Richard II and the limits of majesty

Richard II, son of the Black Prince, grandson and successor to Edward III, was an unusual kind of king for the day, one who clearly would have been better placed in the time of Tudor absolutism, or even in the twentieth century, as a dictatorial monarch in the fashion of, say, Alexander I of Yugoslavia or Carol II of Romania.

One can get a clear idea of how Richard’s power and majesty was perceived at the time-how, indeed, he liked it to be perceived-if one looks closely at The Wilton Diptych, where even the angels wear his personal White Hart badge. Does the arrogance of power come in any greater form? But, you see, Medieval monarchs were not meant to be dictators. They ruled by forms of consensus, not with the people at large, but with the senior nobility. For them the king, his majesty notwithstanding, occupied, in a sense, the same political position of the early Caesars, that of primus inter pares.

Richard’s problem was that alienated the one group of people on whom his power, his real power, ultimately depended. The state simply did not exist in the modern sense, and Richard had no standing army or dedicated service with which to enforce his will. Even the strongest of Medieval kings were careful to ensure that aristocracy were kept loyal to the crown; by success in war, by grants of land, or by a combination of both. Richard was not successful in war. But far more seriously, he showed that, in the exercise of pure royal power, he was prepared to dispossess even the most powerful; and none were more powerful than Henry Bolingbroke.


Richard's decision to exile his cousin and then seize the Lancastrian estates on the death of John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke’s father, certainly ended the power of a potential rival to the crown. It was a bold move, but one that alarmed the other nobles, fearful that their own lands and inheritance could be taken in such an arbitrary and vindictive manner. When Bolingbroke returned to England, it was not, so he claimed, to take the crown, but to recover what was rightfully his, a cause that could easily command wide support among his fellow peers. Against this background Richard’s power simply crumbled. He lost power; he lost majesty; he lost credibility. He could no longer be king.

The People's Queen

Considering her posthumous reputation Queen Mary Tudor, Bloody Mary, if you prefer, began her reign with a wide base of popular support, carried over from the reign of her brother, Edward VI. It’s easy to understand why. She represented stability and continuity in a period of transition and uncertainty. Protestantism was still a new and untried doctrine for the people of England.

One should always remember that the English Reformation came from above. It was from beginning to end a state-directed process, which carried most of the community, conservative and wedded to tradition, slowly and uncertainly. With the old rituals threatened there was no sure point of identity. Under Henry VIII, a schismatic rather than a heretic, people could adhere to a large degree to older Catholic practices. Under Edward VI, his son and successor, the whole thrust of Reformation took a far more Protestant direction.

In November 1547 Edward's first Parliament attacked many of the remaining traditional rituals. Henry's Act of the Six Articles was revoked, and the first steps taken towards the preparation of a new Book of Common Prayer, to replace the Catholic-inspired King's Book of 1539. As the traditional mass came under attack Mary increased the number of times that it was celebrated in her own household. Already popular as the heir-apparent, she became the focus for traditionalists and conservatives of all sorts. The more she was disapproved of at court, the more her standing increased with the people, who openly applauded her on her rides through London. There is little doubt that, on the death of Edward in 1553, Mary was carried to the throne on a great wave of popular and aristocratic approval, sweeping aside the machinations of Northumberland and the Protestant faction. Ironically, it was Mary's actions as Queen that was to give a new life to an unpopular cause.

Teacher of the Queen

Most people, I imagine, will have seen Mrs Brown, the movie with Judi Dench and Billy Connolly, which details the close relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, the favourite Highland servant of Prince Albert. Victoria, in a mood of prolonged and morbid depression after he husband’s death, took comfort in Brown’s reassuring presence. Less well know is that when Brown died in his turn the aging queen found a substitute in another menial. His name was Abdul Karim, better known as the Munshi, or teacher.

