‘Entirely English’: Queen Anne’s ambivalent legacy

Yesterday Charles Moore reviewed Anne’s Somerset’s new book on Queen Anne in The Daily Telegraph, calling her ‘the visionary queen who made our nation’. Queen Anne has always been an awkward figure for the Jacobite historian to evaluate. On the face of it, there are two significant charges against her:

1) Her dissemination (and possibly creation) of the ‘warming pan’ story to discredit the legitimacy of James III;
2) Her support for the Act of Union of 1707

When William of Orange died in 1702 Anne was not only his successor but also his principal political opponent, if one discounts James III himself. For years she had been the queen of a rival court in Piccadilly, bolstered by the fact that her hereditary claim was considerably stronger than William’s when her sister Mary II died in 1694. William lacked credibility as sole monarch and Anne capitalised on the fact. Perhaps the most important question of all about Anne is whether her and her advisors’ correspondence with St. Germain in these years represented a genuine desire to bring the Jacobites on board with her coming reign or a shrewd political ploy to neutralise the opposition. I am inclined to believe that it was the former; Anne genuinely desired a reign free from the kind of discord that she herself had created for her sister and his husband, and this desire for peace and stability overwhelmed the anti-Catholicism that ultimately dictated her attitude to her half-brother. If the promises held out to the Jacobites were nothing more than a political ploy, why did so many Jacobites believe them? In effect, Anne reached a compromise with St. Germain that, given her opposition to William and her antipathy toward the Whigs, she represented an acceptable interim monarch pending a future Jacobite restoration. Many Non-Jurors and Non-Abjurors of the 1690s returned to the Church of England and between 1702 and 1708 the Jacobites made no attempt to launch a restoration, whether by plots or invasions.

Anne’s belief in the warming-pan story vindicated her own reign, allowing her to cast doubt on whether James III really was her brother. However, when James II died in 1701, his son was only thirteen years old and, as such, unable to rule in his own right and subject to the manipulation of advisers. Anne’s belief in his illegitimacy was sincere and, even if it had not been so, under the circumstances it was the right thing for her to accept the throne – and the right thing for the Jacobites, tacitly, to support her. On her accession Anne declared ‘My heart is entirely English’, and medals celebrating her accession bore the legend ‘Entirely English’. Anne was the first monarch since Elizabeth to have an English mother, and her impromptu motto drew attention both to the Jacobite threat and to the provisions of the Act of Settlement, by which Sophia, Electress of Hanover would inherit the throne. Anne acted decisively to prevent George from setting up a rival court in England and it was the Tories, ironically, who attempted to bring him into the country in order to act as a focus for opposition – a fact that demonstrates how wise Anne was to reject Sarah Churchill’s continual argument that the Tories were Jacobites in disguise.

Why did Anne support the Act of Union? There can be no doubt that she did so, passionately. Essentially she was afraid that the Crowns of England and Scotland would pass to different people on her death – George of Hanover and James III respectively, which would have resutled in war between the two countries. Under the circumstances her actions do not seem so reprehensible, albeit like many modern politicians she probably did not realise the profound implications of her policy for the future. Anne was the last monarch until George IV to actually visit Scotland, although it is telling that she described the Scots as an ‘alien people’. Her failure to protect the Episcopalians in Scotland was deeply out of character, and an indication of how strongly she supported the Union, even against her religious principles.

Anne’s approach to government can only be understood once one recognises that her actions were dictated by a deep hatred for party politics; this hatred was in turn dictated by her belief that the person of the monarch, rather than party agendas or even ideas, was at the centre of the state. Edward Gregg has claimed that Anne had no love of the doctrine of Divine Right, and whilst it is undeniable that the Revolution profoundly affected the way her view of the monarchy, she was very conscious indeed of her own rights. Anne was the last English monarch to attempt to maintain the royal prerogative to any significant degree. She was the last monarch to chair the cabinet meetings of her own government, and the last to rule without a Prime Minister. Famously, she was also the last to refuse her consent to an Act of Parliament. She claimed the right to appoint her own ministers and, until coerced into doing otherwise, she endeavoured to compose her cabinet of both Whigs and Tories, pursuing a course of moderation that put her above politics. Again and again the parties tried to claim her, and what is striking from her correspondence is the extent to which she understood the nature of her royal dignity while no-one else around her did, absorbed as they were in party politics.

