Good moaning everybody.

Something "out of interest" just to keep my hand in, since I'm too morphine-addled to make much sense of anything resembling news.

I came across the front page below, from the 8th of July, 1937, while looking for something else, and immediately thought there was something very iffy about the "Catholic priest" in the photo.

So, in I plunged to the story of Count Barry Shafto Leopold De Feld, Duke of Grundenberg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and - apparently - lord of many other places.

(Count Barry?)

And his lovely new wife, author and publishing house founder Doreen Lucy Smith, alumni of the prestigious Clifton High School, neice of a Cardinal, now styling herself "Countess". Who looks to be a lot older than 25 year-old Count Barry, though this former "nun" claimed to be only 32.

A quick search through the British Newspaper Archive threw up that on the day before their photographs appeared in the best-selling national Daily Mirror, the Count and Countess had it away on their toes, leaving Bristol and turning up at a hotel in Truro, Cornwall, where they booked in as the Reverand Viscount and Viscountess de Beaumont, allegedly resident-in-exile in Detroit, Michigan.

Count Barry certainly had a way of not attracting attention to himself.

A large number of people had seen the Daily Mirror photograph - very angry people, who were owed large sums of money. Not least of them a bank in Truro, which on the strength of Count Barry's marriage certificate - he had conned the registrar at London's Caxton Hall into performing his nuptuals in his "Count Barry etc. etc" persona - opened an account for the Count, with an immediate overdraft of £100 (a huge sum at the time). He dug right in to that overdraft, just before the bank became aware of Count Barry's notoriety.

The Duke of Grundenberg and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire legged it out of Truro, leaving the Countess/Viscountess to face the music. According to her, Count Barry - "a deeply religious man" - had gone to a retreat, and was in seclusion. Where this retreat was she didn't know.

A lodging-house owner and Daily Mirror reader in Plymouth, recognising the fugitive prelate when he sought a room as plain Barry Jackson, called the police, who quickly arrived to feel the Count's collar (or should that be dog-collar?) just as he was going into understandable urgent seclusion.

Hauled before the beaks at Truro Police Court the next morning, Barry, asked his name, introduced himself as Count Barry Shafto Leopold De Feld, Duke of Grundenberg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and lord of many other places. And for good measure Barry added that he was also the Reverand Viscount de Beaumont, resident-in-exile in Detroit, Michigan

"Oh no he's not!" said the Count's mother, brought down by the police to give evidence. "He's Barry Jackson, from Wandsworth. He's a house-boy, not a prince."

"And that's not Doreen Lucy Smith," chimed in another voice. "That's my sister, Theodora Craster, a waitress. She's never written anything longer than her name, never mind founding a publishing house. And she's 62 years old! And she's still married to Fred Craster!"

"Do you have any more titles, Count de Feld?" asked the bemused chief magistrate.

"I do," replied the confident Count. "I am also an archbishop and missionary priest to Europe and Africa."

"And in which church are you an archbishop?" asked the magistrate.

"The Catholic Church," responded the Count. "You must call me 'Your Worship' or 'Your Grace' or 'Your Excellency', dependent upon which of my titles takes precedence in this court."

"Are you quite sure you are a prince of the Catholic Church?" teased the magistrate.

"I am," returned the Count. Or Duke. Or Prince. Or Archbishop. "I am a prince of the, er, Liberal Catholic Church."

"Ah! The Liberal Catholic Church," smiled the magistrate. "And how large is the flock of this Liberal Catholic Church, Count de Feld?"

The Count failed to reply, so the magistrate resumed...

"I believe there are no more than twenty of you, every one an archbishop, or a bishop at least, and a good half of you taking communion not in some grand cathedral, but in various of His Majesty's prisons, for having fallen into various sins of theft, fraud and buggery."

Here, the Count drew out a roll of paper and attempted to read out his "lines of Apostolic Succession", but the beaks were having none of it. They remanded the Count and Countess for seven days - under the names of Barry Jackson and Theodora Craster. While in custody several other police jurisdictions arrived to charge them with various offences.

Barry was sentenced to three months at hard labour, and Theodora was transferred to London to answer a bigamy charge, for which she received six months. On his release Barry was immediately re-arrested to answer several fraud charges. He spent the remainder of the 1930s doing porridge in various English gaols.

Throughout the 40s and 50s Barry, unable to come down from his fantasies or repent his thieving ways, made the papers again on several occasions, sans Theodora, who may have died in an air raid.

As the Reverand Archbishop, the Count Barry Shafto Leopold De Feld, Duke of Grundenberg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, of the Old Catholic Church of England, in 1943 he appeared before St. Alban's magistrates charged with the theft of altar fittings, candles, vestments and other religious paraphinalia from local churches. He got nine months with hard labour.

In 1946 Barry was back at the same game, this time in south London. One year, six months of it at hard labour.

