The Immortal Emperor

by Donald M Nicol

  The city of Viterbo was believed to have a special link with the family of Palaiologos. It was forged through the specious etymological equation of the Latin Vetus verbum (= Viterbo) with the Greek Palaios logos, which was held to be one of several no less dubious proofs that the Palaiologos family had its roots in that city. This too lent some ancestral respectability to the otherwise obscure Palaiologi who found themselves washed up in the north of Italy in the later Middle Ages. A remarkable number of documents and inscriptions which had lain dormant and unnoticed for centuries providentially came to light in support of genealogical claims.'s There was, however, an older branch of the family in the north of Italy. It stemmed from the sons of the Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos and his second wife Yolande-Eirene of Montferrat. It was to spite her husband that Yolande invested her eldest son Theodore with the hereditary title of Marquis of Montferrat in 1306, and settled him in Lombardy with a Genoese wife. Their line became extinct in 1533 with the death of Giangiorgio who had no legitimate heir. But the name of Momferrato-Paleologo seems to have lingered on in the Greek island of Cephalonia until the seventeenth century. Those who held it, however, could claim no connection with the family of the last Byzantine Emperor.2o

  The Palaiologi on the island of Syros, on the other hand, claimed to be descended from a son of Andronikos Palaiologos, Despot in Thessalonica, who died in Constantinople in 1429, and who has been credited with at least two children. Another branch of the family traced their lineage back to the Emperor Manuel II through his son Theodore, Despot of the Morea and brother of the last Emperor Constantine. Theodore is said to have had an otherwise unattested son called Emanuel Petrus. The existing Palaiologi in Malta and in France are sometimes said to be his descendants. One of them was the French diplomat and author Maurice Paleologue who died in 1944 and was very proud of his imperial blood, although his ancestors were in fact Rumanian.21 The Rumanian branch of the family originated in the eighteenth century when the Turks entrusted the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to princes of Greek extraction. They were chosen from the wealthy and influential Greek merchant community which had clustered around the Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople, in the district called the Phanar. They were known as the Phanariots and they included some who called themselves Palaiologi and boasted of their imperial ancestry. Some of them were connected with the Phanariots across the Danube in what is now Rumania. But no Palaiologos, it seems, attained the coveted and lucrative rank of hospodar or prince of Moldavia or Wallachia. In securing these positions they were outclassed by those Phanariots who, very dubiously, claimed descent from the imperial family of Cantacuzene, or from less blue-blooded Byzantine families such as Argyropoulos or Mavrocordato.22

  Another alleged descendant of Theodore, Despot of the Morea, was Johannes Antonius Angelus Flavius Comnenus Lascaris Palaeologus, who described himself as 'Princeps de genere Imperatorum Orientis'. He died in Vienna in 1738. The names of Angelus and Flavius he derived from his reputed ancestor, the Emperor Isaac II Angelus (Flavius), who was supposed to have revived and reconstituted the Imperial Constantinian Order of St George in 1191. The last Grand Master of the Order belonging to his family, however, is said to have been one Giovanni Andrea Angelo Flavio Comneno Lascaris Paleologo, Duke of Thessaly, Prince of Macedonia, Count of Drivasto, Durazzo etc. He had no issue and in 1697 assigned his office and his Order to the Duke of Parma, Francesco I Farnese.23 The Constantinian Order of St George was believed by it members to have been founded as the first of its kind by Constantine the Great in 312. Its history, conceived, born and nurtured entirely in the realm of fantasy, has given employment to countless forgers and title-seekers from the seventeenth century to the present day. The most industriously inventive of them in the nineteenth century was the wealthy Greek merchant Demetrios Rhodocanakis of Chios, who lived in London, became a British citizen and styled himself His Imperial Highness the Prince Rhodocanakis. He was tireless in the pursuit and fabrication of evidence to support his claim to the Byzantine throne and to his title of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order, publishing expensive and elaborate genealogical tables and a whole series of spurious documents to prove his point. Criticism and reasoned refutation of his claims only spurred him on to wilder feats of ingenuity. The bubble of his pretensions was finally pricked with a panoply of evidence by the French scholar Emile Legrand, but not before Rhodocanakis had procured recognition of his nobility from the British Foreign Office, the Vatican and several chanceries of Europe.24

