As the country mourns HRH Prince Philip, it may come as a surprise that it is generally accepted he had a Jewish great grandmother.

Prince Philip’s parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice, daughter of Princess Victoria of Hesse.

His maternal grandparents were Louis Alexander Mountbatten, First Marquess of Milford Haven, and Princess Victoria of Hesse, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. It is an unconfirmed story that Battenberg cake was first baked for the marriage of Prince Louis and Princess Victoria.

In 1917 the family gave up their German titles and took the name of Mountbatten. Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s grandfather, was said to be of Jewish ancestry through his mother, Julia Therese Salomea Hauke. Julia’s father was John Maurice Hauke, a distinguished German soldier, who was appointed Deputy Minister of War of Congress Poland.

When his family were elevated to the rank of counts, Julia automatically became a Countess. Hauke was killed during the Polish-Russian War in 1830, and the children were made wards of the Tsar. Julia’s mother, Sophie Lafontaine, was the daughter of Markus Antoni de Comela. Julia was serving as Lady-in-Waiting to the wife of the future Tsar Alexander II when a romance developed between her and the Tsarina’s brother, Prince Alexander of Hesse. They both left the court and by the time they were able to marry, Julia was six months pregnant. The marriage took place on 28 October, 1851, but Julie was considered to be of insufficient rank to qualify for the succession to the Hessian throne and so the marriage was considered to be morganatic (a legal marriage between someone of noble birth and a partner of lower rank with an agreement that any assets of the noble partner will not be shared by the commoner or their offspring.)

She was created Countess of Battenberg in 1851, then elevated to the title of Princess of Battenberg, and the Battenbergs became a morganatic branch of the Ducal family of Hesse.

Her line of descent includes the Jewish ancestry of not only Prince Philip’s grandfather, Louis Mountbatten, but Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, and the current generations of the Spanish royal family.

There are similarities between the ancestral history of HRH Prince Philip and the consort of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert. Both are considered to have been modernisers, both had a difficult time within the English court and both had difficult childhoods. Additionally, both were rumoured to be of Jewish descent.

In the case of Prince Albert, it was strongly suspected by many that he was not the son of Ernest 1, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Ernest’s 18-year-old wife, Princess Luise, had been desperately unhappy, married to an adulterous husband, and it was said that she had an affair with an under servant to the Dowager Duchess Augusta of Coburg at Schloss Ehrenburg.

As a result, she was banished from her home and her family. Luise’s son, Albert, now a motherless child, was brought up as the son of the Duke, but was never allowed to see his mother again. The under servant was named as Friedrich Blum.

Blum, whose Jewish family originated in Tukums, now in Latvia, then married an attractive widow as a Christian. His descendants settled in London. There was, apparently, a close resemblance to the Prince Consort of England and this story was handed down in their family.

Of course, it cannot be corroborated, but the rumour has persisted in their family and features strongly in a book, The Coburg Conspiracy, by Richard Sotnick, published in 2008.

What we can be certain of is that Prince Albert did not inherit the inheriditary syphilis Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha passed to his other son, also called Ernest.

There were other men rumoured to be Prince Albert’s father so it is merely conjecture to say it was Blum. But if it were correct, then most of the royal families of Europe – and all the descendants of Queen Victoria – would have a strain of Jewish DNA.