Friday 6 July 2007

The Act of Settlement

Gordon Brown has apparently annoyed Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh by not including the repeal of the Act of Settlement among his proposed constitutional chnages.

Well, I question the viability of a Catholic community which devotes any great energy to the question of ascending the throne while the born sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets and the pre-born are ripped from their mothers’ wombs to be discarded as surgical waste. Far from being a term of abuse, the word “Papist” is in fact the name under which the English Martyrs gave their lives, and expresses the cause for which they did so, making it a badge of honour, to be worn with pride.

And yet, and yet, and yet...

The Established status of the Church of England was already a century and a half old at the time of the Act of Settlement, and is wholly unconnected to it. Anyway, in the 1990s, the Courts ruled that that status entailed what everyone had always known to be the case: that the doctrine of the Church of England – “the reformed Protestant religion as by law established in the Realm of England” – is whatever Parliament says it is at any given time, be that the ordination of women (as was the matter in question), or reincarnation, or the infallibility of Papal definitions ex cathedra, or anything else at all. All that it is necessary for a monarch to do in order to uphold this “religion” is to grant Royal Assent to Ecclesiastical Measures just as if they were any other Bills passed by Parliament.

Those who would most resist any change to the Act of Settlement are those who insist that the Church of England is confessionally Calvinistic as a first principle rather than, as is in fact the case, only until such time as Parliament sees fit to repeal or replace the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and not a moment longer. Such people are mostly not in England (where they are mostly not members of the Church of England), but in Scotland (where the monarch is required, in ecclesiastical terms, to do nothing more than preserve a Presbyterian pattern of polity) and in Northern Ireland (where, as in Wales, the monarch has no formal ecclesiastical function whatever).

However, it is in Northern Ireland that a large Catholic community, by far the single largest religious body (as the Catholic Church also is, narrowly or otherwise, in each of England, Scotland and Wales), is crying out to be bound more closely to the British State, with which certainly a very large proportion of its members, and possibly the majority, identifies very strongly. In view of what the Coronation Oath actually means, then let the Act of Settlement be repealed if that would help that binding, long complete and unthought about everywhere else in the United Kingdom (even, it seems, on Merseyside and in the West of Scotland).

What was established in 1688, with strong Papal support, was in fact the Catholic principle previously given practical effect in 1399 in England, and even more ingrained in Scotland, as against both Gallican princely absolutism and its metamorphosis into the theory whereby the new gentry-cum-mercantile republic was sovereign even over the Prince.

English Jacobitism, in particular, was what would now be called an Anglican, rather than a Catholic, phenomenon, when it was not just a ragbag of everyone (Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, smugglers, the lot) opposed to the Whig hegemony. Catholics hardly featured, since they simply did not share the underlying philosophical and theological assumptions; rather, they fully accepted Parliament’s right to determine the succession to the throne, even when it was inconvenient to themselves.

Each of the Commonwealth Realms is a linear inheritor of that age-old tradition, which is the peaceable alternative both to the bloodletting anti-republican pseudo-monarchism coming down from Buridan through the French Counter-Revolution, and to the bloodletting anti-monarchist pseudo-republicanism against which it came to react, historical aberrations both.

The Parliament of each Commonwealth Realm therefore has the absolute right to determine the succession to its own throne; but they mercifully choose to exercise this right in unison, and may that ever remain the case. (It is perfectly illiterate to suggest that the repeal of the Act of Settlement would revive any Stuart claim to the throne.) So, again, if the repeal of the Act of Settlement helped to keep even one country in this family, then, in view of the above, by all means let it be repealed, though only by unanimous consent among all the Commonwealth Realms, since its continuation would also be a price well worth paying in order to preserve the unity of that family.

5 comments:

  1. All they have to do concerning the Act of Settlement concerning the present line is to pass a law saying something like only legitimate offspring descended from Queen Victoria are eligable for the throne.

    The Danes did something similar in the 1950's when the constitution were amended to allow women to ascend the throne. The original deal had been that those descended from the marraige of Christian IX and Queen Louise as agreed when Christian was made heir to the childless Frederick vii - Christian being a distant relative of Frederick and Louise was Frederick's cousin.

    In the 1950's when the constitution was amended for the allowing women on the throne, it was also amended stating that only legitimate descendents of Christian X (Christian ix's grandson and grandfather of the present Queen Margrethe) could inherit the Danish throne. Thus removing several European royal families from the line of succession such as the British, Russian, Norwegian and Greek ones.

    Of course the UK is not the only country which binds the monarch to a certain religion. The Danish and Norwegian monarchs are heads of their respective Lutheran churches and the Swedish monarch was bound to be a Lutheran whilst the church was established (it was disetablished at the millenia).

