Royal Succession

I see from the BBC News website that the legislation to modify the succession to the Crown has now come into effect in the UK and in some of the other Commonwealth realms, and as can be seen in the report New rules on royal succession come into force.

I have commented on this previously in my posts Reforming the Act of Settlement, Adjusting the Succession and Adjusting the Succession. Media and other attention rather went off the topic with the birth of Prince George - a male succession appears clear for the forseeable future.

There is a useful outline of primogeniture, absolute primogentiture, agnatic and semi-Salic and Salic succession systems together with other variants at Order of succession 

The changes with regard to equal female inheritance may well be less significance than those to replace the 1772 Royal Marriages Act with the Monarch's assent only to the marriages of the first six in line to the throne. It may simplify things, but it may also allow the occasional future misalliance that might otherwise be avoided.

The change to the Act of Settlement is more important - amnd more welcome. It allows members of the Royal Family to marry Roman Catholics and to retain their rights of succession, and indeed to be Roman catholics in the lin eof succession. However it then still prevents a Roman Catholic from being Sovereign and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. As the Prince of Wales has been reported as pointing out that is potentially unfair on a hypothetical successor to him, who might face a potential conflict of belief and interest. To prevent a Roman Catholic for that reason alone from being Monarch struck me as unfair when I was still an Anglican. The Supreme Governorship is not a matter of doctrine but of administration, and membership no other Christian or non-Christian group is prohibited. Here, for once, the Coalition did not go far enough.

Amending the Royal Succession

I did not manage to see the State Opening of Parliament on television yesterday.  However one passage in what commentators have seen as a legislatively uninspiring Queen's Speech which has attracted some comment is about plans to amend the rules regarding the Royal succession.

The Queen reads the speech at the State Opening of Pparliament yesterday .
Image: BBC

The actual passage merely says:

My government will continue to work with the 15 other Commonwealth realms to take forward reform of the rules governing succession to the crown.

This may indeed suggest that what was spoken of as having been agreed last autumn is still under discussion. However if plans are moving ahead it is in some ways very suitable for Jubilee Year.

From what has been announced previuiosly there are three parts to the propsed changes, which would apply.

The rule whereby male primogeniture ensured a younger son would have rights over an elder sister would be removed, and succession would proceed simply in order of birth, irrespective of the sex of the individual. This cahnge would not rbe retrospective - so no change in the existing line of succession.

The ban on marrying Roman Catholics, dating from 1701, would be repealed, although there appeared to be a retention of the fact that the Sovereign, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, could not be a Roman Catholic.

The requirement under the 1772 Royal Marriages Act for descendents of King George II to seek the Sovereign's approval for their marraige would only apply to the six persons in immediate line of succession to the throne.

Of these proposals I would be inclined to leave the privilege in favour of males unchanged. A friend made the point that to talk of equality or fairness in respect of what is, of its very nature, a selective, elite institution is to risk undermining an aspect of its traditional base without any real gain. However this really turns on matters of human genetics, and on the basis that for the last 124 years out of 175 we have been well and wisely ruled by female sovereigns, not an overly serious issue. Nonetheless I would be inclined to leave well alone here.

Allowing marriage to Roman Catholics is fair - here that argument does I think apply, particularly given the respective numbers of practising believers amongst the Crown's subjects - and one that I have held since long before I personally became a Catholic. If we ever see a return to dynastic marraiges then this widens the available number of potential spouses.

As to the 1772 Marriage Act - well, inevitably the six nearest the succession is going to be a fairly changing group, and in the absence of a House Law on the lines of those of German dynasties, it does provide a system of regulation. I would again be inclined to leave well alone.

Now with all that said I will engage in a few little flights of fancy... The Clever Boy does not really take to the idea of counter-factuals in history, and is inclined to the view that they are only really of use to enable us to reconstruct the possible options facing people in the past which we have forgotten.

However, the Clever Boy has indulged in a few relections as to what would have happened in the past if females had had equal rights of succession with their brothers.

