The Carnarvon Paternity Issue Involving Prince Victor Duleep Singh

 

The Carnarvon  Paternity Issue 

Involving Prince Victor Duleep Singh

THE DAVID SOX LETTER  IS UNSAFE 

Whose baby are you, Porchey?

In my book "The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon" (published in  2011), the cradle to grave biography of Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon, I revealed to the world that Prince Victor Duleep Singh, (1866-1918), the eldest son of the last Maharajah of Lahore, was likely the father of  Almina's only son Porchey (Henry), who later became the 6th Earl of Carnarvon.  

Other books besides mine, press articles, blogs and numerous citations on Google and in other media have repeated the same information.

However,  a dark shadow has fallen on maintaining the original claim based on the evidence of a letter by Rev.H. David Sox, the Highclere Castle guide of the 1990s.  Sox wrote a biography of Almina that the Carnarvons suppressed.

Following further research  I am convinced  that  the  Sox evidence I presented  in 2011  - based on the contents of his letter dated  1 June 1996 - see below- is unsafe and that the letter may have been contrived.

Background

After she married, Almina  was alarmed at the unlikely chance of motherhood by way of  her frail husband, George.  The marriage was not consummated. 

At the time of the wedding in 1895 Almina was aged 19.  George,  the 5^th Earl, was 29. He was a very weak and sickly  man,  riddled with venereal disease; moreover he had  acute lung problems,  was only self- interested,  with an  unpredictable nature and snarling temperament.

                               Almina and George sitting well apart- Highclere 1895

There was no romance, in fact the Carnarvons were turned off sexually  by each other’s physical  attributes.

Almina drew  more and more anxious  year on year as  the nursery wing at Highclere Castle lay silent and empty.

Producing a Highclere heir was always going to be a drag, the big problem being that George was not fit for purpose.

Almina  was under increasing pressure with back snipes and the gossip targeting the blame upon her.  

She eventually fell pregnant in 1898. 

It remains plausible  that Victor Duleep Singh was the man who helped out his friends. 

                                           Prince Victor Duleep Singh and Lord Carnarvon

Victor and George : A Romantic Friendship

Prince Victor was Lord George Carnarvon’s best pal and confidante. They knew each other from school days at Eton, then  Cambridge and as young playboys they sowed their oats together in the bath houses and whore dens of London and Cairo and took part in bizarre sex trips - that banned women on board Carnarvon's yachts at sea. There's was "a romantic friendship".

                         Books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle by William Cross, FSA Scot

The Sox Letter 

The  narrative  I  presented in 2011 in "The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon"  ( and later in related books, as shown above )  of  Victor being Porchey’s dad needs some  revision to point out the  unreliability of  the content of  the David  Sox letter of 1 June 1996.

In my books I describe  the paternity issue as being “a grey area”. Citing Victor as  the guilty party  was never a water-tight judgement.

The Carnarvons admit that “Almina may have strayed”.   Well, she had to do this in order to  continue the family line, she was not the only Peeress obliged to do the same because of bad genes or an infirm spouse.

Other members of the Herbert family at Highclere Castle also had affairs outside their marriages.

DNA Testing

Only DNA testing would resolve the riddle about the presence of  Duleep Singh-Carnarvon "Sikh/ Indian" genes/ blood, but  that procedure is not going to be allowed by Highclere's present incumbent.

Aristocrats like the Carnarvons, who know  or suspect that their kin have been adulterous won’t chance having their blood being tested for fear of the results and consequences.   

                                                  Carnarvon Chums at Highclere 1890s

There are present day Sikhs who want to see such a test done as the Maharaja Duleep Singh's children left behind no known offspring. It is therefore for them a tantalising issue.

Other Evidence Pointing to Prince Victor

Apart from the Sox  letter  there remains other material about Porchey’s paternity  in written testimony I have received and  in  audio interviews I have conducted  stirring up Victor’s role as having done the deed.  However,  there are several men on the sidelines comprising the 1890s Carnarvon coterie, and others  who set upon Almina’s availability who are suspects too, so not only Victor may be culpable.

I  believed - in good faith  - that when I wrote the 2011 biography (and in comments made later) that the  most persuasive evidence  for attaching Victor as Porchey’s dad - above all the rest of Almina’s early  lovers- lay in  the contents of  the letter dated 1 June 1996 - written by Almina’s first biographer,  Rev. H. David Sox – sometime a Highclere tour guide- who claimed he found something in Highclere Archives to show that Victor was the father of Almina’s son.