    By convention the Dutch royal family had to be members of the Reformed Church. Queen Beatrix's three sisters renounced their claims to the throne when they married catholics.

    Several South American republics at one time required their presidents to be practicing catholics. These included Argentina which has a large Jewish and non-catholic Anglo and Welsh Argentine populations. The RC requirement I think was only scrapped in the late nineties.

    Concerning the Queen being head of state of other countries, you tend to put this into some mystical context. In reality the Queen has very little contact with the other 15 countries on the admission of Helen Clark - the Kiwi PM. When Mauritius became a republic in the 1990's the skies did not fall in. They just elected the governor-general the first president (a muslim in a predominately hindu country).

    The Queen to best of our knowledge did not get involved in the violence of the Jamaican political scene, particuarly in the 1970's when HM government and HM loyal opposition were hiring yardie gangs to shoot each other's supporters. It was not Mrs Queen who sorted it out but the very honourable Robert Nestor Marley.

    Tuvalu for a time was run by a military government which operated in the name of the crown. Think it was about two years in power before returning power to civilian government.

    I have no doubt that the Queen is keyed up on the basics of the political scene in these countries.

    It is up to these fifteen where their destinies lie. However it is a bit odd for an independent country to have a head of state who is essentially a foriegner and only occassionally visits if at all - believe she has never been to Tuvalu.

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  2. What a fascinating insight into you no doubt expect an independent Scotland to be like...

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  3. Do not know what you mean?

    Concerning the monarchy in Scotland, generally the royal family respected and the only general complaint is the Queen's title - Elizabeth the II as of course there has been no Elizabeth I of the UK. The Queen was sued in the case I have mentioned in previous blogs - McCormack v HM Advocate. The result of the case was that under the royal perogative the Queen could call herself whatever she liked including Wayne the Dungeater if she so chose.

    However the issue is generally sidestepped by ignoring the offending digits up here. There are no "EIIR" letter boxes in Scotland after they were attacked and blown up in instances. Modern postboxes in Scotland just have crown on them. At official buildings such as prisons, between E and R is the Scottish coat of arms.

    No oaths in Scotland are taken to Elizabeth the Second, only to Queen Elizabeth - the exception being the armed forces. This is due to Ian Hamilton QC who was part of the Stone of Scone repatriation committee in the 1950's (now the basis of a film in production) refusing to take an oath to Elizabeth the Second when qualified as a lawyer and organising a boycott of the oath. So the oath was changed.

    By the way Ian Hamilton has his own blog if you wish to visit it.

    Concerning an independent Scotland I tend to favour a republic over all as it would bring some "political balance" - someone with a mandate to check the execesses of a powerful executive which controls Parliament. Like we have been enduring in the UK periodically.

    However if Scotland was to keep a monarchy I would favour an independent one. Most likely solution would be for Anne (if she wanted) to be designated heir to the Scottish throne and acting as her mother's full time representative in Scotland. On the Queen's death Balmoral and the Scottish crown would pass to Anne and her descendents.

    Anne is very associated with Scotland (particuarly with the rugby) and her heir Peter was educated in Scotland, represented Scotland at sporting level and lives and works in the Edinburgh area (he works at the Royal Bank of Scotland HQ). And therefore an ideal candidate.

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  4. Iain Hamilton has a blog? Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn! Do give me the address, please.

    There has never been an Elizabeth I of any of the Commonwealth Realms, but the Queen is called Elizabeth II in each and every one of them. No one in Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, seriously objected to Edward VII. Nor, however briefly, to Edward VIII.

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  5. Here is the Ian Hamilton blog address. He not only writes it himself but also receives contributions from friends and Scottish political scene types as diverse as Michael Fry, Lesley Riddoch and Tommy Sheriden.

    http://www.ianhamiltonqc.com/wordpress/

    He started the blog when he was 81.

    Yes there was anger in Scotland over the Edward vii title - as you will know the term king Edward has certain sensitivities in Scotland. There were protests but they were quelled when the king nearly died of appendicitis - cancelling the original date for the coronation. Again the issue is sidestepped in Scotland by plaques of buildings that he opened by saying "opened by king Edward"

    Edward viii issue took place over a space of the the death of George V and the abdication crisis.

    Imagine how the people of middle England might feel if Europe became a united monarchy and Prince Charles was its head reigning as Charles xi - the French of course have had ten previous kings called Charles.

    You have obviously forgotten the example of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary when the monarch had different titles for the Austrian half and the Hungarian half brought about by the compromise of 1867.

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