The last time this would have affected the succession would have been in 1901 when Queen Victoria I would have been succeeded by her eldest child, Queen Victoria II. We might assume that had such rules then applied she would not have been married off so as to become German Empress and Queen of Prussia. Nonetheless we will proceed with out excursus... With her death later that year the Crown would have passed to her eldest child King William V - otherwise known as Kaiser Wilhelm II. Now such an Anglo - German condominion would have resolved tensions in Wilhelm himself - see Giles McDonagh's very readable biography - and also such little matters as the naval rivalry of the years up to 1914. From him, after his death in 1941, the succession would have passed through to his son William VI/Wilhelm III, and through his son, also Wilhelm, killed in 1940, and then to his daughter in the next generation, Princess Felicitas (d 2009) and now to her daughter Princess Friederike.

Before that the previous instance of daughters preceding sons might be seen as post factum validation for Queens Mary II and Anne displacing their half-brother the de jure  King James III and VIII in either 1688-89 or 1701.

Earlier than that in the Stuart period is the possibility of what would have happened at the death of King James I and VI in 1625. Then, under such rules as are proposed he would have been succeeded by his daughter Queen Elizabeth II and I, rather than his younger son King Charles I. Well we might have avoided the series of Civil Wars of his reign, but at the cost of being drawn into the Thirty Years War which started with Elizabeth's husband's election as King of Bohemia in 1618.... On her death in 1662 the Crown would have passed to her son  Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (d.1680)  - a man of a rather doubtful character who played an equivocal role in the English Civil War ( unlke his brothers the Princes Rupert and Maurice ) - and might have reigned as King Charles I, to be succeeded by his son as King Charles II and then by the latter's sister Elizabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans. Through this formidable lady (Queen Elizabeth III and II?) the succession would have descended to the House of Orleans, and a potential Anglo-French Monarchy under Louis Philippe...

From a quick scan of the genealogy available online this would, I think, now result in the daughter of the late Duke of Aosta being Queen - Margherita Isabella Maria Vittoria Emanuela Elena Gennara (born 7 April 1930). She married on 28 December 1953 HI and RH Archduke Robert, styled Archduke of Austria-Este (1915–1996), second son of the Emperor Karl I and has issue three sons and two daughters. Margherita's eldest son HIRH Lorenz, Archduke of Austria-Este acquired the title Prince of Belgium (from 10 November 1995) by virtue of his marriage to HRH Princess Astrid of Belgium, only daughter of King Albert II of Belgium. Their two sons and three daughters are members of the Belgian Royal Family. After them in line of succession would be Princess Margherita's sister Maria Cristina Giusta Elena Giovanna (born 10 September 1933 at Miramar), who married on 29 January 1967 HRH Prince Casimiro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, descended from Spanish princes (of the House of Bourbon or Borbon) ruling in Sicily, and has issue two sons and two daughters.

Previous to this scenario, in 1547 ( allowing for minor problems of legitimacy)  Queen Mary I would have succeeded King Henry VIII, and then Queen Elizabeth I, with no King Edward VI at all - and no nasty radical Protestant reformation...

Back in 1483 - well there would have been no King Edward V and Richard Duke of York and Norfolk for their uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester to worry about, but rather Queen Elizabeth I - but then, in the end she married King Henry VII...

And finally, in 1135 the Empress Matilda (or perhaps dowager Queen of the Romans) would have become undoubted Queen after her father King Henry I, and no trouble from cousin Stephen, but King Henry II would have had to wait to succeed his mother until 1167 ....


Now is that all entirely clear? Questions may be asked later...

Adjusting the Succession

The announcement of an agreement amongst the governments of all Her Majesty's realms to amend the law regarding the Succession, as reported here and here raises several thoughts.

First of all, such an agreement, apparently arrived at quite speedily, gives the lie to the long-standing argument that the law could not be changed due to the impossibility of getting legislation through all the respective Parliaments. Given that it has still to pass, nonetheless this move indicates a willingness to move as one.

