dated: July 3, 2012
SOURCE: Telegraph
[It seems to me that if you want to go down this line of reasoning, William the Conquerer was illegitimate as well, along with all of the Plantagenets. At least the Tudors had a second claim by descent from the ancient Prydish kings, but their line ended with Elizabeth I. - AAA]
Michael Abney-Hastings posing beside a portrait of a relative.
Michael Abney-Hastings, or "King Michael", was a British-born self-proclaimed republican who made international headlines in 2004 when a Channel 4 documentary suggested that King Edward IV was conceived illegitimately. It said the crown should have been passed down the Plantagenet line – ending at Abney-Hastings.
The reluctant, would-be king was born in Sussex and went to school at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire but moved as a teenager with his family to the small Australian town of Jerilderie, population 768, about 400 miles from Sydney.
His "claim" to the throne first became apparent after the documentary, Britain's Real Monarch, put forward a thesis by a historian, Dr Michael Jones, who said King Edward, who reigned from 1461 to 1483, was conceived when his parents were 100 miles apart.
At the time, according to a document unearthed by Dr Jones in a library in Rouen, Edward's supposed father, Richard, 3rd Duke of York, was said to be fighting the French near Paris, while his mother, Lady Cecily Neville, was at court in Rouen.
Furthermore, Lady Cecily was said to be spending a great deal of time with a local archer named Blaybourne and the two were rumoured to be having an affair. King Louis XI of France is said to have once claimed about King Edward: "His name is not King Edward – everybody knows his name is Blaybourne."