerage? Suppose they just demonstrated descent from mediaeval peasants. No marquessate then, no throne of the Franks or France. Then the rabbit fur coat would have had to go to charity and I would have to stop giving my occupation as “pretender”. I would even have to give up that slightly stiff nod with which I acknowledge good service in a restaurant.
No, I don’t think I could have borne that. The truth is that really top drawer DNA is sufficient in itself – no need to have it tested. One just knows. Anyway, in these modern times it would be rather vulgar to be seen chasing “titles of honour”. Still, one must maintain a certain noblesse oblige so, if I hear one or two of our junior writers referring to me as “the lord marquis” behind my back, I will not hold it against them.
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