Karim arrived from India in 1887, aged twenty-four, and soon acquired the kind of dominance over the royal household previously enjoyed by John Brown, another source of discomfort and annoyance to Bertie, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII. He initially came as an Indian waiter, one of two selected to serve the Victoria during her Golden Jubilee, but the year after she appointed him “Munshi and Indian Clerk to the Queen Empress at a salary of 12 pounds per month.” In this particular capacity he began to teach the Queen Urdu, as well as introducing curry into the royal menus.

From this point his influence grew and grew. He was the subject of special favours, even being in attendance when the Queen met with foreign monarchs and prime ministers. The relationship has been given fresh significance by the discovery of a new archive of letters and photographs, as well as the Munshi’s own handwritten journal, as The Daily Telegraph reported recently.

The bond between the two was so close that it incited gossip at the time, especially after the Queen spent a night with the Munshi at Glassalt Shiel, the isolated Scottish cottage by Loch Muick that she had once shared with Brown and had not visited since his death in 1883. But the journal records a purely platonic relationship, not at all surprising considering the Queen’s age and the Munshi’s youth. At the time she insisted that all criticism of her Indian servant was based on jealousy and racial prejudice.

In retrospect it does appear unseemly for Victoria to have advanced two servants in such a fashion, a fashion that was bound to cause resentment within the royal household and speculation in the wider world beyond. But, looking at the situation with very modern eyes, it seems to me that both Brown and the Munshi filled a deep void in Victoria’s emotional life that opened after the death of Albert, a void the could not be filled by her immediate family, with whom she was always cold and formal, especially not by her wayward eldest son, whom she held partly responsible for the death of her beloved husband. The Munshi was no more than a surrogate.

A Pretty Witty King

I'm reminded by an article written by Jenny Uglow in the latest edition of the BBC History Magazine that it is almost three hundred and fifty years since the Restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II, a joyful occasion after the disastrous republican and pseudo-monarchical experiment that followed the execution of his father in January 1649.

England after 1660, the England of Charles, is the time of Dryden, of Rochester, of Pepys and of Shaftesbury; the time of Titus Oates and the Popish Plot; the time of a Great Plague and a Great Fire; the time of the Great Cathedral that started its rise from the ashes like a phoenix. It's a period which has long exercised a particular fascination for me, going all the way back to my childhood.

My own particular research is concerned with the political struggles that saw the emergence of the two-party system; of the Whigs and the Tories, who were to exercise such dominance for so long, first the one and then the other. These names were actually introduced as insults by the opponents of the party in question. The Parliamentary group around Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, was originally called the Country Party, meaning that they sought to defend the interests of the country at large against the machinations of the court. Only after were they called 'Whigs', a name borrowed from a group of Presbyterian extremists and rebels in Scotland. The Whigs, never devoid of imagination, called the Court Party, those around the Marquis of Halifax who took the side of the King, Tories, after a group of Irish brigands! The labels stuck. The English have a genius, perhaps a unique one, for turning mud into a badge of pride!

So, yes, this was the time that gave us the Whigs and Tories and the political football that has been present ever since. It also gave us in Charles the so-called Merry Monarch, a serial adulterer second to none, whose mistresses often traded their favours for political influence and high titles, including Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, a wholly unscrupulous gold-digger and personal favourite of mine, who deserves to be far better remembered than the commonplace Nell Gwynn!

I have no doubt that if I had been alive then I would have been a Tory, a supporter of the King and the legitimate succession, though the succession when it came, in the shape of Charles' Catholic brother James, was to be an outright disaster. Still, I have mixed views about Charles, a man not that admirable as a man; a man whose cynicism often did not stop short at the shabbiest acts of dissimulation and betrayal, even of his closest friends and associates.

He may have been no more intelligent than his rigid and unbending father, in his own way as puritanical as the most committed roundhead, but he was certainly a lot more pragmatic, a lot more Machiavellian. His supposed agreement with Louis XIV to convert to Catholicism under the secret Treaty of Dover was little more than a vast confidence trick, a way of extorting money from his gullible French cousin, free of Parliamentary scrutiny. Even his supposed death bed conversion to Catholicism seems to me not to be entirely sincere, almost as if he was playing the literal-minded and unimaginative James in the same fashion as he had once played Louis.

