IT’S a story that reads like a spy thriller with a secret royal baby being smuggled out of Denmark to prevent war in Europe.
And at the centre is a woman from Melksham, 86-year-old Irene Ward.
She has caused quite a stir in Denmark after discovering she is the great-granddaughter of King Frederik VII who reigned in Denmark from 1848-1863 and had supposedly died without an heir.
Irene was researching her family’s history when she uncovered that her grandmother, King Frederik’s secret child, was smuggled out of Denmark as an infant and raised in North Wales in a bid to avoid war between Denmark and Germany.
The conspiracy, which was aided by Queen Victoria and her government, altered the history of the country and indeed of the whole of Europe.
If a female heir had been revealed, a possible revolt in the Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein could have resulted in their loss to Germany and possibly even war at a time when Britain and other countries were trying to stop the expansion of Germany.
As a result of the perilous situation, the baby (Irene’s grandmother) remained a secret and was sent to be raised in Wales without anybody’s knowledge.
It was always believed that King Frederik VII had no legitimate children and thus there was no heir to his throne following his death in 1863.
Irene’s research has sparked major interest in Denmark with the country finding out that the supposedly childless King Frederik VII has a descendant who is alive and well and living in Melksham.
She said, “I have had several newspapers in Denmark contact me and there has been interest in Sweden too.
“History has been changed as a result of the massive cover-up which remained a secret for so long. If my grandmother’s existence had been known, it would almost certainly have caused a war. This is a secret history of our country and that of northern Europe and, as such, it should be told.”
The story first broke in the Copenhagen Post which takes up the story: “In a bid to avert an uprising in the duchies that would have seen them fall into German hands, Denmark and Britain conspired to hide a child from history forever. This is the untold story of Frederik VII’s legitimate daughter.
“Lord Palmerston, a former British prime minister, turned the Schleswig Holstein Question into a joke with his anecdote about how he was one of only three people to ever understand it – the other two being long dead or in a asylum. What he neglected to add was that his monarch, Queen Victoria – along with leading members of the British and Danish governments and aristocracies – was complicit in an enormous cover-up to stop the duchies falling into German hands, thus giving her an Atlantic coastline and the ability to be a maritime power.
“The cover-up remained unexposed until a chance discovery over 100 years later by a British woman delving into her family history in Wales – a quest that eventually brought Irene Lewis Ward to Denmark.
Irene’s findings will astound royals and historians on both sides of the North Sea because they prove she is the granddaughter of a legitimate daughter of King Frederik VII, the last of the Oldenburg dynasty, who died apparently heirless in 1863.
“Irene’s grandmother Elizabeth Lewis nee Wynn was the daughter of Frederik and his third wife, Louise Rasmussen, a commoner who took the title Countess Danner. It is commonly perceived Danner only had one child – a son from an earlier relationship – but she actually had two.
“Her daughter was born in great secrecy in February 1851, which was easily accomplished as the couple lived together in relative seclusion in Jægerpris in northern Zealand. She was initially named Mary.
“Had she been a boy, he would have been joyously announced to the nation and confirmed as Frederik’s heir and successor to his monarchy and dukedoms. Although the royal couple’s marriage on 7 August 1850 was morganatic and their offspring had no automatic right to succeed, the ‘Constitution Giver’ was a popular king and there would have been no opposition in Denmark or the duchies.
“But as a girl, there was a big problem. In Denmark, it was perhaps solvable, but in the duchies, it was insurmountable. Their Salic succession laws prohibited the entire female line from inheriting. The situation was so perilous that the very knowledge of a female heir’s existence would have resulted in a German-assisted revolt and the monarchy losing the duchies forever. As far as Denmark and Britain were concerned, this needed to be averted at all costs.
“The infant girl’s swift exile was handled by the then British ambassador, Sir Henry Watkin Williams-Wynn, who served in Copenhagen from 1824 to 1853.
“The Wynn family found “Elizabeth” a home with a widowed retainer of the family’s vicar, whose surname was also Wynn, and set them and the widow’s parents up as the owners of a new inn. And so it came to pass, that the daughter of the king of Denmark was brought up in a Welsh pub.
“All of this would have stayed buried in the past had Irene Lewis Ward, who is now 86, not been intrigued to find out who her grandmother was – a family mystery that hung like a shadow over her father’s life up until his death in 1958.”
Irene has spent the best part of three decades researching and writing two books on the subject. The first, ‘The Price of Peace – A Conspiracy of Silence’ (available from lulu.com and Amazon) is a work of fiction based on the historical facts of the cover-up and was released on 4th August as an e-book.
Irene said, “It is written as a historical novel based firmly upon facts, rather than as a non-fictional work, because I didn’t feel comfortable about putting words into the mouths of – or allocating personalities to – people I had never known.
“It follows my Danish grandmother’s life, from cradle to grave, before revealing her birth parents and the reasons for her exile. While I have allowed imagination, hypothesis and family folk-lore to colour the canvas, no dates have been altered and no known facts changed or ignored.”
The second book, ‘Piece by Piece – a Genealogical Jigsaw’, is a factual account of her quest to uncover the truth. It is due to be released later this year.
