Last night, El Hubbo, a friend and I went out to Edina, Minnesota to dine at the oh-so-chi-chi restaurant known as Fuddrucker’s.
The server told us a bunch of stuff that seemed like the biggest whopper in the world. Says his name is Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV and that when his uncle passes away, he’ll be the 5th Duke of Cleveland.
“Crichton for Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park. Stuart for Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.”
Said he’s been in the 'States since August because his uncle kicked him out of the UK for “…getting completely wasted and caught on the front page of the London Times.” Lived in Clearwater, Florida until January… until he “made the front page of the Clearwater Gazette for getting wasted.” Then, he says, he had to move to Minnesota to live with relatives. Works at Fuddrucker’s to keep himself busy; gives his paycheck to some pediatric AIDS foundation. Said he hangs out with the princes all the time, blah blah blah.
I found one reference to him on Google… A deleted Wikipedia citation. Seems fish-a-fied to me. But there may be some Brits who know this joker… ?
Man, what does it mean when you have the feeling you used to get back in the early days of emailed urban myths, when you didn’t know how to check to see if they were crap? I have that feeling right now.
This site says that the Dukedom of Cleveland has been extinct since 1891. It’s possible that this guy’s family claims the title, but there isn’t currently such a title officially.
Besides, I’ve been to Fuddrucker’s in my area and the customer serves themselves. You place your order, get your drink, pick up your food order and pile on the toppings. The only time I’ve seen an employee in the dining room is to bus the tables and help bring out the food on occasion if there’s too much for the customer to pick up all at once.
He’s quite likely lying to you. There’s a Crichton-Stuart who’s the Marquess of Bute (former F3 racer Johnny Dumfries, but as has been mentioned, the Duchy of Cleveland doesn’t currently exist
I mistyped. He was the guy who took our order… I noticed his name and mentioned the C.S. Lewis character Prince Capsian; he said that he was named after his grandfather, who knew Lewis. After we sat down outside, he came out to ask how our food was… well, more likely to feed us a line of boolsheet.
Not only did the 1833 dukedom become extinct in 1891, it is extremely unlikely that there are currently any genuine claimants to it. The 1st duke only had three sons, each of whom succeeded to the title in turn and each of whom had no children. So there can be no distant cousins with debatable claims to the title. There are descendants from the 1st duke, via his third daughter, Augusta, who married into the Milbank family, but they have no claim to the dukedom as that could only pass through the male line.
As a rough rule, an English peer will have the same surname as the person to whom the peerage was originally granted, as most peerages have to descend through a male line. As it happens, both the Cleveland dukedoms are counterexamples. The first was a rare example of a dukedom granted to a woman and, as such, fits the rule that such exceptions were grants to royal mistresses. The second has the complication that the 3rd and 4th dukes kept changing their surname between Vane and Powlett. But it is still the case that it is improbable that anyone called Crichton-Stuart could be duke of Cleveland.