Not because I like him, to see the crisis play out. I also wish Nixon had stayed; not to be president, but to be impeached.
So let me see if I understand the argument here. The spouse of the monarch is so important that it is worth throwing him out if he picks the wrong one BUT the monarch is so unimportant that you can toss him out just because of who he married.
The monarch is constitutionally important. Any individual monarch is dispensible.
Well said, Paul!
It also demonstrates that monarchs know they have to give Royal Assent when Parliament tells them to. Royal Assent is not like a Presidential veto; the monarch doesn’t have a legal right to withhold it.
That’s the likely hook that would be used to remove a recalcitrant king. In order to be the king you must carry out the duties of kingship. Giving Royal Assent to the bills sent by Parliament is one of the duties of the king.
If a king refused to give Royal Assent, even to a bill removing him from power, then Parliament would be able to say “Oh, you’ve chosen not to carry out your kingly duties anymore? I guess that means you’ve chosen not to be king. So we’ll assume your refusal to grant Royal Assent is your way of announcing your abdication. With your abdication, we’ve informed your nephew he’s now the king and he’s taken over.”
This pretty much is what happened in 1688. Parliament just informed James II that they considered his decision to leave the country to be an abdication and they chose a new king to replace him. They simply ignored James’ protests that he had never abdicated and had no intention of abdicating.
Sometimes people find strict obedience to a legal principle to be less important than other values. History is full of authority figures who went to their graves or exile or prison protesting all the way that what was happening was illegal. And lots of them were right and it didn’t help them at all.
Depending on exactly how a recalcitrant Edward VIII was removed, it might well be that the method adopted would have been revolutionary (in the sense that it didn’t conform to then current legal norms).
But so what? You could make precisely the same objection to the establishment of the United States. That didn’t stop the United States from being established.
The problem here is a lot of people thinking “the King marrying a divorcee isn’t a big deal”. In 1936, it was a huge deal. Let me quote Charles Mowat’s “Britain Between The Wars”, usually considered the definitive history of the era:
Elsewhere Mowat notes maybe ninety MPs joined Churchill in supporting the King, with all the major Labour and Liberal leaders opposed to him too. The King wasn’t just defying Baldwin, but defying Parliament and the country as a whole.
Ultimately Nixon resigned when he realized the cabinet was no longer willing to do his bidding. Congress’ impending impeachment was just one more (small) brick in that tall and growing wall.
Edward’s Kingship was useful (both to Britain and to Edward) only insofar as anyone bothered to follow his orders. It was apparent to all the experts of the time on both sides of the issue that had Edward persisted, he’d have been like Capt. Queeg. IOW, on the bridge, issuing orders, but ignored by all.
Even assuming Edward really wanted to remain King and also marry Simpson, that wasn’t a winning situation.
God-Kings went out a thousand years ago. The British Monarch, and indeed the US President, are as powerful as their followers permit them to be. And no more.
As has been said, it’s hard for a 2015 Westerner to absorb the 1930s zeitgeist about divorce, commoners vs. royal blood, etc. Imagine the King or President today admitted to being an active pedophile in search of the next victim; that’s about the corresponding degree of moral panic that would ensue. Clearly all the talking heads and most of the citizenry would say this person has demonstrated rock-bottom unsuitability for the high office.
Yes, and in James’s case he really kinda gave Parliament a pretty justified reason for taking this position. He dropped the Great Seal of the Realm into the Thames (or at least at least that’s the story, it’s unclear if this really happened or not–but it was certainly seen again which calls this into question), and when faced with an invading army from Holland he chose to not engage it but to disband his army and flee. When captured by William’s forces he was given the option to flee the country to avoid any further legal problems and that’s when he crossed over to France. Arguably by refusing to meet an invading army in the field and disbanding his forces he had basically abnegated all of his sacred responsibilities as King and created an interregnum.
Now of course, the reason for James’s actions is he was deeply unpopular. Large numbers of his army were expected to be unreliable in combat as they had no desire (as Anglicans) to fight and die against Protestant William to keep their detested Catholic King on his throne. Many of his top officers had openly switched sides (so too did Princess, later Queen, Anne.)
