Charles III: we love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah
KING CHARLES. OATHS. PRINCESS DIANA. SLAVERY. The King's crowning glory, so help us God
Next week sees the coronation of King Charles, the third of that name, as King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of Antigua and Barbuda, of Australia, of The Bahamas, of Belize, of Canada, of Grenada, of Jamaica, of New Zealand, of Papua New Guinea, of Saint Kitts and Nevis, of Saint Lucia, of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, of the Solomon Islands, and of Tuvalu. The last coronation to crown an Emperor was that of George VI. I wonder if Charles can point to all these places on the map.
Pledge: the perfect way to put a shiny gloss on the house
As part of the order of service paved out for the official “crown-plonking ceremony”, there is an oath of allegiance. I’ve sworn three oaths of allegiance to King Philippe of the Belgians and his father, but I never once swore an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, and, if she had asked for one, I’d have asked her “Why?” Why are the people of all these countries being exhorted to swear an unwitnessed oath of allegiance to the new monarch? Because they are clamouring to do so? Because he demands it and won’t be crowned without it? Because he wants it as some PR exercise? Or is it just nice to swear an oath? In the play A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, Sir Thomas More tells us what an oath is. Before his execution, he’s paid a surprise visit by his family. When More learns that his daughter’s under oath to persuade her father to sign the oath of allegiance, he remonstrates with her, gently: “That was silly, Meg. How did you come to do that?”
“I wanted to!”
“You want me to sign the Act of Succession?
She retorts with his own words: “‘God more regards the thoughts of the heart than the words of the mouth’, or so you’ve always told me.”
“Yes.”
“Then say the words of the oath and, in your heart, think otherwise.”
“What is an oath then, but words we say to God?” More asks. “When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water, and if he opens his fingers then — he needn’t hope to find himself again.”
He’d have cautioned against taking any oath flippantly: on no account is it nice to take your whole spiritual destiny in your hands, at the risk of opening your fingers.
The 1980 film Flash Gordon has a scene in which colonial subjects of Ming the Merciless appear at a ceremony of allegiance to pay their tithes. One of the planets pleads poverty owing to circumstances outside their control. They say they have nothing to offer his majesty but their allegiance. “Excellent!” says Ming, “There is nothing we value higher!” And that would seem to be that, until Ming adds: “Fall on your sword.”
A pledge of allegiance is a pledge to fight the cause of him to whom it is given. To defend the nation in times of war. To honour its traditions and its values. It is a pledge more to the nation as a concept than the individual king. But Britain has, in its long history, had a panoply of traditions and values that are now coming under scrutiny and causing a wave of what some decry as wokeness and others see as removing from places of honour elements of today’s Britain that modern Britons eschew. I suggest they look less at names of streets and statues, and more at gross domestic product circa 1650 to date.
In 1686, King Charles’s ancestor on his maternal grandmother’s side (so, not the line of succession) purchased and exploited 200 slaves on a plantation in the then Colony of Virginia. The King is reportedly happy that investigation is being done into this. We’re told it is “an issue that His Majesty takes profoundly seriously.” I would sooner he did so by investigating himself, rather than leaving the press to do it, but one places faith in those more capable than oneself. The seriousness with which he in fact takes and acts upon the matter will in any event be a measure of his profundity. When he married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, he was less profound, replying to the question “But you are, of course, in love?” with “Whatever love is.” At their wedding, the service included, at Diana’s request, the hymn I vow to thee my country, which was her own pledge of duty and service to the British nation; I suspect she had no other juncture at which to make this promise to us in the official ceremony. If she did, she reinforced the pledge in the hymn.
I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
Britons are not to be apprised of what earthly things their King is possessed of, though much is procured from them; that would be the least of the objections to the hymn’s inclusion at the coronation: contrary to Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s (who wrote the words to Holst’s Thaxted tune), his love asks questions — will you swear your allegiance to me? Like Ming did. Charles’s previous love with Diana did not stand the test (supposing he ever got to finding out what it was, love). What price will Charles pay for his contentious diamond? And will that be his final sacrifice; are his people his dearest and best and on whose altar would he sacrifice them?