In a way I suppose it is possible to excuse Charles some of his vices in that he had a long and hard apprenticeship; first the plaything of the Scots, given to more extreme forms of religious intolerance, in an early attempt to recover the throne, then the head of a threadbare court in exile, dependant on the charity of foreign princes. In the end he was restored in 1660, it must be remembered, not by his friends, not by the old royalist party, but by his former enemies, people who had previously taken the side of Parliament in the Civil Wars and after. So he had to be careful, always playing a close and not very principled game. He was a great survivor determined, as he once told his brother, never again to go on his travels. Perhaps John Wilmot earl of Rochester's poetic comment on the man is ever so slightly unfair but it is the one that for me still carries the greatest resonance;

We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.

Oh, he did at least one wise one: he maintained James as his legitimate successor against all the political odds. For, as he once told his brother, only half in jest, nobody was ever going to remove him in his favour, something that all heads of state-and heads of government- would do well to remember. :-))

The Man of Sorrows

When Henrietta Maria, the prospective wife of Charles I, saw his image for the first time in Van Dyke’s triple portrait she is said to have wept. It’s possible to understand why. There is something deeply melancholic in those eyes, in that face, something that might even be described as martyrdom foretold.

The royal couple were eventually married in person (there had been an earlier marriage by proxy) in June 1625, a few month after Charles’ accession to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. After some initial frigidity, they were to find a deep and lasting happiness, which at least went part of the way to balancing the troubles of Charles unhappy public life.

His was never going to be an easy task. A small, retiring, shy man who spoke with a life-long stutter, he was never meant to be king. That was a role to be played by his older brother Henry, by all accounts an intelligent and personable figure, who gave ever sign of playing the part well. But Henry died in 1612 of typhoid fever, not long before Charles’ twelfth birthday.

As far as governance is concerned, the ways of dealing with people and institutions, Charles, now heir apparent, was given next to nothing in the way of practical training and responsibility from his father, James. But he inherited one particularly dangerous dogma – that monarchs ruled by divine right, by the will of God and not by the will of profane human institutions; not by the will of Parliament.

James had been king of Scotland many years before his accession to the English throne in 1603. There he had been involved in a lengthy struggle with the church; with those, like Reverend Andrew Melville, who inclined to a Presbyterian view, a view which held the king to be just an ordinary member of the church, like any other before God. James embraced divine right, and continental forms of absolutism, as a kind of royal declaration of independence. But what worked in Scotland, with its relatively weak parliamentary tradition, was to be disastrous in England.

Divine right was never going to fit within the English constitutional framework, with assertive traditions of parliamentary self-expression going right back to the Middle Ages. James, unsurprisingly, had a less than comfortable relationship with Parliament. But for all his dogma the King was a trimmer, a pragmatist, who only pushed a point so far. Charles, in contrast, was very much a ‘man of principle’, who hid his shyness and insecurity behind a rigid protocol, behind a jealous regard for the royal dignity; and for him the royal dignity truly was bestowed by God.

The struggle between crown and Parliament was the leitmotiv of Charles’ whole reign. He began badly, so badly that he dispensed with Parliament altogether for eleven years, raising money by any means available. This worked up to a point in ordinary circumstances, but a taste of future trouble came with the attempt to extend the Ship Tax, levied in costal counties for defence purposes, to the rest of the country, leading to the famous prosecution of John Hampden. But the whole act of royal management, of royal juggling, if you will, was in danger of falling if something extraordinary happened, and the extraordinary happened: the Scots rose in rebellion over the introduction of a new Anglican-style Prayer Book. Soon after the so-called Bishops’ Wars began.