  Another Byzantine Order of Chivalry was that said to have been founded in Ioannina in June 1z9o by Nikephoros Doukas Komnenos Angelos, Despot of Epiros from iz67 to iz96. It was known as the Constantinian Angelican Order of the Holy Wisdom (St Sophia) under the rule of St Basil of Caesarea. It is worth mentioning only because it was alleged, on the basis of forged documents, that Constantine XI Palaiologos granted privileges to its Grand Masters in 1452. One of them, who claimed to be the last lineal descendant of the Despots of Epiros, is said to have died at Palermo in 186o. The city of Ioannina has produced many historical oddities. An Order of Chivalry blessed by the last Emperor of Constantinople must surely be the most bizarre and least probable of them. To those who have set their hearts on believing in such institutions it is idle to point out that westernstyle Orders of Chivalry, and the heraldic devices that went with them, were unknown in the Byzantine world.25

  `Prince' Rhodocanakis either did not know or did not care that there had been an Irish claimant to his imperial throne a generation before him. In 1830 Nicholas Macdonald Sarsfield Cod'd of Duke Street in Wexford petitioned first Lord Aberdeen and then Lord Palmerston pressing his ancestral claim to the recently established Kingdom of Hellas or Greece, which had been offered to the young Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Leopold had wisely declined it. Sarsfield described himself as `the Comte de Sarsfield of the Order of Fidelity Heir and Representative to his Royal Ancestors Constantines [sic] last Reigning Emperors of Greece subdued in Constantinople by the Turks'. He enclosed an immense and closely written genealogical tree tracing his descent from Dermot King of Ireland on one side and from the Palaiologi on the other. His imagination was more cultivated than his literacy. Annoyed by the incivility of their Lordships in not acknowledging his petitions, the Comte de Sarsfield of Duke Street Wexford proposed to present his case to Charles X of France, to the Emperor of Russia, to the King of Prussia and to the pope. Perhaps he did. The letter which he addressed to King William IV survives in manuscript. But again he received no acknowledgement. The Irish claimant to the throne of the Constantines seems to have got no further than Wexford.26

  Rhodocanakis did, however, know of the English connection with the throne and title of Constantine Palaiologos and made full use of it to lend substance to his own genealogical fantasies. On a wall inside the parish church at Landulph near Plymouth in Cornwall there is a brass plaque recording the death of one Theodore Paleologus in 1636. The text, which has been reproduced many times, reads as follows:

  Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologvs of Pesaro in Italye descended from ye imperyall lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece being the sonne of Camilio ye sonne of Prosper the sonne of Theodoro the sonne of John ye sonne of Thomas second brother to Constantine Paleologvs the 8th of that name and last of yt lyne yt raygned in Constantinople until) sub dewed by the Tvrkes, who married with Mary ye daughter of William Balls of Hadlye in Sovffolke gent: and had issue 5 children Theo doro, John, Ferdinando, Maria and Dorothy, & de parted this life at Clyfton ye zrth of Janvary 1636.

  The Theodore Paleologus who died at Clifton in 1636 and was buried at Landulph thus believed that he was a direct descendant through four generations of Thomas Palaiologos, brother of the last Emperor Constantine. The line of descent seems quite plausible until one observes that there is no contemporary evidence to show that Constantine's brother ever had a son called John. Constantine's friend and chronicler of the family, George Sphrantzes, was meticulous about recording the names and da
tes of all its members. The two sons of Thomas whom he records were Manuel and Andrew. He names no others. The earliest and the only reputable authority to credit Thomas with a third son called John is Leo Allatius, writing in 1648.27 The genealogical tree inscribed on the memorial to Theodore Paleologus in Cornwall and adorned with the double-headed eagle thus appears to be faulty at its first branch. It has been argued that the alleged John was an illegitimate son of Thomas or that his real name was Leone. Neither suggestion is convincing. The best that can he said is that Theodore was descended from one of the several Palaiologi known to have settled in Pesaro in northern Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and who later claimed affinity with the imperial house of Byzantium.21

