An Accident of History

#12

The papers last weekend were running stories speculating on possible changes to the Act of Settlement, removing the primacy given to male children. Changes to this Act (dating from 1701) would be of limited, possibly only esoteric, interest were it not for the impending marriage of William Wales to Catherine Middleton. If the first child born to their marriage is a girl, her claim to the throne would be overtaken by any subsequent younger brother. The Act would have to be amended (not just here but in all Commonwealth countries) if we – or rather ‘They’ – decided to modernise the order of succession to follow strict primogeniture regardless of gender.

Well, hurrah for that, or them, you might say – always assuming you give a monkey’s … which hopefully you don’t, except out of a purely whimsical interest in the quirkiness of history. And while they’re about it, they could also remove the religious test – designed to prevent a Catholic succeeding to the throne or any prospective heir from marrying one. And it’s not just Catholics; anyone not in communion with the Anglican church is barred. That, I guess, takes care of everyone who wouldn’t write “C of E” on their paperwork at Accident & Emergency. Removing the ban on Catholics would probably also require dis-establishment of the Church of England and I struggle to remember any reasons why either you or I should be troubled by that.

Hereditary monarchy is a strange anachronism. Its main function these days seems to be to set the Gold Standard for ‘A’ list celebrity status, with all the consequent fawning and trashing and keyhole-peeping that being a ‘celeb’ entails. The hereditary principle simply does not work as a mechanism for finding the right person for the job. No one would want to consult a medical doctor who had done nothing more than inherit the title of ‘doctor’. Yet that’s exactly how we choose our Head of State. The Act of Settlement is a tacit admission that the hereditary principle is flawed but instead of dispensing with the whole idea, our ancestors tried to manipulate the details to ensure a more congenial outcome.

Under the Act, succession to the British throne is restricted to the heirs of the Electress Sophia of Hanover (1630 – 1714) as determined by male-preference primogeniture, religion and legitimate birth. It’s particularly strange that males are given precedence in the royal succession considering our long history of spectacularly ineffectual males on, behind and around the throne. Were it not for inheritance through the female line, the House of Windsor would never have become ensconced in its various castles and palaces in the first place. Nor indeed would any of the previous ruling houses of Tudor, Stuart, Hanover and Saxe-Coburg & Gotha.

No one would accuse Edward III (King from 1327 to 1377) of being an ‘ineffectual male’. On the contrary, this grisly old goat went rather too far in the opposite direction. He and his Queen (Phillippa of Hainault, if you insist,) upset the medieval applecart by producing several too many sons and thus giving rise to the Wars of the Roses. One hundred years later, in 1485, Henry Tudor (claiming the Lancastrian line via his mother, Margaret Beaufort) put an end to both Richard III (of York) and said Wars at the battle of Bosworth Field. An astute and meticulous man, Henry VII quickly married the late Richard’s niece, Elizabeth of York, thereby re-uniting the Houses of York and Lancaster. He was careful to maintain, however, that his claim to the throne was valid, independent of the marriage. Showing considerable prescience, he subsequently arranged for his daughter, Margaret, to marry James IV, King of Scotland. It was because of this alliance that a century later, when Queen Elizabeth I died childless in 1603, Margaret Tudor’s great-grandson, James Stuart (James VI of Scotland) – gaily headed south to become James I of England.

James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, by Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Mary was executed by her cousin Elizabeth I and Darnley was murdered. As dysfunctional families go, the Tudors and Stuarts take some beating. But, lack of a happy home not withstanding, James was also the James of the King James Bible – so well done him! James married off his own daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V, the Elector Palantine – which would lead eventually to Sophia, of whom more later. James Stuart was also the father of Charles I who rather over-did ‘The Divine Right of Kings’ and got himself beheaded by parliament in 1649. The Cromwellian ‘Protectorate’ did not long survive Oliver’s death in 1658 and in 1660 the Stuart monarchy was restored in the person of Charles II. This next Charles presided over the Great Plague and the Great Fire but produced no legitimate heir. When he died in 1685 he was succeeded (briefly) by his younger brother, James – numerically James II. Alert to James’ Catholic leanings, and fearing the establishment of a Catholic dynasty when James managed to father a legitimate son, the English rallied to James’ daughter Mary and her robustly Protestant husband, William of Orange. In 1688, in a series of events rather inaccurately known to history as ‘the Glorious Revolution’, William landed at Torbay in Devon and James II fled abroad. He and later his son (The Old Pretender) and grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, (The Young etc. ) maintained a claim to the throne until 1788, although the last meaningful Jacobite rebellion had ended in blood and gore at Culloden in 1746.

William’s claim to the throne came through two women; his mother, Charles I’s daughter Mary and his wife, also (and rather unimaginatively) named Mary. William III, still to this day variously revered and reviled by sectarians in Ireland as King Billy, reigned jointly with his wife (who was also, obviously, his first cousin) until Mary’s death in1694. William continued as king until he too died (as a result of falling off his horse) in 1702; whereupon Mary Stuart’s sister Anne became queen. Queen Anne gave birth to fourteen children, none of whom survived into adulthood. She also suffered at least four miscarriages and died (of exhaustion and broken heart, I should imagine) in 1714 at the age of 49.

We now revert, as did the authors of the Act of Settlement, to James I’s decision to arrange for his daughter Elizabeth to marry the Elector Frederick. Elizabeth’s daughter Sophia was duly married to the Elector of Hanover. Thus when the unfortunate Queen Anne died the succession passed to the House of Hanover in the non-English-speaking person of Sophia’s son, George I. Georges II and III naturally followed with a little local ‘madness’ and a period of Regency along the way. George IV had issues but died without issue and was succeeded by his brother, William IV. On William’s demise in 1837, the crown passed to his young niece, Victoria. She promptly threw herself upon her cousin the diligent and devoted Albert of Saxe Coburg and Gotha with whom she had innumerable children. The Royal family were then stuck with Albert’s resoundingly Germanic surname until 1917 when – at the height of the First World War – Victoria’s grandson, George V, poked his cousin (Kaiser Bill) in the eye by dumping the family name and re-inventing the British branch of the family firm as The House of Windsor. So there! And after all that quite how they justify the precedence given to male heirs is a right royal mystery to me. It is almost as big a mystery as why we, The People, still tolerate the power, wealth and privilege enjoyed by the slow-motion historical accident that is our beloved Royal Family.

Next week: Banged-Up in the Tower.