Quite apart from her many personal misfortunes, Anne had the political misfortune to preside over years of interminable warfare which, although she conceded their strategic necessity, she did not really want – in September 1711 she worked so hard to bring about the Treaty of Utrecht that it made her ill. She was a monarch in the mould of James I and VI who, unable to control England’s involvement in foreign wars, strove her best to preserve peace at home.

It is unsurprising that Anne showed little enthusiasm for the doctrine of Divine Right when it was of no advantage to her to maintain it. The final Tory ministry of 1710-14 toyed with the idea of making the restoration of (a Protestant) James III on her death a condition of peace between England and France, but Anne seems to have been unaware of this. The Scots had implicitly made the same offer in 1702, but James III’s conversion to Protestantism was even less likely than his restoration, as he made clear to Bolingbroke in 1711.

Charles Moore claimed that Queen Anne was a visionary and far-sighted monarch who saw the shape of things to come. I would suggest that the evidence demonstrates the opposite was true. Much of her reign was spent avoiding the future – avoiding giving assurances to the Jacobites, whilst at the same time avoiding making the Hanoverians part of political life in England by keeping them out of the country. The Queen’s focus was on the stability and prosperity of her own reign rather than on some grand design, in spite of the fact that both the Act of Union and the Treaty of Utrecht were momentous events that dictated the future of British imperialism. The reign of Queen Anne was her and England’s ‘sunshine day’ – a last taste of the Stuarts before the malaise of the Hanoverians set in. The last years of Harley and Bolingbroke’s Tory ministry saw the final attempts to consolidate the Church of England as the national church, yet Anne imitated her father by providing a voice of toleration against the Tories.

Queen Anne reigned in the knowledge that she was the last of her house, her deep-seated convictions precluding her, at the last, from considering the restoration of her brother. However, the behaviour of some of her closest Tory allies is perhaps the most lasting testament to the nature of her reign, especially its last years. Bolingbroke and Atterbury supported the Jacobite rising of 1715 and defected to St. Germain, not so much because they were passionate Jacobites but because the rule of a boorish German princeling without hereditary right was simply too much to bear.

Salmond’s Scottish Defence Force could not work

The SNP’s latest defence proposals for an independent Scotland are both unrealistic and unnecessary, yet at the same time they indicate a singular lack of imagination on the part of SNP policy makers. Sadly, it appears that party politics have in this case taken priority over serious nation-building. No Scottish politician can ignore the fact that the armed forces and defence industries are major employers in Scotland, and therefore Alex Salmond has taken the easy way out by arguing that the Westminster government’s defence review can provide the template for the shape of a future Scottish Defence Force.

In reality, it is inappropriate and unnecessary for Scotland to have its own Defence Force. The SNP must not go down a route of dogmatic nationalism, demanding a separate army as a badge of independence – surely a party of progressive social democrats is more grown-up than that? Bearing in mind that between 1660 and 1707, Scottish regiments fought alongside their English fellows as soldiers of the Crown, the concept of the British Army is older than the Union itself. A precedent for a binational military unit exists in the 1 German/Netherlands Corps, and England and Scotland have rather more in common than Germany and the Netherlands – a shared language, a shared monarch and a less complicated recent military history. If Germany and the Netherlands can make military co-operation work, why not England and Scotland?

It might be objected that, in any agreement on joint defence, Scotland would essentially be without an army of its own and therefore rank as a second-class state beside England. My answer to this would be twofold. It must be made clear that the British Army (as such a force should still be called) is not the army of the UK, but a binational force defending both England and Scotland. The monarch, as commander in chief of the army, will provide a centre of unity and allegiance for both English and Scots. In a union of crowns, which England and Scotland will remain after Scotland’s independence, compromises must be made; obviously, a binational British Army could not be engaged without the consent of both governments. However, for centuries Scotland has provided the backbone of the British Army – it is only fair that Scotland should get a say in its deployment.

An essential implausibility in the SNP’s defence proposal is the assumption that Scottish units in the British Army would automatically become Scottish, or indeed that Scottish soldiers would be willing to serve in a Scottish Defence Force without the international prestige, traditions and capabilities of the British Army. Given that Irish citizens are permitted to enlist in the British Army, the idea of barring Scottish citizens from doing the same thing seems absurd and unworkable.

On one issue Alex Salmond is quite right – the removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil is an absolute prerequisite of independence, and there is no reason why Scotland should pay for the removal of nuclear weapons from its territory. Scotland has already endorsed a party in favour of unilateral disarmament and a vote for independence would be a further endorsement. A sensible Westminster government would of course solve this problem by disarming the UK in advance of independence and scrapping Trident.

