The stories, taken together, were designed in a roundabout way to suggest that the brothers’ supposed grandfather was in reality Commodore O’Haloran, and that the child, their father (known as Thomas Allen), was in reality the child of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and Louise of Stolberg, and thus de jure monarch of England. Although the tales were ‘copiously augmented with historical notes’, in truth Admiral John Carter Allen did not command any ship in 1773, being on half-pay from 1771 to 1775.