The process reflects a mood of a renewed, positive view of the Monarchy in the wake of the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and notably in some of the leading Commonwealth realms - as detailed for Canada in The Monarchist blog and it can be seen, in a slightly quirky way, in the response to Miss Gillard not cutseying to her Queen in Australia. Such a trend in opinion is good in itself.

As to the changes themselves the removal of the ban on marriage to a Catholic is good, removing a piece of discrimination, and also widening the potential marriage arena. In Canada and Australia that should help resonate with substantial sections of the population.

Retaining an insistance on the Monarch not being Catholic may be politically and ecclesially judicious at present, but given that the Sovereign's role as Supreme Governor in practical terms is fornally issuing the conge d'elire to elect Bishops and receiving their homage, and signing into law the Measures which having passed unchanged through Parliamnet representing the latest daft ideas of the General Syond it is no different from their position as Monarch in temporal affairs. So a Catholic could do that as well as an extension of the Monarch's duties. That is not to say that the Monarch does not have an important part to play by their personal support of Christianity - The Queen has been exemplary in this matter.

Enabling females to succeed in direct relation to their order of birth is something I am a little wary about, but taht may be that I am not someone who likes the look of changes of this sort. Applying such changes to the descendents of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge means that members of the Royal Family can be prepared from birth for their likely responsibilities, not having to adjust in later life, as has been the case in some other European Monarchies that have changed their succession law recently.

In reality the last time such a legal provision would have affected the succession would have been in 1901, and we must presume that had the law been in place in the earlier nineteenth century the Princess Royal would not have married abroad....

Fortunately, and ultimately, it depends on genetics rather than on politicians, and its effective intoduction is at some hypothetical date in the future, and at least two more reigns away.

A friend and I agreed there is one other point - what about peerages? Now that, alas, they no longer carry admission as of right to a seat the House of Lords - and there is, shamefully, legislation going through to remove the remaining hereditaries - and women were admitted to seat there in 1958, could not, or should not, legislation allow such titles of honour to descend in the female line?

Reforming the Act of Settlement

I am not sure if I always agree with Damian Thompson, but he has an interesting post in
Did Lambeth Palace block the reform of the Act of Settlement? Or was it Buckingham Palace?
Once again I am not sure if I agree with him entirely, but it makes for interesting and thought provoking reading.

When it comes to dealing with the exclusion clauses of the Act( and that is what it was designed to do - exclude) I think that it is not as difficult to do as some would have us believe. As I undwerstand it the Statute of Westminster of 1931 applies the same succession to the other realms that applies in the United Kingdom. Clearly any change needs to be approved by the Crown in Parliament of Canada, of Australia, of New Zealand and of the other realms, but the principle is there.

To remove the anti-Catholic bias could surely be done by enacting that those clauses no longer apply to the descendents of a particular Sovereign. So it could be applied to the descendents of the Queen, or her grandfather King George V - the King who in effect created the House of Windsor, and in whose reign the 1931 Statute was enacted - and this would re-integrate the members of the Kent branch who are currently excluded. The antiquated nature of the 1701 Act is shown by the fact that the Duke of Kent himself is not excluded by his Duchess' conversion to Catholicism as the Act does not envisage a spouse converting to Rome subsequent to the marriage. A more generous reform would be to extend it to Queen Victoria's descendents.

So far as Canada, Australia, or for that matter Northern Ireland, are concerend such achange could be seen as removing an issue which might be considered to offend some of Her Majesty's subjects.

As far as the Church of England is concerned the possibility of a Roman Catholic Supreme Governor would doubtless remain remote, and given the nature of the exercise of the Royal Supremacy, hardly threatening. Given the way the Church of England appears to be going, and the odd opinions of at least some bishops and clergy on Establishment and Monarchy, such a change would be no serious problem, and might actually make them appreciate what they do possess in living in a system of Christian Kingship.

As to how important the whole question is remains open - the succession appears safe and assured, and the modern obsession of some with equality, fairness removing discrimionation and potential offence and such like is one promoted, at least in part, by those who are no freinds to Monarchy, or Catholicism, or Christianity. That said I think a sensible reform could be achieved if there was good will, and that may be the missing element.