England doesn’t deserve a vote on Scottish independence

Many who consider themselves ‘English nationalists’ appear to be using the prospect of a referendum on Scottish independence as a platform to argue the case for an English parliament, and are calling for English people to be given the right to decide whether the Union should continue. The idea that all citizens of the United Kingdom should vote on a major constitutional issue that affects two parts of the Union makes a degree of sense, at least to those with a Unionist mentality. However, it does raise certain practical problems; what about the north of Ireland and Wales, for instance? Should the inhabitants of the north of Ireland, which according to the UK government is as much part of the United Kingdom as England and Scotland, be given the right to decide whether Scotland remains united to England? It would be ironic if the inhabitants of the six counties were allowed to vote on Scottish independence when they have never been permitted a referendum of their own on remaining part of the UK.

This is a practical objection to England’s involvement in a referendum on Scotland’s future. In principle, however, England has no right to determine the future of Scotland. Although the Act of Union was passed by both the English and Scottish Parliaments in 1707, to claim that the Union was anything other than the annexation of Scotland by England is a distortion of history. Union with England was supported, at the time, by only a small minority – a Presbyterian governing class similar to the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. England and Scotland did not come together by mutual consent, and they should not part by mutual consent; to give the dominant partner in an assymetrical constitutional relationship the power to block the dissolution of the union would be fatal to Scotland and England’s future relationship. I have no doubt that the majority of English voters would vote in favour of the Union, as there is a deep-seated fear among English voters and unease about what the dissolution of the Union means for their post-imperial national identity. ‘English nationalists’, albeit vocal, are decidedly in a minority.

The constitutional questions concerning the referendum bring to the fore the underlying problem in the United Kingdom – England’s assymetrical relationship with the other nations. Government rhetoric may speak of the nations as equal but they all exist in a relationship of subjection to England, where power is centralised and concentrated, and some are more subject than others. Scotland, which almost enjoys judicial independence (pace subjection to the Supreme Court) is freer than Wales or the north of Ireland, for instance. This constitutional assymetry is ignored by ‘English nationalists’ who romantically view the UK as a family of equal nations rather than as the subjection of two nations, and six counties of a third, to England.

The government’s scare-tactics in the campaign against Scottish independence have continued over the past week, with the Tories attempting each time to emphasise how different, not to say alien, an independent Scotland will be. It is important for nationalists to counter this rhetoric by highlighting the normality of independence as the natural culmination of an ongoing process of devolution and, indeed, the restoration of constitutional equilibrium to Great Britain. Of course Scotland will not leave the EU and of course Scotland will remain in a monetary union with England, at least for as long as Scotland wants. For this is ultimately what the parties in Westminster are unable to stomach – the thought that Scotland should be given equality with England and the freedom to make its own decisions.

Scottish independence is not separatism

The spectacle of David Cameron and Ed Milliband mutually congratulating each other on their unionist credentials in Parliament yesterday is unlikely to have any effect at all in Scotland; it will merely reinforce the fear felt by people in England concerning what the end of the United Kingdom could bring. Again and again, the word ‘separatism’ has been invoked, by the government and by Labour, to describe the SNP. However, independence and separatism are not the same thing, and someone who is in favour of Scottish independence need not advocate the separation of Scotland and England. The independence debate is a debate about Scotland’s rightful constitutional status within the British Isles, not a debate about whether Scotland should ‘go it alone’ economically and politically.

I do not believe that Scotland’s relationship with England will be radically changed by independence. I am passionately in favour of ‘union’ with a small ‘u’; England and Scotland’s shared history makes anything else ridiculous. However, the Act of Union of 1707 and the legal incorporation and subjection of Scotland is a dirty mark on both countries’ history. At present, several small countries that are not part of the United Kingdom exist in an informal union with it and share institutions with the UK on an agreed and conventional rather than legally binding basis – I speak, of course, of the Bailiwicks of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark and the Isle of Man. No Act of Union has ever incorporated these tiny nations into the United Kingdom and yet, by convention, they co-exist with the UK in much the same way as its Dependent Territories. A key institution that makes such co-existence possible is the Privy Council, which has the power to make certain Statutes relating to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The Privy Council’s role derives from the fact that it is not an institution dependent on Parliament but dependent on the Sovereign, who is Queen ‘in right of the United Kingdom’ but also Queen ‘in right of the Isle of Man’ and Duke of Normandy. Orders in Council are, in theory, an exercise of the Royal Prerogative. For this reason, the authority of the Privy Council exceeds the boundaries of the United Kingdom because the Queen is the Sovereign of other countries as well – thus the Privy Council acts as a final ‘court of appeal’ for some Commonwealth Countries of which the Queen is Head of State.