And in 1950 the Metropolitan Police raided "the Cathedral Church of St. Dismas" - a disused kitchen at King's Cross railway station - where they found the Reverand Archbishop etc. etc buggering who he claimed to be "altar boys". Three years, one year of it at hard labour.

1956 saw Barry make his final bow when Essex police raided "the Parish Church of St. Dismas", a war-time Nissan hut, at Romford, where the Reverand Archbishop etc. etc and two other bishops had set up a youth group, and proceeded to bugger their way through its members. The Count got five years, but records show he died of a heart attack at Pentonville Prison in 1958, aged 46.

Amen.

Now, this Daily Mirror front page was something of a set-up, intended to smoke Count Barry out and, by sending his picture the length and breadth of the kingdom, to alert others who might have a bone to pick with the Count - and there were so many of them.

What surprised those who interviewed Barry was that he really seemed to believe in his right to bear his many titles, and he was always ready to pull out his "lines of Apostolic Succession" to "prove" it.

Oh my God! To explain all this... is... - well, I'll try...

Back in the 17th century, at the tail-end of the Catholic Reformation (the slow response to the Protestant Reformation), certain Catholic clergy and laiety in western Holland, notably around Utrecht, were deeply unhappy that the Catholic Reformation had either gone too far, or not far enough. Those who believed it had not gone far enough continued to take Orders from Rome, but operated in a sort of semi-detached manner. Their archbishops, bishops and priests were all annointed or ordained in the true Apostolic Succession of the Roman Catholic Church. What's important to remember is that bishops could create more bishops and ordain priests.

Skip forward to the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), which promulgated the doctrine of Papal infallibility, among other dogmas that were anathema to the increasingly Protestant-leaning Catholics of Holland. Hundreds of clergy around Utrecht seceeded from Rome, forming the Old Catholic Church - by which was not meant a return to traditional Catholicism, but a turning back of the clock to the time of the early Church, before mediaeval accretions (Purgatory being a prime example) and the expansion of Papal power which, in their view, could not be justified by Scripture.

Here's where Apostolic Succession comes into the picture. No matter how far the Old Catholic bishops deviated from the Roman Church, all of them could claim and prove that they were in the true line of Apostolic Succession, that is the belief that the authority of the apostles of Jesus Christ has been passed down from St. Peter through the continuous laying on of hands, from one generation of bishops to the next, in an unbroken line.

Enter the Englishman Arnold Mathew, sometime a Catholic, sometime an Anglican prelate, unstable, not entirely honest, and claiming to be the Earl of Llandaff. Mathew's life story is a Byzantine tale which I shall by-pass here. Suffice it to say that by many dubious means Mathew convinced the Utrecht elders that he had built up an Old Catholic following in England, and in 1908 off he went to Holland to be consecrated a bishop.

And - bingo! - Arnold Mathew was now in the authentic line of the Apostolic Succession. Too late did Utrecht realise that Mathew was a charlatan, and before they could take action he had consecrated several other fantasists and charlatans as bishops, who, in their turn, did the same.

Thus began a rogue variant of the entirely respectable Old Catholic Church of Utrecht, its "clergy" and their orders unrecognised by any other order, hence why its "clergy" are so ready to pull out their "lines of succession" to prove their authenticity. They still do it today - though many of these one-man, or at best tiny churches no longer have "Old Catholic" in their titles, those to them all-important lines of succession appear on virtually all their websites, and all of them run through Arnold Mathew.

In a 1956 report to the Synod of the Church of England on episcopus vagans ("wandering bishops", or clerics in irregular orders) the researchers say:

"There is a high degree of lunacy, a fondness for dressing up, for elaborate ritual, for the claiming of high titles, and an unmistakable tendency towards homosexuality. Schisms occur when two 'bishops' in a homosexual liason break apart and immediately 'excommunicate' one another... It is our estimate that more than one third of of these 'clergy' have been convicted of acts of gross indecency, with an equally high proportion convicted of other serious offences..."

Less than two decades after that report those "serious" offences included murder when in 1975 a television documentary crew stumbled upon the "Bishop of Medway", Roger Gleaves, a convicted paederast whose Old Catholic Church of Great Britain ran hostels (little more than dilapidated hovels) for homeless boys, who he - in the words of the documentary makers - "casually buggered". One of Gleaves's minions was murdered during the making of the documentary, "Johnny Go Home" (fascinating stuff, available on YouTube - Gleaves appears in the second half).

This rogue "Old Catholic Church" fathered by Arnold Mathew quickly spread to other parts of the world, most notably to the USA, where dozens - perhaps hundreds - of variants continue to operate, and in much the same dubious way they did and do in England.

The real Old Catholic Church of Utrecht has long been part of the Anglican (Episcopal) communion.

So there we are. Something "out of interest" in lieu of anything better. I hope it suffices.