Charles had not the military resources to repel or subdue the Scots. Such force that was available collapsed in 1640. With his treasury empty the king was obliged to summon the first assembly in eleven years - the Short Parliament, which proved unwilling to grant supply until certain grievances were addressed, and after so long a gap there were many, particularly over the question of religion and church government. Parliament, dominated by puritans like John Hampden, John Pym and latterly Oliver Cromwell, was suspicious of the high Anglicanism favoured by Charles, and the Catholicism embraced by the Queen.

The Short Parliament was dismissed after a few weeks with nothing settled, but as the crown was practically bankrupt Charles had no option but to summon another- the Long Parliament, which was destined only finally to exit the stage of history twenty years later. Now things really got out of hand. No sooner was peace made with the Scots than a major rebellion broke out in Ireland; the balls came down one by one. In England Charles mismanaged Parliament so badly that he was obliged to leave London in early 1642 in the tensest of political atmospheres. After some lengthy manoeuvring by both sides, the English Civil War finally broke out later that summer.

The war, in its first stage, was to last until 1646, leaving the King totally defeated and a prisoner of his enemies. Still he refused to compromise, seeing himself as a key player, playing one side off against the other; the Scots against the English, the New Model Army, which came into existence in 1645, against the Parliament, the monarchists against the republicans. The only effect this had was to radicalise politics still further. Finally, in late 1647, the King entered into a secret compact with the Scots, who promised to send an army into England on his behalf in return for certain religious concessions. The result was the Second Civil War, defeat for the Scots and a death warrant for the King.

Charles’ execution in January 1649 was born of a kind of political necessity; the axe went through his head, it might be said, in the way that Alexander’s sword went through the Gordian Knot. The act, though, had been little better than judicial murder, a decision that could only be secured after the army purged Parliament of all those sympathetic to the King, leaving a compliant and unrepresentative Rump. It was the beginning of a constitutional nightmare, with England eventually slipping into a military dictatorship headed by Cromwell.

Charles finally achieved his martyrdom, a witness for the Anglican ideal that he held so dear. He, more than any other, surely deserved the incorruptible crown.

Losing America

A new archive of letters was discovered recently which illustrate how much personal responsibility George III bears for the loss of the American colonies. What they show in particular is the communication gap, with a king and an administration hopelessly out of touch with events in America; a king whose optimism contrasts sharply with the pessimism of the commanders on the ground.

The collection, which goes on sale at Sotheby’s in New York in a series of auctions beginning in April, indicate that the commanders began to despair of victory almost as soon as the conflict began in 1775. A letter by General John Burgoyne, written in Boston on 25 June, 1775, is the earliest assessment of how bad things were. The British position is described as

…a crisis that my little reading in history cannot parallel…such a pittance of troops as Great Britain and Ireland can supply will only serve to protract the war, to incur fruitless expense and to insure disappointment.

It was not just the pittance of troops that was a problem; it was also the kind of troops that the crown possessed. In the previous wars with the French for the control o the Continent the British had relied on the support of colonial militias, who knew the country and could make the most effective use of the terrain; skirmishers, who knew how to use hit and run tactics and fighting skills learned from the natives. On occasions these highly mobile forces were to prove superior to conventional armies, tied to roads and dependent on supply columns, as Burgoyne was to find to his own cost at Saratoga.

The collection also includes a copy of George III’s proclamation of August 1775 calling for the “suppression of rebellion and sedition”, one of only twenty in existence. Other correspondence from London emphasises just how absurdly sanguine the authorities were, continually hoping that the rebels would see their error and sue for pardon. The problem is quite clear: king and cabinet obviously saw events in America as an old-fashioned rebellion, much like that of the Scottish Jacobites earlier in the century. It was nothing of the kind: it was a revolution.

Finding King Richard

Last November I wrote a piece headed My Kingdom for a Gun; finding Bosworth Field, focusing on the attempt to pinpoint the precise location of this seminal battle. According to the latest reports the task is all but complete. A thumbnail-sized silver gilt boar has been uncovered by the archaeological team. The boar-badge was, of course, the personal emblem of Richard III, the last English king to be killed in battle, and is thought to have been worn by one of his close retainers at the spot where he fell.

