Scandalous King Anthony claimed British throne

An ex-policeman threatened to kill and replace the reigning monarch.

LONDON: An ex-policeman who claimed to be related to King Henry VIII threatened to behead the reigning monarch and take his place on the British throne in the 1930s, according to secret files released on Friday.

The “quarrelsome and scandalous’’ campaign by former police inspector Anthony Hall against George V ruffled feathers in Buckingham Palace and at the heart of government. “I claim the crown,’’ Hall wrote in a letter to the king. “You have no connection with the British royal family. You are an outsider. Therefore, leave this country.’’

Although dismissed by officials as “mere ravings’’, Hall’s antics sparked a flurry of correspondence between the police, government and the palace on how to silence him. George V, grandfather of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, was keen for Hall to be arrested, according to official documents released for the first time by the National Archives. At one of several public meetings, which attracted audiences of up to 600, Hall said he wanted to be the first policeman to “chop off the monarch’s head’’ and the first to be crowned king. At another he said he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the king “like a dog’’.

Hall claimed a direct blood link to the Tudor dynasty which ruled from 1485 to 1603. George V, who changed his family’s Germanic surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor during World War One, was a “pure-blood German’’ who had no right to be king, Hall argued.

Moves to detain him in a psychiatric hospital foundered when doctors found “no absolute proof of unsoundness of mind’’.

Police in Birmingham, central England arrested Hall in July 1931 for disturbing the peace. He was found guilty and ordered to behave himself or pay a £25 fine. Hall’s dream of being crowned was dashed.