A shared monarchy, as the SNP proposes, is a far more profound guarantee of unity between England and Scotland than the coercive and mechanical Act of Union. The Queen, as Queen ‘in right of Scotland’, would in theory appoint the ministers of state of an independent Scotland and it would be appropriate for these ministers to be sworn as members of the Privy Council, which could meet alternately in London and Edinburgh and be attended by both English and Scottish ministers on each occasion. The Privy Council could thus provide a point of contact between the ministers of the two nations around the centre of unity, the Sovereign, a little like the ‘North/South Ministerial Council’ in Ireland, albeit hopefully more effective. England and Scotland would, like the UK and Ireland, operate a principle of shared citizenship. A wise First Minister of a newly independent Scotland would follow the precedent of Ireland by permitting Scottish citizens to enlist in the British Army, meaning that the Scottish regiments would remain part of the British Army. In return, he would expect the removal of all nuclear weapons from Scottish soil. Scotland could then enter into a defence agreement with England just as the Isle and Man and the Channel Islands have done, so that England will agree to defend Scotland. Do we live in a world imaginative enough for the British Army to be run jointly by the Defence Ministers of England and Scotland? That would surely be an ideal solution to the military problem.

Scotland will not cease to be British as a consequence of being again an independent country; Scotland became British in 1603 when King James VI took the title ‘King of Great Britain’, not in 1707 when Scotland was effectively abolished. Thus there is no reason why, in principle, ‘British’ institutions such as the BBC and the NHS may not continue in Scotland once it is independent. The difference will be that decisions regarding the governance of such bodies will have to be reached in agreement between London and Edinburgh. In effect, Scottish independence will mean an equal vote for Edinburgh in matters concerning the whole of Britain that, up to now, London has exclusively controlled. It will require courage, imagination and a more creative attitude to the boundaries of what is usually considered the business of a nation-state, but it is not impossible. Independence will restore Scotland’s just rights but it will not divide England and Scotland; the only thing that can create animosity between the two nations is the refusal of Westminster to allow Scotland to determine its own destiny.

Now the unionists are scared…

The Conservative Party’s new policy of calling for a referendum on Scottish independence in the near future is a pretty dangerous strategy for unionists, and a sign of their evident fear that what was once a distant and romantic fantasy has become a very real possibility indeed. In every statement, the government resorts to using frightening language – the SNP are ‘separatists’ and ‘seek to break up our country’. Unfortunately for the government this language is likely to frighten English people rather than Scots, for whom phrases such as ‘our country’ have a hollow ring when they come from the mouths of English politicians. To what extent can a Scot say that Britain is his country when Scotland is still governed from Westminster?

Insisting that the independence referendum must be approved by the Westminster Parliament rather than the Scottish Parliament on the grounds of its binding legality is a particularly cynical move on the government’s part, given that the very act that could potentially free Scotland from subjugation to the Union will now be legally undertaken by the Parliament that asserts sovereignty over Scotland. If the Scottish Parliament were to launch a referendum whose result were in favour of independence, it would of course be impossible for the Westminister Parliament to dispute it, whatever its technical legal status. Recent governments have a track-record of disregarding the finer points of constitutional law when it has suited them but evidently not when the Union is at stake. To suggest that a referendum run by the Scottish Parliament would be illegitimate is tantamount to impugning the legitimacy of the First Daíl in 1919. The Scottish Parliament represents the Scottish people, albeit the Scottish MPs at Westminster do the same, but it would be absurd to deny its authority to conduct a referendum on independence. If Scotland were to become independent, then that independence would require a legislative act in England (repeal of the Act of Union) but presumably no legislative act would be required in Scotland – just as the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 terminated the existence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but was not mirrored by any act of the Daíl. Ireland did not need to make a legal declaration of independence in order to be free of Britain – the onus was on Britain to free Ireland, as the onus now is on the UK to free Scotland.

I believe that the government’s unionism may backfire – their hope is that the Scottish people are not ready for independence, that they are fearful in a time of economic hardship and will not wish to surrender the economic support that they receive from London. I believe that the Scottish people are stronger and prouder than the government believes, and that every fresh insult that is heaped upon the cause of Scottish independence will merely inflame Scots to react against the arrogance of the Conservative Party and their unionist allies.

