The monarch doesn’t have to be an Anglican to use the title “Defender of the Faith”; both Mary I and James II used it, and they were Catholics. Conversely, not using the title, or using a variation of it, would not mean that a monarch wasn’t an Anglican.
Religion-wise, the requirements imposed on the monarch are twofold:
First, don’t be reconciled to or hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome or profess the Popish Religion. Since 2013 you can, however, marry a Papist.
Secondly, join in Communion with the Church of England. This doesn’t require you to be an Anglican at the moment when you inherit the Crown; George I, for whose benefit the Act of Settlement was passed, was a Lutheran. What it requires is that you should be willing to take the sacrament at the hands of an Anglican minister, and that you should do so at least once. The monarch does this as part of the coronation service.
Which the Roman Catholic Church would not allow to its members, even if the primary legal restriction on communion with Rome were removed. In effect the only ways round this are abdication, or a complete recasting of the relationship of Church and state.
Well, presumably it was a kind of belt-and-braces thing, but it went further than that, since there might be people other than Catholics who would be reluctant to take Anglican Communion - Orthodox Christians, for example, or some particularly exclusive variety of Protestants.
Taking the requirements together, the net effect was that you had to be a Protestant, and the particular flavour of Protestantism that you professed had to be not fundamentally incompatible with Anglican Protestantism. And (until recently) you had to be not married to a Papist.
First, it is not the case that “nothing is decreed explicitly in law” in England/the UK. Since 1688, the succession to the Crown has been expressly defined by four different Acts of Parliament: the Bill of Rights, 1688; the Act of Settlement, 1701; His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936; and most recently, the Succession to the Crown Act 2013. Those statutes didn’t just “put restrictions” on the common law of succession to the Crown; they fundamentally altered the line of succession, changing the common law. Every monarch since 1688 has held the Crown by virtue of statute law, not by common law. That started with William and Mary and continues right to Elizabeth II. She is monarch because she is the descendant of the Dowager Electress Sophia of Hanover:
At the time it was passed, the Act of Settlement excluded from the succession approximately 50 to 75 people (can’t find the exact number). Since then, that number has grown exponentially. That’s not a restriction on the succession; that’s a major statutory change to the succession. If the Act had not been passed, on the death of Anne, or at the latest by the extinction of James II’s line with the death of Henry, Cardinal of York, the Crown would have passed to the descendants of Charles I’s daughter Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans. Instead, the Crown descended to Sophia’s line, who was descended from Elizabeth, daughter of James I. By the common law of succession, she would not have inherited ahead of all those others, but the statute law expressly changed that and made her line the preferred line. It was by statute, and only by statute, that George I became king.
As MikeS commented, if the succession were governed by the common law, it would be Henrietta’s senior descendant, Franz, Duke of Bavaria, who would be monarch.
Second, it is correct that once the succession was changed, subsequent monarchs inherited by virtue of the common law rule of males in order of birth, followed by females in order of birth, but that is a secondary rule of succession, within the statutory rule that succession is based on descent from Electress Sophia, and not from more senior lines.
Third, that common law rule has also been changed by statute. As of 2013, succession will be determined solely by birth order, without regard to gender. Should little Prince George (whom God long preserve) die without lawful issue, the crown will go to Princess Charlotte, not to little Prince Louis Arthur Charles. The common law would say that Prince Louis would be next in line after Prince George, then Princess Charlotte. The statute law has explicitly changed that: Charlotte is next in line after Prince George, followed by Prince Louis.
So, no, it is not the case that the succession to the throne depends on the same common law rules that applied to Richard II or Henry VI. Nor is it the case that succession rules are not declared explicitly in law: they are, in the various statutes I’ve cited.
And, as a side note, Henry VI did not inherit by common law rules, but by force of conquest: Richard II’s heir by common law was Edmund Mortimer, who was the senior descendant of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, not the Lancastrian line founded by John of Gaunt.
Richard’s father was the eldest son of Edward III, so Richard became king on Edward’s death. Clarence was the second son of Edward III, Gaunt was the third son. If the common law rules applied, Clarence’s senior descendant, Edmund Mortimer, should have inherited the throne on Richard II’s death. Instead, Gaunt’s son, Henry IV, seized the Crown from Richard and promptly imprisoned Mortimer, who died in prison while the Lancastrians were on the throne. Henry VI, grandson of Henry IV, inherited by virtue of that act of force, not the common law.
