ROYAL LINKS WITH THE PEERAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22718, 2 November 1935, Page 28

ROYAL LINKS WITH THE PEERAGE

The marriage of a Prince or Princess with one not of royal blood comes as a welcome and flattering proof that royalty are, after all, of the same flesh and blood as ourselves.

The announcement of the engagement of his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott is another example of the democratic tendencies of the day (says the Daily Mail). The number of Princes and Princesses of Great Britain descended from Queen Victoria who have conu'acted similar alliances will now be brought up to seven.

_ The first to marry outside the charmed circle of European royalty was Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, who, in March, 1871, became the bride of the Marquess of Lorne, afterwards ninth Duke of Argyll. He was made an extra Knight of the Thistle on the day of the marriage, and later held the important post of Governor-General of Canada.

Princess Louise's example was followed in 1889 by her niece and namesake, the eldest daughter of King Edward VII, and afterwards Princess Royal. She married James Duff, fifth Earl of Fife, who was raised to the dukedom two days after the marriage ceremony. Ag no sons were born of this marriage, the Duke obtained in 1900 a new grant of the title with special remainder to his daughters and their heirs male, and ou his death in 1912 the elder, who is now Princess Arthur of Connaught, succeeded him in the Fife title.

The younger daughter. Princess Maud, married in 1923 Lord Carnegie, the eldest son of the tenth Earl of Southesk, and has discontinued the style of Princess, being now known as Lady Maud Carnegie. Four years previously Princess Patricia, daughter of the Duke of Connaught. became affianced to the Hon. (now Sir) Alexander Ramsay, a younger son of the thirteenth Earl of Dalhousie. A Royal Warrant, dated February 25, 1919, authorised her to relinquish the style of Royal Highness and title of Princess, and ordained that she should be known as Lady Patricia Ramsay and have place, pre-eminence, and precedence immediately before marchioness of England. In 1922 Princess Mary, as she then was, was married to Viscount Lascelles, who became Earl of Harewood on the death of his father in 1929. The Princess was the first of the children of H.M King George V to wed, and the ceremony took place in Westminster Abbey. The following year saw the marriage of the Duke of York to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghome, and a bridesmaid at Princess Mary's wedding. There are, therefore, several happy precedents- for the Duke of Gloucester, and his action in choosing a bride of nonroyal rank. In fact, the Duke of Kent's marriage to Princess Marina last year was the first of its kind since that of Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught in 1913.