The evidence uncovered in the fields straddling Fen Lane in the Leicestershire parish of Upton also includes the badges of the supporters of both Richard and Henry Tudor, as well as twenty-eight lumps of roundshot, in a site that is nearly two miles south-west of what has traditionally been regarded as the centre of the battle.

Frank Baldwin, chairman of the Battlefields Trust charity, has described the discovery as “important to us as Schliemann discovering Troy.” My reaction was that he was, perhaps, allowing himself to be carried away by boyish enthusiasm, but I quite agree with Professor Richard Holmes, a historian for whom I have considerable respect, that “this is certainly the most important discovery about Bosworth in my lifetime.”

On Richard himself my feelings are somewhat ambivalent. I do not share the enthusiasm of the Ricardians for the ‘lost cause’ of their hero king. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Princes in the Tower, King Edward V and Richard duke of York, were indeed murdered on the orders of their uncle; they were simply too dangerous to remain alive. Moreover, I can’t but admire the Tudor dynasty that brought us in Henry VIII and Elizabeth I two of the greatest monarchs in English history.

Still, the romantic in me regrets the loss of the old England, the England of the Plantagenets, the England of Richard III, an enduringly fascinating man for all of his brief flight with destiny.

But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth

King of Sex

Charles II’s notorious carnal appetites impacted on popular consciousness at the time, with far greater consequence than any caused by past royal misconduct. In the course of research I carried out on this period I came across some truly hilarious-and unpublished-satires, one in which the king is depicted running around the streets of London-'Mercy, help!' the king cried, 'What is wrong, your Majesty; have the Dutch invaded?' 'No; for the love of God, fetch me a midwife.'

Politically speaking, though, the impact of Charles' affairs was far from amusing, because of the circumstances of the time and the nature of the reign. Charles had no legitimate offspring, but many bastards. Normally this would not have been any great problem, as no illegitimate son would have expected to succeed. It became a problem when Charles' designated heir, his brother James, Duke of York converted to Catholicism, and those opposed to him awakened the ambitions of the vain and mercurial James, Duke of Monmouth, the bastard-in-chief.

Beyond this Charles' affairs did indeed have consequences for the well-being of his dynasty, for the simple reason that he quite often allowed sexual attraction to translate directly into political power. Barbara Villiers was to be the first and greatest example of the 'political mistress' and the 'mistress of politics', far more powerful in every way than Charles own queen, Catherine of Braganza. Her influence was such that she created her own political circle at court, interfered constantly in matters of state; so powerful that she was even courted by foreign ambassadors. Charles was frightened of her, frightened of her temper.

In one of his diary enties Samuel Pepys noted "...the king doth mind nothing but pleasures and hates the very sight or thought of business...my Lady Castlemaine [Villiers] rules him...She hath all the tricks..." This liaison was in many ways to set the tone for Restoration politics, secret and manipulative, one that inevitably produced an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. Villiers, in the style of Salome, even managed to engineer the downfall of one of Charles' ablest and longest-serving advisors, Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon, whose head was effectively presented to her on a plate.

Villiers had been bad, but her eventual replacement, Louise de Keroualle was, if anything, even worse; for she was little better than a French agent, put in Charles' bed by his cousin, Louis XIV. Her rise coincides with the secret Treaty of Dover, by which Charles promised to convert to Catholicism in return for a French subsidy. It was not long after this, with the steadying influence of Clarendon gone, that a new mood of parliamentary suspicion emerged; suspicion of the throne, suspicion of Catholicism, and suspicion of Keroualle, or 'dearest Fubs', as Charles liked to call her.

Fubs conspired against all those in the court opposed to the French connection, including Lord Halifax. With the onset of the anti-Catholic crisis of the late 1670s, known as the Popish Plot, a document circulated specifically aimed at Fubs, with the title Articles of High Treason and other High Crimes. Parliament began to investigate the matter but Charles promptly ordered a dissolution.

