A ROMANTIC STORY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 28 July 1922, Page 3

A ROMANTIC STORY.

Lust week we published a cable message from London stating the Monti' Carlo correspondent of the Daily Express reported that George Frederics Grinialdi, formerly a butcher at Smithfield, created a sensation in official circles by claiming succession to the principality of Monaco. Mr Grinialdi was known personally to Mr Alexander McNab, of Knapdale, and the solicitor who attended to the affairs of the present claimant to the Monaco seat gave some details of the strange history of the family to Mr McNab's brother. The whole story is most romantic, and Mr McNab has handed to the Mataura Ensign the following statement concerning the Grinialdi family:— About 20 years ago an advertisement appeared in the English papers inquiring for information about the GrimahJi family. Mr Grimaldi seeing the advertisement, and knowing that there was a legend in the family that its members came from abroad, instructed his solicitor to make a search. The search in England showed that centuries ago a widow, named Grimaldi with an infant son fled from Europe to England in distress. This woman married an English farmer or small landowner in Norfolk and had a large family. The. Grimaldi boy was treated by the others as an outcast, and became a worker about the farm. Grimaldi married in Norfolk, and generation followed generation of farm, laborers. Then the tide turned, and a Grimaldi appeared as a drover . between Norfolk and Smithfield, until finally a Grimaldi appeared as a stall-holder in the Smithfield market, where he was regarded ps a prosperous man. The search ah-:; proved that the widow refugee was-tfc;-widow of the late Marquis Grimald\ and that the 3rarquis was the infant. The search then shifted to Gene:', where the Herald's College had .the genealogy of the Grimaldi family from the time the widow fled with the infant Marquis back through the Second Roman Empire into the First Empire. After having the genealogy approved by the Herald's Colleges at London aiid Genoa, Mr Grimaldi, who was t\n elderly man without an "h" in his vocabulary, left the task of assuming the title to his sou or grandson. The latter was being well educated with a view to this. This grandson must now be a man near 40 years of age, and either he or his father is the Mr Grimaldi referred to in the cables.

The putting forward of the claim to Monaco is a proof that the_ family has now decided to assume its undoubted rank. The Prince of Monaco, whose family name is Grimaldi, represents a junior branch which never came to England. The Grimaldis were at one time a ruling family in a small State west of Genoa, where ruins of their strongholds are still to be seen. Compared to this family, the oldest noble families in England were brand new. With the possible exception of the Emperor of Japan, no crowned head can show such a descent. The Grimaldis were apparently a power in the land as far back as the time when Julius Caesar took a trip to England and mentioned in his diary that someone had divided Gaul into three parts.