The succession to the English throne is even stranger around Henry VII. His best claim to the throne was through his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and not through his father. Lady Margaret was descended from Edward III via John of Gaunt (her great-grandfather), but she was still alive during Henry VII’s reign: she outlived him by about 2 months, which isn’t surprising, since she was only 13 years older than her only son. So Lady Margaret had a better claim to the throne than Henry VII, except that Henry did defeat and kill Richard III at Bosworth.
However, after 1485 the succession has proceeded normally from Henry VII, except for the exclusion of Roman Catholics and the abdication of Edward VIII.
IIRC the monarch is anointed in the form of a cross on the hands, head, and heart. That last part would imply Her Majesty’s chest may have been partially exposed during the ceremony.
I don’t think the use of a screen (more a canopy) was because of the risk of exposing HM’s balcon, more the idea that a sacrament is or should be a mystery, televised or not. The Church was always a bit sniffy about due respect for religious ceremonial. In 1923 the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to let the wedding of the future George VI to be broadcast over the radio because it might be listened to by men in pubs with their hats on.
What sort of form the next Coronation might take, in view of all the changes in custom and practice over the decades since, is anybody’s guess, but I don’t imagine it will be very different, at least in its central religious core. I can’t see it turning into a Dutch-style civil investiture.
Norman Hartnell deliberately designed both her coronation dress and the white shift she wore over it for the anointing with relatively low necklines so that she could anointed on the upper chest. The Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t get to see anything more than anyone else.
The use of the canopy at modern coronations has been mostly symbolic. It is not as many people attending see much of the other main bits of the ceremony anyway. Most of those in the Abbey can’t see the Coronation Chair at all and those who can often only have a back view. Only those close to the high altar get a good view. The ceremony is structured so that more of those present see more of what is happening after the monarch has been anointed and crowned.
At some medieval coronations the chancel of Westminster Abbey was more enclosed by the temporary platform constructed in the crossing, which made the anointing and the presentation of the regalia genuinely hidden moments.
As for the OP, I don’t think anyone has mentioned what was the most striking aspect of the decision. That’s the fact the Queen publically advised the Commonwealth governments to appoint Prince Charles. Obviously she would have done so only after private discussions and so in the confident knowledge that this would be approved without a fuss. But it was choreographed so that she appeared to be telling the politicians in public what to do. That’s the sort of thing that, as a good constitutional monarch, she pretty much never does. Presumably all concerned calculated that it would be more convenient for all of them if it was the Queen who was seen to force the issue.
I wondered about that, too. Even doing so on the “advice” of the British PM would arguably be insufficient for her to be saying that to all the Commonwealth heads of government.
The usual back channel consultations culminating in a politely expressed hope, which it would be churlish to deny to an old lady…
There is also some speculation in the UK as to what HM might possibly have allowed to be said to the PM about the shambles caused by changes to immigration requirements over the last few years (when the relevant minister was one Mrs. T. May). The net result was that a fair number of people from other Commonwealth countries who came here legally suddenly discovered after decades that, to prove it, they now had to produce all sorts of documentation they didn’t have and pay large application fees to get themselves regularised, with some suddenly being told they’d have to pay for treatment on the NHS, or would have to leave their jobs or homes. And all that coming to a head on the eve of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London, with the PM at first refusing to meet other Commonwealth PMs to discuss the issue. And then suddenly she went into reverse (abject apologies all round, promises of instant citizenship, fees to be waived and compensation to be paid).
I strongly suspect that care would have been taken in advance to reassure the other Commonwealth governments that she was not acting only on the advice of the British PM. Any impression that the British government had told her to tell them to appoint Charles would have gone down very badly indeed. But it was no secret that there had been some discussions between the various Commonwealth governments over the issue, so presumably she acted on their collective advice.
There would also have been the factor that it was easier for her to be seen to raise an issue that implicitly involves a discussion of what happens after her death. Difficult to see how anyone else could have done so without appearing really tactless.
Of course, the British government had more reason than any of the other governments to want to see this issue resolved in advance. There will be a number of more complicated issues that it will have to address when Charles becomes King. Starting with ‘Queen Camilla’, but also including what form his coronation will take. The headship of the Commonwealth is one problem that can now be ticked off that to-do list.
Can someone explain in simple terms just what is the problem with ‘Queen Camilla’?
I mean, if the problem is that she’s divorced, well, so’s he. And if the problem is she was dicking around with his previous marriage … well … so was he.