So, yes, Charles' extra-marital relationships did weaken the authority and the majesty of the crown. It was of no matter when his lovers were, like Nell Gwynn, women of little consequence or influence. It most assuredly did matter when it came to intelligent and the strong-willed individuals, like Villiers and Keroualle. It was all to be part of government by intrigue and cabal; government, in other words, without responsibility. For many, moreover-setting the politics to one side-it made the monarchy look ridiculous, which allows me to finish with some verses drawn yet another anonymous satire;

As Nero once, with harp in hand survyed
His flaming Rome, and as that burned, he played,
So our great prince, when the Dutch fleet arrived,
Saw his ships burned and, as they burned, he swived.
So kind was he in our extremist need,
He would those flames extinguish with his seed.

Great, Good, and Just

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I on 30 January, 1649, a cold, tragic day in English history. Here is the poem that always comes to mind when I reflect on his murder and martyrdom

Great, Good, and Just, but I could rate
My grief with thy too rigid fate
I'd weep the world in such a strain
As it should deluge once again
But since thy loud-tongued blood demands supplies
More from Briareus' hands than Argus' eyes
I'll sing thine obsequies with trumpet sounds
And write thine epitaph with blood and wounds

The Once and Future King

We have been here before in the cycles of our history, the fag end of yet another Labour government, ever deeper into incompetence and mismanagement, ever deeper into debt. It has been proved time and again that these people are simply not fit for government; they never will be. They left the country in a mess in 1951, in 1970 and again in1979, but this is nothing compared with the horrendous mess that will be left by Brown and co.

Indeed, though still months short of a general election, it is doubtful if we have a ‘government’ any longer in the meaningful sense of the term, people who are willing and able to face up to the problems of the nation, the very real problems before us. No, we do not have a government, we have a party machine determined to hold on to power at all hazards, no matter the damage that is caused.

We have a Prime Minister, if we can call him that, the most ludicrously incompetent in our history, fiddling like Nero, pretending that the debt crisis, the horrendous debt crisis that he is responsible for, can be met with ‘efficiency savings’. He will by these means, save £3 billion, while a Golden Palace is spun out of the £655 billion that remains. Oh, what palliative treatment we will need when Nero is finally driven protesting from the stage and the New Labour circus is over. What an artist will die in Brown. What an artist indeed.

A new style of leadership is needed, a new form of government, altogether more sober and more realistic. What better model than Henry VII, the first Tudor, the five hundredth anniversary of whose death came this year? His reign had none of the drama of Henry VIII; none of the frustrated promise of Edward VI; none of the tragedy of Bloody Mary and none of the glory of Elizabeth. No, but he was still the smartest and shrewdest of them all. A careful manager, a founder of the modern English state, a believer in financial responsibility and political stability, a man who recognised that military adventures, adventures beyond our capacity, were bad for business, bad for security and bad for stability. Yes, a smart man, a shrewd man, a careful man. Altogether the best example for the difficult times ahead.

Long Reigning Over Us

I really quite enjoyed Channel 4’s drama-documentary about the Queen, shown last week over five nights, with a different actress playing her on each of the nights at key moments in her reign. They were reasonably good in their individual ways, though I think none of them really came close to Helen Mirren in The Queen. For those who did not see the television production the events surrounding the death of Princess Diana were not depicted, largely, I suspect, because a comparison would inevitably have been drawn with the movie.

I thought the opening and closing episodes of the series framed the history of the post-war monarchy so well; the first dealing with Princess Margaret’s relationship with Peter Townsend, a divorcee, with whom she was very much in love, but decided not to marry because of the call of royal duty. This was a time in the early 1950s when the abdication of Edward VIII still cast a shadow over the royal family. In the final episode Prince Charles declares that his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, another divorcee, was ‘non-negotiable’, and that he would marry for love. The ghost of Wallis Simpson, if you like, had finally been exorcised. The two cases, so similar is some ways, reflected a change in personal and national attitudes. It was their history, the history of the Windsors, the history of the institution, but at a deeper level it was also a history of us all, a history of the changes in Britain, as profound and far-ranging as any revolution, since the Queen first came to the throne all those years ago.