  Theodore's own career and the fortunes of his family, however, are not without interest. Theodore was born about 156o and was the nephew of two gentlemen of Pesaro, Leonidas and Scipione Paleologus. All three were convicted of attempted murder. Theodore was exiled from Italy and found his way to England, where he was employed as a hired assassin and a soldier in the service of the Earl of Lincoln. In 16oo he married, as his inscription relates, Mary, daughter of William Balls, of Hadleigh in Suffolk. The wedding took place at Cottingham in Yorkshire. His first child, Theodore, was born only ten weeks later, but he died in infancy in September 16oi. He had three other sons and three daughters, for the inscription mentions only those that survived childhood. He is known to have fought as a soldier in the Netherlands between 1609 and 16zi and then to have lived in Plymouth before settling at Clifton mansion in Landulph, Cornwall. The register in Exeter Cathedral gives the date of Theodore's burial as zo October 1636 and not, as in the inscription, z1 January. In 1795 his grave was accidentally opened revealing an oak coffin. When the lid was lifted the body was found to be in perfect condition; and it was possible to see that Theodore Paleologus had been a very tall man with a strong aquiline nose and a very long white beard.

  His eldest daughter Dorothy married a Cornishman called William Arundel of Clifton on 1656. The entry in the marriage register states that she was of imperial stock ('Dorothea Paleologus de stirpe imperatorum'). As she was then fifty years old it is unlikely that she had any children. She and her husband were buried at Landuiph in 1681 and 1684. Theodore's younger daughter Mary, who probably never married, died in 1674; and his third daughter died young. Of his three sons, John Theodore Paleologus was born in 1611 and is known to have been in Barbados in the West Indies thirty years later. Theodore junior, born in 16o9, became a captain in the British army, died in 1644 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, not because of his imperial ancestry but because he fought on the side of Parliament against the Royalists in the Civil War. Finally, there was Ferdinand Paleologus, born about 1615. He too became a soldier, but he emigrated to Barbados before the Civil War began. He and his brother John seem to have gone there to join relatives of their mother, Mary Balls, who had already settled in Barbados. They were among the first settlers, for the island was not colonised until about 16z.o. Ferdinand acquired a small landed estate, married a lady called Rebecca Pomfrett and had one son named Theodorious. His will survives, dated September 1670. He died in October 1678 and was buried in Barbados. He was for long remembered there as `the Greek prince from Cornwall'. When his grave was opened in 1844 it was found that Ferdinand had been buried with his feet pointing to the east, `according to the Greek custom', and that like his father he was exceptionally tall. In 19o6 a monument was erected in the churchyard of St John's church at Barbados bearing an inscription commemorating `Ferdinando Paleologus, descended from ye imperial lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece'. His son Theodorious or Theodore, named in Greek style after his grandfather, became a sailor, returned to England and died at Corunna in Spain in 1693. He married a Martha Bradbury of Barbados and had a son born in Stepney in London and perhaps also a daughter.

  As late as the nineteenth century, after the War of Independence, the provisional government of liberated Greece sent a deputation to western Europe to see if any of the imperial line of the Palaiologi existed. They visited Italy and other places where Greek refugee families had been known to settle; and in due course they came to Landulph in Cornwall. But they found no living symbols of their lost empire.29 There were, however, and perhaps still are, others in England who claimed affinity with the last Emperors of Constantinople. When King Othon was evicted from Greece in i86z, one Theodore Palaeologo, probably from Malta though then resident in England, pressed his hereditary claim to the throne of Greece. His name is inscribed on the headstone of his widow's grave in the Greek cemetery at West Norwood in south London: `Theodore Attardo di Cristoforo de Bouillon, Prince Nicephorus Comnenus Palaeologus (hereditary claimant to the Grecian throne 1863)'. He died in 1912 at the age of eighty-nine. His widow was Laura, daughter of Nicholas Testaferrata Marchese di Noto of Malta; and she seems to have been related to another grand lady who lies buried at West Norwood, the Princess Eugenie Nicephorus Comnenus Palaeologus, who was born in 1849 and died in 1934. Her gravestone describes her as `a descendant of the Grecian Emperors of Byzantium'. She married Col Edmund Hill Wickham, RA, who died in 1907, and had four sons, the eldest of whom, also buried at Norwood, died at the age of twenty in 1900 and is described as: `Constantine Douglas Prince Palaeologus'. His three brothers all became officers in the British army and are collectively recorded on their memorial stone as `Princes of the house of Palaeologus', though they seem to have preferred to call themselves `Cristoforo de Bouillon Wickham'.3o