                                                           Rev. H. David Sox

That letter  (part of it is reproduced  below ) by David Sox was  written to Almina’s godson, the late Tony Leadbetter. It is written to  impress the eye  on embossed Highclere Castle  headed notepaper.

                       The Sox Letter to Tony Leadbetter

 Notwithstanding the credibility of establishing the paternity issue from other sources,  the content of the Sox letter  is flawed, there are several errors ( not shown in this extract) besides the rapier sting of Sox’s claim about Victor.  Of much greater concern is that this letter was  conjured up, and that it is the work of a schemer.   

My current researches into the hand that wrote the 1996 letter – Rev. H.  David  Sox-  has established that when  a money making enterprise was at stake – as with the expectations he had of  glory and media attention over his biography of Almina- he was manipulative and not bothered about  forgoing integrity or truth.

There is evidence  that  Sox sold his soul for rich pickings in 1988 betraying colleagues in the Turin Shroud Community by publishing a book that announced his own self praising endeavours and revealed  the outcome of the secret, confidential  results of carbon dating the famous Turin relic. 

Even today,  30 years on,  Sox's  double dealing is a bad memory for several of his former Shroud colleagues  who choke on his name.

Sox was also an expert on forgery and faking. He was a smart operator. With a claim  declared  to Tony Leadbetter that he’d found something as monumental as the paternity scandal in Highclere Archives, he'd also  strengthened his position, Sox also had a  key marketing angle to sell his proposed Almina biography.  

In 2013, when challenged i.e.  17  years  after writing the letter to Leadbetter Sox admitted that in fact  he had  not seen or found anything in the Archives about the paternity issue and Victor.  

By the late 1990s  Sox had secured a  monetary deal with Highclere, who bought his Almina manuscript. The Carnarvons could not have any of  Almina's secrets bursting open into the public domain.

The pay off by Highclere was enough to help Sox buy a house in Richmond, and sell it off  later for £2.5million pounds.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

William Cross, FSA Scot

27 February 2022

This is an extract from "More on Prince Victor Duleep Singh and the Curse of the Carnarvons: The Final Twists" (2022) by the writer William Cross, FSA Scot

ENQUIRIES : PLEASE EMAIL WILLIAM CROSS

williecross@aol.com

David Sox: The Man Who Knew Too Much- An Investigation by William Cross, FSA Scot

 

Highclere Insider - David Sox

The Man Who Knew Too Much

         An Investigation  

 By William Cross, FSA Scot

 

         New Book - Highclere Insider-David Sox : The Man Who Knew Too Much

In the 1990s, in the aftermath of being snubbed for unprofessional conduct by his colleagues in the Turin Shroud Community, Rev. H. David Sox, author and part time clergyman, took a job as a visitor guide at Highclere Castle (the backdrop to ʻDownton Abbey’).

Sox, an American by birth, soon had his feet under the table and proved a popular figure with tourists and the 7th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.

The new guide soon saw an opportunity to endear himself to his employers by suggesting a biography of Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon, the 7th Earl’s beloved ʻgranny’ and the widow of the 5th Earl, of ʻOld King Tut’ fame.

Sox’s research went ahead and with access to the Highclere Archives he collected information and interviewed a dozen people who knew Almina. There were skeletons in Almina’s closet, Sox found himself the man who knew too much. One controversy arose around tales of Almina’s only son, Porchey later the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, that his true father was Prince Victor Duleep Singh, a close friend of the 5th Earl and son of the last Maharaja of Lahore.

In a letter written by Sox he confided the paternity issue to Almina’s godson, Tony Leadbetter, implying he had found something in the Highclere Archives about it. But had he? The Carnarvons dithered about what they should do next. In a clever stroke, in order to provoke a result, Sox sent his manuscript around the world to would be publishers. What happened thereafter and the bizarre events ever since, has given rise to decades of leaks, questions and prevarication.

William Cross, FSA Scot, author of several books on the Carnarvons, investigates and reveals a trail of lies, deceit and hypocrisy.

ISBN 10 1905914741 ISBN 13 9781905914746

ENQUIRIES : PLEASE EMAIL WILLIAM CROSS

williecross@aol.com

                      Highclere Insider -David Sox : The Man Who Knew Too Much

David Sox : Highclere Guide : Some Secrets Are NO Secrets At All

 

                          

                              Highclere Castle, Berkshire : Seat of the Carnarvon/Herbert family

Highclere Castle Guide :  David Sox

Some Secrets Are No Secrets At All

 

David Sox ( 1936-2016) – full name  Rev. Harold David Sox  was a guide at Highclere Castle for close on  3 years.