The second episode of the series, where the Queen is played by Samantha Bond, dealt with the turbulent early 1970s, when the country was under threat from trade union militancy and terrorism. Princess Anne has long been among my favourite royals because we share that same enthusiasm for horses. But seeing the dramatic recreation of the kidnapping attempt of 1974, seeing the way she behaved at the time, confirmed just what a remarkable, cool-headed and courageous person she is-an absolute brick!

The episode I enjoyed the most, though, was the one with the ‘two queens’, if I can put it like that, the first in Buckingham Palace and the other in Downing Street! In this episode the Queen was played by Susan Jameson and Margaret Thatcher by Lesley Manville. Manville was good, I thought, as the Iron Lady, depicting something of the more vulnerable side of her character. The clash between the two women, subtle but prickly, was well captured over the issue of the Commonwealth and sanctions against South Africa.

The Queen took an oath early in her life to serve the Commonwealth. Though she has taken all of her oaths seriously this is one to which she has had a particularly strong commitment. But as far as Margaret Thatcher was concerned the Commonwealth could go hang! Sorry, I’m being facetious but it was in the one episode that I found myself ‘out of sympathy’ with Her Majesty, though that’s not really quite the right expression. The Queen’s enthusiasm for the Commonwealth is admirable but as the years have passed since the coronation I suspect that those who share it have declined in ever increasing numbers. It seems to have so little relevance to our lives now, this residue of Empire. I further suspect that if today if a union of Commonwealth supporters in this country were called to, say, Scarborough, they could all be comfortably accommodated with hotel space left over.

Yes, it was good to get some insight, if partly fictitious, into the way ‘the firm’ operates, into the way in which the monarchy has played such an important part in the lives of each and every one of us; in keeping the country on course, in preserving an identity, a continuity, in the midst of transformation.

Never Fall in Love with a Royal!

It continues to be believed by some that Edward VIII’s affair with Wallis Simpson was universally unpopular, uniting the political establishment, the aristocracy and the people in a single view, when, in fact, all of the contemporary evidence suggests the contrary.

Edward was popular with ordinary people, and he received a great many letters of support, including one from Sunderland, in which he is told of Wallis "She is worth fighting for. I am only one of millions of working trod downed class who wish you every happiness with this Lady." Another from South Wales said "It is character that Counts here, and in the Great Beyond, not a Tytle."

In December 1936, with the Abdication Crisis well underway, an edition of the Daily Mail appeared with the headline The People Want their King. There was even speculation that Winston Churchill was going to form a 'King's Party' to bring down the government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

Why was Wallis hated by British society? Setting all of the ridiculous stories to the side-including the contention that she had an affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, and that she was a 'Nazi agent'-it reduces to one thing: simple snobbery. For many, including Lady Diana Cooper, Wallis was cast in the role of Becky Sharp, the cunning social-climbing heroine in William Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair. Low-class, a divorcee, an American-she had nothing to recommend her, nothing that would make her acceptable to society.

She had one advantage, though: Edward loved her, and that made her 'crime' even greater. In the end, the establishment view prevailed, to the extent that stories that Wallis was a Nazi agent still manage to surface from time to time, along with the even more ridiculous conjecture that she ensnared Edward using sexual tricks she had learned while in Shanghai. Never, ever, fall in love with a royal!

Edward I of England, Joshua and Justinian

Edward I, king of England, was both law-maker and law-breaker; Justinian and Joshua! He was certainly a 'bully' when it came to dealing with the Welsh and the Scots, jealous in every way of his imperial and feudal rights. But he could also be quite overbearing when it came to his own subjects.