While one needn’t take a hymn’s sentiments too seriously, I can’t but help reflecting that Diana did mean and, what is more, live up to every last word of this one.
Slavery’s embarrassment to royalty; and its message to modern societies
Links to slavery sound like links to paedophile rings or to the mafia, to bootlegging, drug-smuggling, international terrorism, by sociopaths and the unbridled evil. They sound like that because it is like that, that they are. Slavery was an evil, paraded as entirely conscionable normalcy by decent, church-going folk. But to talk of links to slavery sounds as if distinct sectors of society had no such links, and I’m not sure who can claim to have no such links. Unlike bootlegging, slavery, even in its narrow sense of enchaining black Africans as export goods to the West Indies, was an integrated element of the whole production and distribution system, not just of sugar and cotton, but of trade as a whole; and its acceptability in moral terms, let alone in legal terms, was precisely what gave rise to the very prejudices and social rejection under which enslaved races (even if long since freed – legally, if not economically) still suffer to this day.
We revisit slavery today as a cathartic process of cleansing; and yet, for the most part, no connection is drawn to today’s world, the past’s slavery being viewed in the light of our guilt for the sins of our forefathers, rather than any guilt we might ourselves bear for the sins of today’s slavery, which lie unheeded. To many, the Abolition Act brought slavery to an end; it didn’t, but merely cautioned slave-drivers to take more careful heed in disguising how they exact labour from the masses. Slavery has much to do with the past, setting records straight and contrition; but it also has as much to do with the present, the mechanics of slavery as they exist today.
The us-and-them attitudes of 1686, perpetuated by the class system, persist to our times: they attained such entrenchment that their deconstruction is a task seemingly without end, and this gives cause to reflect: what slaves, then, took the place of those so liberated in the post-slavery world? For, replaced they were, by whatever name they might subsequently have been called:
“Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto.)
The Communist Manifesto and the Oath of Allegiance to King Charles III are very different texts. But they are in concept more closely related than might first appear, and nobody relates them more closely than does the Labour MP Clive Lewis, who has said, “In a democracy it is the head of state who should swear allegiance to us.” Lewis voices in this an aspiration barely attained in the world at any time: equality. It’s a fundament of democracy — with inequality, democracy is simply absent, call the system that perpetuates it what you will. The rank inequality at the very top of the nation breeds inequalities throughout society, which take inspiration from the tenet: if it’s all right for the king, it’s all right for me, which quickly devolves into I’m all right, Jack. The king’s prime duty is to lead by example, to abandon privilege where practical and to say to his people that he will subject himself to rules like he expects them to do: no one here is special. I’m not special. And none of you is special. That might at least instil a sense of fairness that is missing in British society. And if it doesn’t, it would not have been for want of trying. At present, there’s a lack of fairness and a lack of will to do anything about it.
Mr Lewis isn’t, therefore, at all off the mark with his comment. In an elected democracy, the candidate puts him or herself before the people and pleads for their votes on the basis that they’re the best, most trustworthy and beneficial person for the job: count on me. The least they can do upon winning office would be to return the compliment, and promise their allegiance to their people, those who supported them and those who didn’t (which presidents do in republics). King Charles will do so elsewhere in the ceremony (I trust), as did the old Queen (see below), so it’s not a sentiment that is absent.
But he does not hold the post as the chosen of the people. He holds it because his mother held it and, ultimately, because William of Normandy invaded England in 1066. Since when, the British people have executed two of his forebears (Charles I and Lady Jane Grey) and one of his own forebears murdered another (Richard III, who murdered Henry VI), and they have fought countless of his forebears’ wars and died for their realms, conquered a third of the world’s surface and made his Crown’s footprint felt there, on occasion by the colonial equivalent of a thug standing on someone’s face.