Jacobites and Europe

Jacobitism is perhaps the most ‘pro-European’ political movement in British history, insofar as many committed Jacobites lived out their entire lives in exile in European countries, and were prepared to be naturalised in their new home countries and serve in foreign armies. As such, Jacobites became members of a pan-European network of exiles and their links with their country of origin (whether it be Ireland, Scotland or England) could fade into the background. Furthermore, Jacobites were in favour of a French-sponsored invasion of England that, had it ever occurred, would surely have meant French troops landing on English soil. Jacobites were arguably defined less by their nationality than by their commitment to an ideology of kingship and government that had more in common with the Continental monarchies than with the constitutional monarchy established in Britain after 1715.

However, the paradox of the Jacobite relationship with Europe was that the raison d’etre of Jacobites was an insistence on the legitimacy of sovereignty in England, Scotland and Ireland. Thus in spite of the fact that Jacobites felt culturally and politically at home in Europe their cause was tied to the maintenance of legitimate sovereignty in the Three Kingdoms. The same paradox arises when a modern day Jacobite considers the issue of the European Union and the aspirations of further European integration shared by France and Germany. Certainly, contemporary Euroscepticism is alien to the spirit of Jacobitism, arising as it does directly from a Whig view of England as the home of freedom and democracy and the inherent superiority of British laws and institutions. No Jacobite can take such a rose-tinted view of the British constitution. On the other hand, surrendering Parliamentary sovereignty to Brussels is, by implication, surrendering that sovereignty that, for Jacobites, belongs rightly to the legitimate monarch.

The European Union has many positive features and arose as the result of the desire of mainly Catholic countries to protect the future security of the Continent. However, over time the Union has begun to create laws and institutions that have a tendency to eclipse the reasons for which it was originally founded. A Jacobite must conclude that sovereignty cannot be shared, whether between the the King and Parliament or between the King and the European Union. However, provided the European Union made no attempts to impinge on the de jure sovereignty of its constituent nations, derogation of powers de facto to Europe on an informal basis seems an eminently sensible idea, especially in a world where smaller countries such as Ireland are not able to conduct all activities independently. Unfortunately, however, the republican ethos of many of the countries comprising the Union has ensured that the EU has generally gone for legally binding solutions that have had a profound effect on the sovereignty of the countries concerned. Thus a Jacobite, whilst profoundly in favour of closer ties to Europe (as opposed to America) and opposed to Euroscepticism, must oppose the further derogation of sovereignty to the European Union.

London’s oldest Catholic churches

The large Victorian and twentieth-century parish churches of London and the splendour of Westminster Cathedral tend to distract attention from the surviving traces of an earlier substratum of Catholic places of worship. In spite of the Gothic revival, urban planning and the Blitz a little survives. St. Etheldreda’s, Ely Place is usually regarded as the oldest Catholic church in London, and it was briefly used as the Spanish ambassador’s chapel between 1620 and 1623. However, St. Etheldreda’s only became a Catholic church again in 1873. The Queen’s Chapel next to St. James’s Palace, now one of the Chapels Royal, was originally built in 1623 for Henrietta Maria and continued in use as a Catholic chapel until 1705.

Four London churches (Ss. Anselm and Caecilia, St. James, Spanish Place, Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory, and St. Patrick’s, Soho) trace their origins to the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 and beyond. These churches are reminders of a different kind of Catholic worship that took place not in gloomy Gothic edifices or overcooked Baroque magnificence but in warehouse-like buildings resembling nonconformist chapels, hidden down side streets and away from public view.

The Sardinian Chapel, Lincolns Inn Fields (St. Anselm and St. Caecilia)

St. Anselm and St. Caecilia on Kingsway, formerly the Sardinian Embassy Chapel

The church of St. Anselm and St. Caecilia at Lincolns Inn Fields has the longest continuous history of any Catholic worshipping community (if not as a building). A Franciscan chapel existed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the reign of James II and by 1700 the Portuguese Embassy had a chapel there. In 1720 a chapel on the line of the present Kingsway passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and this became one of the principal centres of London Catholicism and a base for the Vicars Apostolic. The original chapel was damaged in the Gordon Riots in 1780 and finally demolished in 1909, by which time (in 1902) the present chapel had already replaced it. Although not in the original location, the restrained baroque and inconspicuous frontage of the Sardinian Chapel is in keeping with its history, and it is gratifying that this parish (in contrast to St. James’s Spanish Place and Farm Street) did not give into the temptation to indulge in Gothic excess.