Well, he was exiled because he had a son. I mean, he had been a Roman Catholic married to a Roman Catholic before then, and Parliament was reluctantly willing to put up with it.
This is maybe a semantic question, but why is it called “advice” if the monarch is bound to follow it? Why not just cut out the bullshit and say that that the Prime Minister, as head of the House of Commons, can order the King to do something?
It’s typical British understatement.
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It’s typical British understatement.
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The King rules based on the advise of his Ministers. That has been English and later British constitutional position for centuries. If the King does not follow the advice of his ministers then you have a major issue, because the Minsters will resign, new elections will be called, with the Monarchy and its powers as the issue of the campaign. A monarch will only do that is he or she feels that they are standing for some fundamental issue; like if Cameron and the Tories declare that they will execute every blue eyed baby (to use Sir Ivor Jennings’s favourite example), and attempt to pass legislation to that extent, then the monarch might be justified in refusing assent.
Ultimately, the Monarchy is indispensable. As has been said above, the current monarch is not.
You know, judging by the number of answers/scenarios that end with “…and so Edward’s out” vs. "…and there goes the Monarchy [insert political form of government here], the first alternative, as worked out by you SD alternative Universe scholars, still seems to lead.
And in the post elaborating the second alternative (I’m on cell phone and can’t flip back for cite) this new crazy thing called The Republic of England (God knows what-all else for the rest of the Commonwealth) would be an “illiberal democracy.” Huh? Why? We turned out OK, even though it took a while. We didn’t have the wrench that this new R. of E. in the 1930s would have had, and I can’t see a Terror arising (although exigencies and specters of war would allow “extraordinary” non-democratic measures to take root, as it has and cnyines to do to this day.
But that’s an alternative alternative Universe exploration.
To return to the matters and language used in the thread: a number of times in the early comments a/the key act of initiating major trouble is happening is when Parliament issues (a bill?–what’s it called before Assent?) which “regrets” what the Monarch has done. Later, with Queen E’s hats, the proposition was that Parliament “advises” her in re the Royal Lids.
Are these Parliamentary acts (“Acts”–that’s what they’re called!, right?), using either of those words, or other words expressing such an opinion, in themselves extraordinarily rare?
One more thing: I briefly talked about this thread with my father, who besides being quite uninterested in these questions (hey, everybody has his own hobbies) is over 90 years old, and the one thing he responded with, with a surprising (to me)
emotion was, “I always felt bad for Margaret, who died, and they wouldn’t let her marry a commoner.” Never heard of that, don’t even know what he’s talking about…
Captain Pete Townsend. She would have been allowed to have married him, but she would have had to give her up place in line for the throne, and she would have been forbidden to take communion in the Anglican church. For all Margaret’s faults, she took her duties to the crown and her religion very seriously.
Goddam–so this affair (at whatever level of intimacy) was, by my reading of your cite, initiated under George, and it too was scuttled–again, by Wiki–“officially” because, yet again, from Henry VIII down to pre-Charles, the suitor was divorced. (I put the quote marks because of my father’s reading/assertion for the ixnay was that he was a “commoner.” Which of course to Americans is an intolerable reason for disparagement.
Of course his “common-ness”–a decorated war hero with high trust of the Monarchy–differed in kind than that of Wallis. But the way he said it reminded me of how even Americans took the side/were sympathetic to Lady Di, in emotion.
No, the problem was not that he was a commoner. It was that he had married before, and had a wife living. Yes, he’d had a divorce, but at the time it was unacceptable to the Queen and the court that a senior member of the Royal Family would marry a divorced person. Hence, if Margaret did so, she’ have to leave the Family Business. Which she was not willing to do.
WHich is surprising. ELizabeth already had two young children by the time the whole Townsend business broke, and Margaret had done her duty as the spare, which is live long enough to step up if necessary, lot less likely once kids are there.