Offspring of the Loin King
QUESTION Are there known descendants of Charles II’s many mistresses?
Though his marriage to Catherine of Braganza was childless, Charles II had several illegitimate children by at least nine mistresses, some of whom have descendants in today’s peerage.
The Duke of grafton was a title created in 1675 by Charles for henry FitzRoy, his second illegitimate son by Barbara Villiers. The 12th Duke of grafton is henry oliver Charles FitzRoy. Appropriately, the family name FitzRoy means ‘child of the King’.
Louise de Kerouaille’s son Charles was created Duke of Richmond in 1675. The 11th Duke of Richmond, Lennox, gordon and Aubigny is president of the British Automobile Racing Club, patron of the TT Riders Association and founder of the goodwood Festival of Speed.
The Duke of St Albans was a title created in 1684 for the 14-year-old Charles Beauclerk, 1st Earl of Burford, the King’s son by the actress Nell gwyn. The 14th Duke of St Albans is Murray Beauclerk.
Catherine Pegge’s descendants were the Earls of Plymouth; Elizabeth Killigrew’s daughter Charlotte married the son of the Earl of Yarmouth; Lucy Walter’s son was the Duke of Monmouth, beheaded in 1685 for his attempt to overthrow his uncle James II; and actress and courtesan Moll Davis was mother to famous actress Lady Mary Tudor.
Winifred Wells and hortense Manzini had children, but they may have been by their husbands. It is possible Charles II had more children with other women during his time in exile.
Many of his descendants and their families served in royal households, such as the Duchess of grafton, who was Elizabeth II’s Mistress of the Robes.
Ian Elliott, Belfast.
QUESTION How many concentration camps were there in World War II?
IN 2000, the u.S. holocaust Memorial Museum began documenting the number of concentration camps, ghettos, slave labour factories and military brothels during the Nazi regime.
Researchers had predicted a figure of 7,000 but have identified close to 42,500, which will be documented in a sevenvolume encyclopaedia due to be completed by 2025.
There were 23 major concentration camps, including Auschwitz, BergenBelsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Sobibor and Treblinka. Less well-known examples include Crveni Krst, gross- Rosen, Janowska and Stutthof.
Most were found in germany and Nazioccupied Poland but there were also camps and ghettos in Croatia, hungary, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Vichy France.
Concentration camps have come to symbolise the Nazi killing machine but represent only a fraction of the places where people were systematically murdered. Each main camp had subcamps, about 900 in total. Auschwitz alone had 44 sub-camps.
There were also 30,000 slave labour camps, 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 1,000 PoW camps, 500 brothels of sex slaves and thousands of camps for euthanising the elderly and infirm, germanising prisoners or transporting victims to killing centres. Berlin alone had 3,000 camps.
Pat Stillman, St Austell, Cornwall.
QUESTION The Canadian government has invested heavily in molten salt reactors. What are these?
EFFoRTS to develop new sources of carbon- free energy have led to the rediscovery of molten salt reactors, a nuclear-power concept introduced at the oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in the 1960s. This is a radical departure, using a molten salt such as uranium tetrafluoride as a coolant rather than water.
It relies on a low- pressure, hightemperature environment — 450c to 540c — for stable energy production in a highly efficient, breeder type of fission reactor.
Though still being developed, it is hoped these generation IV reactors will be economical, safe and low emission.
Nuclear power plants generate electricity through a fissile chain reaction. Isotopes such as uranium 235,233 or plutonium 239 absorb a neutron and then split apart into fission products.
In that process, they generate heat and eject neutrons to initiate a chain reaction. A moderator slows down the neutrons so they are more likely to cause another fission when they impact the fuel.
In the case of light water reactors, solid fuel rods contain the fissile material. Water surrounding the fuel acts as a moderator and coolant that carries heat to turbines to generate electricity.
In a molten salt reactor, the coolant is a salt heated above its melting point so it is a fluid. Instead of fuel rods, the fissile material is dissolved.
In most designs, the solution flows around graphite rods, which moderate the energy of the neutrons to support the nuclear chain reaction. other designs include liquid or solid fuel in rods or fast reactors that do not have a moderator.
Several designs use thorium as a fuel. There is at least three times more thorium on the planet than uranium and it’s a much cleaner fuel. Thorium waste decays in hundreds of years rather than tens of thousands.
There are many other advantages: replacing water decreases the possibility of steam explosions and the generation of flammable gas; and low-pressure operation means there is less demand on containment.
Because they operate at a higher temperature, their steam cycle generates electricity more efficiently. Liquid fuel means there is no need to shut down the reactor to refuel during operation.
however, the biggest problem with molten salt reactors is that they can easily corrode steel and aluminium.
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