 

Highclere is,  of course,  the Carnarvon– Herbert family seat near Newbury, in Berkshire. Now-a-days the backdrop to TV and Movieland’s  famous Downton Abbey.

                                                           Prince Victor Duleep Singh

In the 1990s and the decades that followed :

It was NO SECRET amongst some of Highclere’s  senior staff  that Prince Victor Duleep Singh  was the father of Henry,  the 6^th Earl of Carnarvon (Almina’s only son)

It was NO SECRET amongst tenants  living on the Highclere Estate that Prince Victor Duleep Singh  was the father of Henry,  the 6^th Earl of Carnarvon (Almina’s only son)

It was NO SECRET amongst many in the ranks of the British Aristocracy that Prince Victor Duleep Singh  was the father of Henry,  the 6^th Earl of Carnarvon, (only son of the 5^th Countess, Almina).

 

Henry, 6th Earl of Carnarvon

                                       In Short

      Some Secrets Are NO SECRETS At All

 

More in a New Book In 2022

“ David Sox: Highclere Insider

The Man Who Knew Too Much”

 An Investigation by William  Cross, FSA Scot

                        ISBN 13 9781905914746

ENQUIRIES : PLEASE CONTACT  THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT 

BY EMAIL

 

williecross@aol.com 

 

William Cross is the Author of several books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle including   the best selling  " The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon" -from 2011 - the first published biography of the Countess. 

 

David Sox : Highclere Guide : A Snake In The Grass

                                                                                                        

                                         David Sox

A Snake In The Grass

                                

Rev H. David Sox  was  a part-time clergyman,  author of books on the Shroud of Turin. 

In the 1990s, in the shadow of being snubbed for unprofessional antics by his former colleagues in the Shroud Community, Sox took a job as a visitor guide at Highclere Castle (the backdrop to TV's "Downton Abbey").   

During his long association with  Shroud history Sox was charged with deceit,  of underhand methods of research and leaking secret data to the press. He scored a big success with one of his books on the authenticity of the  Shroud  by including classified information that was not to be published.   

Sox was the ultimate snake in the grass. Always waiting, but ready to pounce.

Yet, he was an engaging, dapper,  and convincing character and popular with everyone at Highclere Castle working for the 7th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.  

That was David Sox's style, to "look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it". 

He very soon had his feet under the dining room table sitting pretty like  King Charles I on his horse.

Highclere clearly knew nothing about Sox's chequered past. 

Before too long Sox saw an opportunity to  write a biography of  Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon, the Earl’s beloved ‘granny’ – the widow of the 5th Earl of Old King Tut fame.

The idea of Sox’s biography received the green light. He was given unfettered access to Highclere Archives, and although Almina had died aged 93, in 1969, there were many people still alive who knew her  and numerous sources to tap into about her extraordinary life and times.

Sox's research went ahead and he interviewed many of Almina's family, friends and deadly enemies. 

Almina had many skeletons in the closet.

The material supplied to Sox by Almina's godson, the late Tony Leadbetter, was highly controversial, laced with details of Almina's  colourful life that Highclere could never let enter the public domain. 

To dwarf  that,  several people told Sox of  the rumours around one issue that was the most damning and damaging - that Almina's only son was illegitimate. 

Sox claimed he'd found in Highclere Archives details of this  a scandal relating to the paternity of the 6th Earl of Carnarvon.

The Rev. H. David Sox had his big headline grab for a book and knew it was a money spinner. 

But  Sox  was the " The Man Who Knew Too Much"

Did Sox - an expert on forgery and fakers- really find anything incriminating in Highclere Archives?

Who knows the truth? Who is willing to tell what they know? Who is too scared ?

It is time to settle this part of Highclere’s history once and for all.

NB : A new book in 2022 will provide the answers. 

"Highclere Insider - David Sox : The Man Who Knew Too Much"

ISBN 9781905914746

https://highclere-truths.yolasite.com/

MORE INFORMATION WANTED

Enquiries about this article contact williecross@aol.com

Highclere’s Insider : David Sox “The Man Who Knew Too Much”

 

Highclere’s  Insider : Rev. H. David Sox

 “The Man Who Knew Too Much”

The Carnarvons of Highclere (Downton Abbey) know a thing or two about  raising revenue to  pay for dry rot, damp patches and fixing the proverbial leak in the roof.