Arms of the Kingdom of Sardinia in St. Anselm and St. Caecilia

The Sardinian Chapel's original altarpiece

Several features of the Sardinian Chapel were original to the old church; the coat of arms of Sardinia, the original altarpiece (the Deposition of Christ, now consigned to the south side of the sanctuary) and, perhaps most poignantly of all, the font in which so many eighteenth century Catholics were baptised. The Lady Altar was original but the present one is largely a reconstruction of what was destroyed by a bomb in 1940.

The original font of the Sardinian Chapel

Interior of St. Anselm and St. Caecilia

The Lady Altar in St. Anselm and St. Caecilia, a reconstruction of an 18th century original

St. James, Spanish Place

The exterior of St. James, Spanish Place occupying a cramped position

This Gothic church is the successor of a series of Spanish embassy chapels at which English Catholics in London worshipped throughout the penal era. The present church was built between 1890 and 1949 and succeeded a chapel built in 1791 following the Catholic Relief Act of that year, which allowed Catholic chapels to be built provided they were sufficiently inconspicuous. In 1827 the church’s association with the Spanish Embassy came to an end, but this did not prevent King Alfonso XIII giving the church his royal standard in 1908. Little remains of the contents of the original church – in fact, the only item that seems to have survived and found a place in the new building is the gilded statue of the Virgin and Child, made in 1840.

Standard of Alfonso XIII given to St. James, Spanish Place in 1908

Statue of the Virgin and Child in St. James, Spanish Place (1840)

The Royal Bavarian Chapel (Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory)

The Royal Bavarian Chapel in Warwick Street

Interior of the Royal Bavarian Chapel, facing East

Interior of the Royal Bavarian Chapel, facing West

This church is one of the few intact 18th century Catholic churches in England, dating from the 1791 Relief Act. Apart from some stars and angels added in the 1950s, the front of the church has a warehouse-like appearance that was typical of the era. However, like the Sardinian Chapel and St. James, Spanish Place, this church has a much longer history than its appearance suggests. The Portuguese Ambassador had a house on Golden Square with a chapel from at least 1747; the house and chapel later passed to the Bavarian Ambassador. The Bavarian chapel was gutted in the Gordon Riots in 1780 but seems to have remained standing. However it was replaced in 1790 by the present chapel which was built over the site of the existing chapel and the stables that shielded it from public view on Warwick Street. The walls of the chapel are a yard thick and originally its doors were lined with metal to protect the church from fire. Inside, the roof and apse are later additions but the gallery is original; originally, it extended all the way to the east end. The organ also dates from the original church. As in the Sardinian Chapel, the original plasterwork altarpiece was retained and, in this case, displayed on the wall to the left of the sanctuary. The font, too, is original to the church, albeit not in its original position.

Font of the Royal Bavarian Chapel (1791)

Original altarpiece of the Royal Bavarian Chapel by J. E. Carew

This church’s association with Bavaria is especially significant today, given the Duke of Bavaria’s position as senior descendent of the House of Stuart, and this fact was not lost on the Royal Stuart Society who erected a tablet in the Baptistery commemorating King Rupert, the father of the present King Francis II. There is a also a small perspex Bavarian royal arms at the west end of the church.

Tablet commemorating HM King Rupert in the Royal Bavarian Chapel, Warwick Street

Arms of the House of Wittelsbach in the Royal Bavarian Chapel, Warwick Street

St. Patrick’s, Soho Square

St. Patrick's, Soho Square

St. Patrick's, Soho Square

St. Patrick's, Soho Square from 'Centrepoint'

Interior of St. Patrick's, Soho

St. Patrick’s is the mother church of the Irish community in London. The present church, whose apse can currently be seen jutting out over the enormous construction site beside Tottenham Court Road station dates from 1893. It replaced a barn-like church built by the Franciscan Arthur O’Leary in 1791 and consecrated by the Vicar Apostolic John Douglass in 1792. O’Leary served the immense Irish population of the ‘rookeries’ in the west end. Although not the original church, the Neoclassical interior recalls the old church and is, in my view, the most beautiful Catholic church in London (it has recently been restored and is gleaming). Several items from the old church were retained in the new, such as the monument to Fr. O’Leary, an eighteenth century Pieta, some of the woodwork of the side altars and, most importantly, the inscription recording the church’s consecration in 1792.