The altar, in form not unlike that at which Charles sang in 1981, where he would now lay his dearest and best, might, I fear, and leaving aside all question of his responsibility for the sins of slavers 200 years ago, prove to be one to Mammon, piled high with lucre, if his alleged taints anent cash for access are considered. What, one might ponder, would prevent such a powerful man from actually indulging in unthinkable financial impropriety, given he repels all and any answerability to explain his wealth (mostly obtained by title and inheritance and not the sweat of his brow).
Especially his refusals to disclose: one supposes his vocation is to serve his people with an open hand; with discretion, but no secrecy imposed with stern firmness. Instead, from afar, he puts up blanket dismissals of accountability (mocking remarks at the press’s misguided endeavours to root the figure out themselves). It smacks instead of a head of state more akin to Russia’s, a comparison I draw with discomfort: people may not enquire why; they may, and shall, do as they’re told — including not calling for a republic; they shall not even be allowed to enquire what of my wealth, which is private (when’s a back-hander ever professional?); my business is to rule the country; theirs is to be ruled; my business is none of their business. This is a classic stance of the slave-owner/slave relationship: slaves do not question owners; serfs do not question Russian overlords; British nationals do not question their king.
His Majesty will, at the coronation, promise to rule wisely and sagely, to counsel, to warn (as Bagheot, the constitutional theorist, tells him) and to hold to the constitution under which he is crowned (which no one’s able to read; or, seemingly, write). When Charles, the first of that name, failed to abide by the precepts under which he was crowned, he was removed, as was his head, and, for 11 years, England, and later Scotland and Ireland, were republican in all but name. By the measure by which some nations lay claim to the epithet (nay, fiction) democratic, one might assert that things were even that democratic under the Cromwells.
Here is how Queen Elizabeth made her promises:
Archbishop: Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon, and of your Possessions and other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?
Queen: I solemnly promise so to do.
Archbishop: Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?
Queen: I will.
Archbishop: Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?
Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?
Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?
And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?
Queen: All this I promise to do.
The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God.
Much of this is worded by virtue of the monarch’s position as head of the church. She promised to be a merciful administrator of law. But she prorogued parliament despite it being unlawful, mercy or no. To her peoples, she promised to rule them according to their laws. She did not promise not to pass unjust laws, however. Let alone apartheid. She promised to defy the Church of Rome, so help her God. Antagonism with Rome is always in. That much hasn’t changed since Thomas More’s time.
How wisely would Charles rule if he were to brush over the reprimands being expressed of his House for slavery sins committed in times past, the consequences of which are not confined to times past, but are of direct relevance in times present, those in which he rules? Having recognised that the Koh-i-noor is a contentious diamond, what steps will he then take to settle its contentiousness?
He has a duty to warn and counsel (which, when all’s said and done, is all he can do – even his mother only prorogued parliament because the prime minister told her to); he appears on postage stamps and banknotes (except in Australia, that is); he entertains photo opportunities; and he entertains his people with inevitable verbal gaffes (all respect to Liz Truss, but “Oh, no, you’re not back again?” is hardly protocol for welcoming the Prime Minister to the Palace). That’s it, as good as. Could there yet be a time when those dutifully and enthusiastically swearing the oath in his favour come to ask themselves, “What did King Charles ever do for us?” (and whatever he does do for us is in return for a financial status that requires him, as Duke of Lancaster, to render no return to the Inland Revenue). For that belies equality under the law even for the monarch: what exactly is the substance of the fealty that some consider is owed to His Madge? How, in their own minds, do they see the airy-fairyness enshrined in the proposed oath as even taking substance — falling on their swords? One is left wondering what an oath of allegiance should bring to the King (a warm glow, like that imparted by a cup of hot cocoa?); especially given the paucity of allegiance on his part: not, admittedly, in mouthing sentiments of loyalty; rather, in the concrete realisation of steps by him towards fulfilling his to us.
“I have no window to look into another man’s conscience” (Thomas More, 1478-1535).