 

The exposure of the Herbert family’s Highclere Castle as the back drop  to the well known TV/ film epics  has increased  its coffers on to a grand scale.

 

In the late 1980s   Highclere  first opened  its doors to the public with a flurry of excitement and neat timing about previously unknown Tutankhamun artefacts.  The 5th Earl was of course co-discoverer with Howard Carter of the tomb of the boy King.

 

Later in the 1990s Highclere’s then incumbent, the 7th  Earl of Carnarvon,  better known as Lord Porchester,  the Queen’s Racing Manager,  together with  his American Countess wife, Jeanie Wallop, were  keen to attract American visitors, with American dollars to their Berkshire Estate. 

 

With a reputation for forking out mega bucks to hear all about the  English gentry’s life style, past and present, it was a sure money spinner to seek and aim at Americans  craving  history and offer them  lavish  pampering,  supreme hospitality  and old style hunting, shooting and fishing. So grabbing the huge American  tourist market became part of Highclere’s business plan.

 

What better sweetener for the would be  visitors from New York, Los Angeles and Wyoming than for a fellow American to act as the house guide to receive them.. The guide had to be someone who stood out as suave,  articulate, personable, witty, equally attractive to  the eye and ear. It all made  perfect business sense.

 

Enter Rev. H. David Sox as Highclere’s resident history expert in the 1990s.

 

The idea worked, the  Americans came and for several years this man  Sox  continued as one of Highclere’s most popular insider figures  above and below the Castle’s  hierarchy, respected by the 7th Earl and Countess,  adored by visitors and  liked if not more often  revered by other Highclere staff.

 

Sox was a part-time clergyman,  author of books on the Shroud of Turin, and an art aficionado. He oozed self- importance and had an inherent ruthlessness that made  him reach out for any opportunity to raise his own reputation and notoriety.    

   

That opportunity came  when Sox approached the 7th Earl about writing a biography of  Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, the Earl’s beloved ‘granny’ – the widow of the 5th Earl of Old King Tut fame.

 

The idea of Sox’s biography received the green light. He was given unfettered access to Highclere Archives, and although Almina had died aged 93, in 1969, there were many people still alive who knew her  and numerous sources to tap into about her extraordinary life and times.

 

Sox’s work although flawed in places was fairly exhaustive and thorough. Then a huge bomb dropped on him when he made a startling  discovery in the Archives, about a  family scandal that, if true, could have monumental consequences to undermine the Herbert family’s succession.

Besides what Sox says he found in Highclere Archives, several of the people  Sox interviewed revealed stories about Almina that were none too pleasant. 

Sox realised he was the man who knew too much. What was he to do with his secrets? 

 The nature of  David Sox secrets, especially what he says he found in Highclere Archives  and what  he did with the information  has lain festering in the long grass for 25 years.  Now  in  the run up  to  the Tutankhamun centenary it is time to reopen this other tomb with  an examination of  Rev. H. David Sox,   his life’s work, research and  legacy  and  revisit and update the facts with reflections on  the circumstances  that  forced him to abandon the Almina  project – that led to Highclere burying the proposed biography.

In the  long aftermath of  David Sox’s study of Almina  and discovery in Highclere Archives, the unpublished biography of the 5th Countess  of Carnarvon  has tantalised various   researchers,  journalists  and even TV companies, and Sox was  frequently pursued for enquiry, comment and truth.

 

In 2011, as a further money spinner, Highclere produced its own biography of Almina, a watered down  accompaniment for Downton Abbey fans. 

Only the Society author William Cross, FSA Scot  has revealed some of  Almina's misdeeds in his  past publications, including reference to Sox’s researches  and  Highclere’s quandary.  Sox  died in 2016, leaving behind  fears of a wider disclosure of further scandals about Almina.

The real "scandal" revolves around the integrity of David Sox.

Sox has left behind much confusion but still unanswered questions about his original discoveries.

Did Sox - an expert on forgery and fakers- really find anything incriminating in Highclere Archives?

Who knows the truth? Who is willing to tell what they know? Who is too scared ?

It is time to settle this part of Highclere’s history once and for all.

NB : A new book in 2022 will provide the answers. 

"Highclere Insider - David Sox : The Man Who Knew Too Much"

ISBN 9781905914746

https://highclere-truths.yolasite.com/

MORE INFORMATION WANTED

Enquiries about this article contact williecross@aol.com