Lord Linnæus Clancharlie and Ann Bradshaw

The reported marriage between Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie and Ann Bradshaw becomes a possible challenge to the succession only after Lord Clancharlie’s death. The account stresses that the marriage and the birth of their son were hearsay, leaving the family relationship—and its political consequences—in doubt.

The reported marriage and child

After Lord Clancharlie died, people exchanged accounts of his final years in exile. One story held that his republican convictions had deepened and that he had married Ann Bradshaw, identified as the daughter of a regicide. The report placed the marriage late in his life: he was said to have been fifty-nine when he married and sixty when their son was born.

The same account said that Ann Bradshaw died in childbirth. Their son was therefore described as orphaned by the deaths of both parents soon after his birth. If the report were accurate, he would be the legitimate and rightful heir to Lord Clancharlie.

Rumor and the succession

The narration explicitly qualifies these details as vague rumors, probably legend and conjecture rather than reliable facts. The marriage is not confirmed, and the son’s existence and parentage remain conditional within the account. The distance between events in Switzerland and the England hearing the stories further emphasizes how little could be verified.

King James II ended the public speculation by declaring Lord David Dirry-Moir the sole heir in default of legitimate issue. The royal patents established Lord David in the late Lord Clancharlie’s titles, rights, and prerogatives, while making his inheritance conditional on marrying the infant Duchess Josiana when she reached marriageable age. That settlement treated the absence of other issue as established, but did not turn the earlier rumor into a proven account.

Significance of the relationship

The reported marriage matters because it offers a competing line of descent: a legitimate son would displace Lord David Dirry-Moir as heir. Yet the story’s uncertainty allows the royal declaration to settle the succession publicly while leaving the possibility of a hidden heir unresolved. The relationship is thus presented less as a confirmed domestic history than as the source of a consequential question about legitimacy, inheritance, and the authority of the crown to declare who succeeds.