At the beginning of his reign, determined to restore some of the rights of the crown eroded during the reign of Henry III, his politically inept father, he instituted a series of legal inquiries, known as Quo Warranto. By this he challenged holders of liberties, particularly those with jurisdictions, like that enjoyed by the Palatinate of Durham, to prove that they held these by legal title. These investigations were a source of much friction, and Edward was compelled to modify his legal offensive in 1290 under political pressure from his barons. But it also provides an insight into the lawyer-like and nit-picking mentality with which Edward doggedly pursued the prerogatives of the crown, a clue to his later attitude towards his feudal superiority over Scotland.

So, yes, he was something of a single-minded bully, without a great deal of interest in constitutional niceties. Yet consider this: in 1275, not long after the beginning of his reign, he wrote to the Pope, explaining that he could do nothing concerning the power of the crown without "consulting the magnates and the prelates." It was during his reign that Parliament began to be a regular feature of the English political landscape. In the summons for that of 1295 it was announced that "What touches all should be approved by all.", meaning that taxation could only be granted by consent, one of the great founding principles of English constitutional law. It was during this time that the census known as the Hundred Rolls was taken, the first comprehensive survey of English property rights since the earlier Domesday Book. As a result, the law was further refined in the Statute of Westminster, and other law codes issue subsequent to this document. So, here is the English Justinian!

In ever sense, therefore, Edward was the perfect feudal lawyer; therein lies his strength, and therein lies his weakness. For his notions of what was right were often so narrowly defined and pursued with a single-minded purpose, regardless of the political damage caused, and with hidden costs to the crown. Unlike his father, he was a good soldier; but his conquest of Wales, and the attendant castle building, was ruinously expensive.

It would have been wise to consolidate and pause for reflection, but the vacancy of the Scottish crown following the death in 1290 of Margaret opened what was to be known as the Great Cause. It was, perhaps, the defining moment of Edward's reign, confirming that jealousy of privilege and title that marked the outset of his reign in England. He came to Scotland as a lawyer, and as a bully; and he fought his wars in Scotland as a lawyer, and as a bully. You see-and this is a point that is often overlooked-Edward never, at any point claimed the crown of Scotland for himself: he simply fought to maintain his position as feudal overlord, granted to him by the Scots in 1292. Even in 1305, when the conquest seemed to be complete, Edward produced Ordinances for the government of Scotland, of which he is Lord, not King.

Kings, Heretics and Witches

Heretics had to burn in England, yes, but why and for what reason? The timing of the introduction of De Heretico Comburendo in 1401, the law that allowed for this practice, hitherto unknown, intrigued me.

The facts are, I suppose, quite simple: the passing of this rather extreme measure at that particular point in English history had a little to do with religion and a lot to do with politics. You see, Henry IV had only two years before the introduction of De Heretico Comburendo deposed his cousin Richard from the throne of England in highly controversial circumstances. There were other people, moreover, who had a claim to the throne just as good if not better than he did himself. He was thus open to challenge and was to spend virtually the whole of his reign defending himself against conspiracy, plot and treason in all of their many forms.

The one thing he needed was support, the support of the church above all. So, on the advice of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, worried by the growth of Lollardy, a crypto-Protestant heresy, Henry decided that the flames would have to be lit. Rather burn heretics than lose the crown of England.

Henry’s second wife, Joanna of Navarre, probably unknown to most people who read this, has the right to be know as the only Queen Consort to be accused and condemned as a witch. Yes, she was. When Henry V, her step-son, succeeded to the throne in 1413he was anxious to renew the struggle with France, in the long conflict subsequently known as the Hundred Years War. Joanna, the daughter of Charles the Bad of Navarre, had relatives in the French service and refused to agree the king’s request for money. She subsequently found herself accused of attempting to poison the King by malificia. She was convicted, her lands seized and Henry got his money…and his war.

One does not execute royal witches, oh no. Joanna was kept, rather, in Pevensey Castle, and subsequently released after the death of Henry in 1422. Witch or not she is buried alongside her husband, Henry IV, in Canterbury Cathedral.