Monument to Fr. O'Leary, founder of St. Patrick's

Inscription commemorating the dedication of St. Patrick's (1792)

Monarchy is a matter of divine, not human law

David Cameron appears to have achieved what Gordon Brown could not – consensus among the 16 Commonwealth countries of whom the Queen is Head of State that the laws of succession should be changed to permit first-born female children of an heir to the throne to take precedence over male children, and to allow heirs to the throne to marry Catholics. This latter measure, albeit welcome, is hypocritical while the law continues to prevent the Sovereign from being a Catholic. The case of James II amply demonstrates that the monarch’s personal faith need not interfere in the exercise of his or her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

The first aspect of the reform of the succession laws could have unforeseen consequences – a disputed succession, for instance, between the descendants of a son and daughter of an heir to the throne, similar to the succession dispute in Spain in the nineteenth century. Far more important, however, and unlikely to be recognised by politicians, is the fact that monarchy and the rules that govern it are a matter of divine, not human law. In other words, monarchy is of divine institution and thus, whilst interacting with the political life of the nation, it is not a creation of man but of God. This is apparent in the Bible, where the prophet Samuel is informed by God beforehand of his choice of Saul as the first King of Israel (I Samuel 9:16). Although the appointment of Saul as king took place by means of a combination of election and acclamation (I Samuel 19:21), Saul was, ultimately, God’s choice.

Throughout the centuries, different nations have chosen their kings in different ways and different laws have governed succession. The Kings of Poland were entirely elected while the monarchies of France and Spain were governed by the strict Salic law that did not permit any female succession at all. This can easily give rise to the impression that kingship is a human institution; who the king happens to be is an arbitrary matter, derived from longstanding tradition and a set of laws that were in force at a particular time. The king, as source of law, was essential for the welfare of the state but who he was did not ultimately matter. The conclusion of all such arguments is that monarchy may once have served a useful purpose but that in a modern state a single human person is no longer required to be the origin and guarantor of the law.

By the late Middle Ages the political consensus in Europe was that the legitimacy of kingship was intimately bound up with the defence and patronage of the Church and, therefore, a king had to be Christian. Two views then emerged; the idea that kingship was essentially grounded in Canon Law and could be conferred by the Pope, and the competing notion (foundational to the Reformation) that kingship was a matter of divine law. If legitimacy is conferred by defence of Christianity then the title is the English Kings is secure. When Alfred the Great defeated the Danes at Ethandun in 878 he was the only English King still alive, and moreover England’s principal Christian leader. Alfred’s victory, and the fact that he was the ‘last man standing’ among the Kings of the Heptarchy gave him and his heirs an undisputed right to the kingship of England as a whole. The Divine Right of the direct successors of Alfred, the House of Stuart and their heirs, stems from Alfred’s status as God’s chosen instrument to preserve Christianity in England. As the chosen one of God, the King is not merely a convenient political fiction who serves a purpose in the state, but God’s direct representative and therefore the Head of both Church and state.

An essential principal of monarchy is that there is never a time when the Sovereign is dead or his or her identity is doubtful. Kingship, like God’s eternity itself, transcends mortal life. It is crucial, therefore, that the best means be found of identifying who is a King’s legitimate successor. The Salic Law, as the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated, has the potential to create great instability if female heirs are passed over entirely. However, the English law of succession in which male heirs are privileged but female heirs may inherit guarantees the greatest possible stability, in that it ensures as far as possible that the Crown remains in the same family. Thus the House of Tudor was able to remain on the throne until 1603, when under Salic Law it would have died with Edward VI in 1553. However, if female heirs had been allowed the same rights as males then the crown could have passed into a bewildering variety of different royal houses.

Neither the Commonwealth Conference nor Parliament has the right to re-make fundamental law concerning who is or is not the Sovereign – that is a matter for God alone.

McGuinness for President?

Martin McGuinness’s decision to enter the Irish Presidential election, as many commentators have observed, has turned a lacklustre contest into a political hot-potato. It has also brought the constitutional role of the President back into the forefront of people’s minds. Should the role of the Uachtarán be a political one? Should the President have less power, or more power? Most holders of the office of President since 1938 have been senior statesmen and women (who have already achieved power in public life) and academics. The connection between the Presidency and academia, and indeed between the Seanad and the universities, is in my view a very strong feature of Irish political life. The Presidency and the Seanad are not merely destinations for superannuated politicians but also institutions that draw on and recognise the expertise of those who have not acquired their position by political posturing but by scholarly merit. It is essential for the well-being of a republic that it should have some mechanism to recognise merit and incorporate it into its institutions of government. The alternative is for the state to consist entirely of professional politicians, a situation that obtains in the United States which, like the late Roman Republic, has distintegrated into a naked oligarchy. Academics are, in a sense, the aristocrats of a republic.

