Page "James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth" Paragraph 1

Born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, to Lucy Walter, and her lover, Prince Charles ( who was living in continental exile following his father's execution ), James spent his early life in Schiedam.

According to biographical research of Hugh Noel Williams, Charles had not arrived at The Hague until the middle of September 1648 — seven months before the child's birth ( but he met Lucy for the first time nine months before ) — and some unfounded voices whispered that Lucy Walter had in the summer of 1648 been mistress of Colonel Robert Sidney, a younger son of the Earl of Leicester.

When the child grew to manhood, contemporaries observed that he bore a strong resemblance to Sidney.

The unfounded voices had probably originated from the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II, who was afraid of his nephew's claims to the throne.

Finally, in 2012, a DNA test conducted on Monmouth's descendant, the duke of Buccleuch, showed that he shared the same Y-chromosome ( inherited from father-to-son ) as a distant Stewart cousin, providing strong evidence that Charles II was Monmouth's biological father after all.