No one will have any record of anyone taking the oath called for by the Church of England (aside from the taker and his God). An oath is an undertaking given to another party, in the presence of God as a witness. It’s given on pain of the taker’s soul: while they may one day have to answer to those in whose favour the undertaking is given, for breaking it, the punishment for breach of the oath itself lies ultimately in nobody’s hand but God’s. It’s for this reason that an invocation is often added at the end of an oath: for, if only God can punish, it is only God we rely on to save us from His own wrath: so help me God. He who says it in fact anticipates the oath’s breach from the outset. But people say it, and mean it: if they believe.
It’s a precept for taking an oath: the taker must believe in God (or in the deity in whose name it is taken); they mustn’t just say they do, but actually believe. For the coronation, no one will ever record who has or has not taken the oath, and so it constitutes not an oath, but a promise to God, along the lines of St Patrick’s words “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity.”
Courtroom oaths are a nonsense. I promise to tell the truth … If they don’t tell the truth, they’ll land with a conviction for perjury. Courts rely on truth, but make scant use of it (they don’t seek the truth, the whole truth; they seek enough truth; “enough for what?” is off the topic). So they ask for testimony on pain of your soul? Wrong: they ask for testimony on pain of your liberty. Perjury puts people in penitentiaries. Quite right too. So, what is the use of the oath? Why drag God into the business? Because it puts the fear of God in people, and they fear God more than the man in the wig. Again, quite right too. But some people have as scant a regard for God as courts do for the whole truth. And policemen have most inventive imaginations when giving court testimony. There are no policemen in heaven (except Saint Paul, of course). For those who fear their confrontation with their Maker, this all has an influence. I won’t say such people never give testimony, but the courts could do well to simply say, “If you lie, you’ll sit.”
However, anyone who takes the oath and is then, say, called up for military service (a not unnatural adjunct to swearing oaths to kings), it will not be the oath that is cited as grounds for that, but a law, passed by parliament and its democratically elected representatives, from which there will, for those not swearing the oath, be no escape. Those who meet His Majesty will proffer a hand, a bow, a curtsey and words like, “Yes, Sire, no Sire, three bags full, Sire”, as befit the occasion. That will be done out of protocol, custom, the done thing. No one will ask whether the individual swore the coronation oath, if only because no one can check to ascertain the answer to that.
The request from the Archbishopric of Canterbury is bizarre. It has no meaning in law. It has no meaning in protocol. It has no meaning in divinity. It forms part of no catechism or prayer book. It will not be recorded. It will serve no practical purpose. But: it may just brainwash (like rousing a crowd in a restaurant to sing Happy Birthday).
Whilst some might argue that brainwashing is a practice well within the remit of the Church of England, likewise is confession and the conveyance of God’s forgiveness and absolution for sin: Charles’s, as its leader, as well as that of its congregation. It is not for me to judge the intercession of a church in the relations between another man and his God. Nor is it, therefore, for that church to intercede in the relations between me and that man before my God. Their advocation of the oath denies what an oath even is. It is a church that, in endorsing for its own behoof an oath of allegiance in 1535, had a direct hand in the execution of the holiest man in England. They should dwell in introspection on that sorry episode and appreciate better what they ask.
People will love Charles for his duty to his role, for his personability, for his public statements, for not screwing up (too badly), and for defending the interests of his country. I will love, obey, honour and be loyal to him for just as long as I hold a UK passport. I will serve in his army, if called upon to do so. I will render to Caesar what is due to Caesar, whether Caesar be worthy of it or no, and for no reason but that the law obliges me, even if God does not.
But, when I invoke God to witness my love to another, it must be a love born of my heart, and not of a some exhortation to be nice, still less some act of parliament or archbishop’s rallying call of “All together now!” Yes, the Church of England and its head should dwell in introspection on oaths past, and on what they, Church and monarch together, did to Thomas More. And they should dwell in introspection, before asking the nation to join Beatles-like, as if to sing, “We love you, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Above: on stage, kings of pop The Beatles. Below, a popular king on the stage, King Charles III, played by Tim Piggot-Smith. The play is to be staged by the Brussels Shakespeare Society in that city in the autumn of 2023.
