In the 1820s, two English brothers, John Carter Allen (1795–1872) and Charles Manning Allen (1802–1880) adopted the names John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, moved to Scotland, became Roman Catholics, and about 1839 began to claim that their father, Thomas Allen (1767–1852), a former Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, had been born in Italy the only legitimate child of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his wife Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern. They claimed that Thomas had, for fear of kidnapping or assassination, been brought secretly to England on a ship captained by their grandfather, Admiral John Carter Allen (1725-1800), and adopted by him. Thomas was thus, they claimed, ‘de jure monarch of England in place of the then reigning sovereign Queen Victoria’.