  A less likely claimant to the Byzantine legacy was a postman called Archie White-Palaeologus who, in the 1970s, declared that he was of Greek origin and descended from the imperial family of Constantinople. His great-grandfather had gone back to Greece after 1821 to assert his hereditary rights to the throne, but no one would listen to him. Archie maintained that his real name was Prince Robert Wheeler Palaeologus; and he reported that there were still many Palaeologi living in England who from time to time dressed up in their imperial robes and held assemblies, at which they addressed each other as prince and princess.31

  The embers of the fire and glory of the last Christian Emperor of Constantinople smoulder on. The latest to huff and puff upon them was another Englishman, Peter Francis Mills of Newport in the Isle of Wight, who died aged sixty-one in January 1988. For long he had called himself Prince Petros Palaeologos, though he liked to be styled as `His Imperial Majesty Petros I, Despot and Autokrator of the Romans, The Prince Palaeologus'. His letter heads were imprinted with the title of Grand Master of the Ordo Imperialis Constantinianus Militaris Sancti Georgii. His seal displayed the double-headed eagle. His Imperial Chancellor or Kouropalatios, who was convinced of his own imperial ancestry, lived in Dunkineely, Co. Donegal in Ireland. The titles which Peter or Petros adopted were clearly his own invention. Sometimes he also called himself Duke of the Morea. His claim to be descended from the Palaeologi, however, merits a little more attention. For although his father was plain Mr Frank Mills of the Isle of Ely, his mother had been Miss Robina Colenutt, daughter of Samuel Colenutt, a plumber in Niton in the Isle of Wight. Petros always referred to her as Princess Robina Colenutt-Palaeologos and declared that it was through her that he came by his Byzantine titles. The belief that the house of Palaiologos was connected with the family of Kolonet, Colnet, Colnutt, or Colenutt was not new.32 Earlier genealogists had laboured to prove that one John Laskaris Palaiologos of Kolnet who died at Viterbo in 1558 had married Maria Colneat Phokas, a child of the marriage of Prince Matthew de Kolonet to a daughter of Uzun Hasan, Khan of the Turkomans of the White Sheep or Ak-Koyunlu and Lord of Dyarbakir in Persia. One of the sons of Maria Coleneat and John Laskaris Palaiologos was said to have been Richard Komnenos Phokas Palaiologos of Kolonet who married Joanna Dauntsey, daughter of Sir John Dauntsey, a cousin of Henry VIII, at Southampton, settled at Combley in the Isle of Wight, and died there in 1551,33

  The reader's credulity has perhaps been stretched far enough in the vain search for the imperial ant
ecedents of Prince Petros of the Isle of Wight. He liked to think, though he could never prove, that his mother was descended from William Colenutt, the son of that Richard Palaiologos of Kolonet, who was alleged to have settled at Combley. A sober and scholarly account of the Colenetts of the Isle of Wight was written in 1958 by Rear Admiral Noel Wright. Prince Petros, alias Peter Mills, countered with a pamphlet entitled `the Imperial Palaeologi in England 1400-1965', which he wrote under the pseudonym of Count A. A. Saddington. The latest word on the subject was published by C. D. Webster, the County Archivist of the Isle of Wight, who describes the Admiral's study as `an honest piece of research' and condemns the pseudo- Saddington's riposte as `historical rubbish'. It seems that the selfstyled Prince, Emperor, Despot and Duke was no more than an English eccentric. He was often to be seen striding the streets of Newport, `with long flowing white hair, sandals but no socks and some sort of order or military award around his neck'. He was evidently the victim of his own delusions. His first wife, the mother of his family, left him in 1975. His second wife, whom he married ten years later, piously and loyally continues to defend her assumed title of H.I.H. Patricia Palaeologina, Empress of the Romans. Debrett's Peerage refused to have anything to do with him. Yet some were taken in. For when he died at Ventnor on z January 1988, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Isle of Wight County Press all printed obituaries of His Imperial Highness Petros I Palaeologos. His son Nicholas at last felt free to tell the truth and to pour deserved ridicule on his father's follies which had caused so much embarrassment to his family. He did so with some relish and not a little venom in the local newspaper and in The Times, denouncing the `Prince's' pretensions as 'a complete and utter sham' and expressing the hope that `the ghost of Prince Palaeologus' might now be buried once and for all.34