The prototype for the academic-turned-President was Douglas Hyde, the first President, who set the standard for all subsequent holders of the office. The President should be a person familiar with politics but above it, an individual capable of representing Ireland, with sufficient moral authority for that authority to be exercised in silence. The fact that Hyde was both a Protestant and a Gaelic-speaker rendered him both an insider and an outsider, ideal characteristics for one who stands symbolically above the other institutions of the state.

A bid for the Áras is certainly not, for any party, a bid for power, but it is certainly a bid for influence and for recognition. It is widely agreed that Sinn Féin is motivated primarily by the symbolic credit of having a Sinn Féin President in 2016, in time for the centenary of the Easter Rising. This would allow Sinn Féin to claim the final victory of Republicanism and, more importantly, allow today’s Sinn Féin to self-define as the legitimate successor of the Sinn Féin of 1916. Martin McGuinness closely resembles one previous President – Eamon de Valera – and one school of thought would assert that if De Valera was good enough for President then McGuinness is as well. No-one can deny that McGuinness is recognised as a senior statesman in Ireland, and one who (like De Valera) has made a tremendous effort to reinvent himself. However, also like De Valera, McGuinness did not hesitate to kill Irishmen to achieve his aims. The Provisional IRA waged a war in which they killed Nationalists and Republicans, even if Irishmen were not (as they were in De Valera’s Civil War) the direct target of the Provisional IRA’s war in the north. However, McGuinness is not only responsible for the deaths of members of his own community; he also held the Irish state and its institutions in contempt and actively worked against its security forces.

The same, of course, could be said of De Valera. However, De Valera accomplished a constitutional revolution of government within the Irish Free State that transformed those institutions he had rejected. Whilst it could be argued that McGuinness has contributed to a revolution of government in the north of Ireland, he has done nothing to contribute to the Irish state that would redeem his rejection of that state in the past. It cannot be denied that McGuinness has served (for better or worse) the Irish people, yet he has not served the Irish state. I believe that, at some future point, when he is a good deal older and has served the Irish state, when he has enjoyed power and can demonstrate that his campaign for Áras is not political point-scoring, but issues from a true desire to represent Ireland, Martin McGuinness could be a plausible Presidential candidate. At present, he is neither plausible nor appropriate.

I shall not get to choose the next President of Ireland, but in the not too distant future I shall have the opportunity to elect the next Chancellor of Cambridge University. This office, like that of the Irish President, has virtually no powers as these are exercised by the Vice-Chancellor, but it still matters who the Chancellor is as he or she represents the University. Until June the Duke of Edinburgh was the Chancellor; the role is perfectly suited to a member of the Royal Family. However, the present candidate (Lord Sainsbury) is neither a distinguished academic nor an apolitical figure, and as such unacceptable in my view. None of the other candidates fulfil this description either. The Duke of Edinburgh should be succeeded by another member of the Royal Family, a senior and apolitical peer, or by a senior academic (such as Sir Anthony Kenny or Sir Keith Thomas).

Scottish Independence: the Challenge for England

I have already outlined the extent to which independence for Scotland would not be a seismic shift for the Scottish people. It is not the Scots who fear the dissolution of the ‘United Kingdom’ but the English, and the reason is clear enough. Marginalised nations have a strong sense of identity; this is clearly seen in Ireland, Scotland and Wales and perhaps most obviously of all in the neurotic patriotism of Unionists in the north of Ireland. However, in the post-colonial era nations that spent decades or even centuries imposing their own identity on others now lack a strong sense of unified identity, with regional identities becoming more important. This is true of England, Germany and Spain but not of France and the United States, whose status-anxiety seems more pronounced.

English fear of the end of the Union is the fear that part of the identity that supposedly ‘made Britain great’ will be taken away. After all, it was the British Empire that ruled a third of the globe, not the English. The 18th and 19th centuries deeply rooted the imperial mindset in the English psyche. Britons had a destiny separate from that of Europe, and a strong identity that was expansionist and syncretist rather than isolationist. The British Empire, like the Roman Empire, had the flexibility to absorb features of the cultures it dominated as well as subjugating them.

Unless English people are able to embrace a distinctive ‘English’ identity as opposed to choosing to submerge their identity in an obsolete ‘British’ identity, Scottish independence may be traumatic for many in England. Essentially, people will be forced to choose between a residual and outdated imperialistic identity that represents England’s ability to dominate and absorb others (Britishness) and a far older yet more deeply rooted Englishness.