Should Britain change its rules of succession so that Roman Catholics and non first-born sons can become the head monarch?

No

1 of 2

by Mark Hopkins

• 

Write now Print Invite a writer™ Add to Favorites RSS Feed Contact this writer

Women are perfectly capable of being effective and much loved Monarchs and Heads of State, as the present Queen, Elizabeth II, has shown. This writer therefore opposes the debate title because it implies too narrow a widening of the eligibility to be Monarch, not because he supports the custom of primogeniture. When one considers the Queen's four children, Prince Charles the Prince of Wales, Princess Anne the Princess Royal, Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Prince Edward Earl of Wessex, it has to be admitted that there is nothing about Prince Charles which would appear to make him best suited to succeed to the Throne. Were Prince Charles to predecease his mother, there is nothing about his elder son, Prince William, which seems to mark him as a better heir to the Throne than the Princess Royal or the Duke of York. 'Automatic' promotion to the 'top job' is not always wise.

Queen Elizabeth II herself only became Heir because her father, George, unexpectedly took over in 1933 as King when his elder brother, Edward VIII abdicated. As it turned out, the shy, stammering George was a far better Monarch than the confident, glamorous, Edward would probably have been (he ruled for less than a year) and George's elder daughter Elizabeth is admired the World over. Choosing the eldest male has little to recommend it in principle or in practice. On the contrary, in the modern, media driven, age the pressure exerted on the Heir is almost unbearable, particularly when the deference once extended to the Monarchy has all but evaporated. Prince Charles, as Heir to the Throne, has had a very long time to wait to become King and may yet have another decade or so; his grandmother reached 101! Although there is much to admire in him, Prince Charles does sometimes appear as something of a 'tortured soul', despite all the supposed privilege he is said to enjoy. Would it not be wiser and kinder to put off choosing the Queen's successor until her death? Then all of her children could get on with attempting to enjoy a more normal existence (relatively, of course) and when the time came the nation could express its preference in some way. This might be through an election or through deliberation by Parliament.

This is closer to the way early English kings were chosen. Succession by eldest son was not a rigid rule before the Norman Conquest. Any new King had to be acceptable to the Witan and the choice of successor usually lay with them. Brothers often ruled in succession, as was the case with Alfred the Great (youngest of the four sons of King Aethelwulf of Wessex) and Athelstan, Edmund and Eadred, sons of King Edward the Elder. At a pinch, Anglo-Saxons even accepted female rulers, as when the Mercians were led by Aethelflaed following the death of her husband Aethelred. Young, inexperienced, 'princes of the blood' could be passed over by the Witan as in 1066 when Harold Godwinson was preferred to Edgar 'the Aetheling' as the next King of England.

The question of Roman Catholics being eligible to succeed is quite separate, really. It is fashionable among many to suggest that a person's religion is a private affair. With those who rule, either as elected President or as hereditary Monarch, this is not the case. Leaving aside the fact that the British Monarch is head of the Church of England, which is a Protestant Church, any Head of State's first loyalty must be to his/her country and its people. A Roman Catholic's first loyalty is to the Pope, or certainly should be. There is therefore the real prospect of a clash of loyalties. Given the Pope's power to excommunicate, pronounce anathema, etc and consign one's soul to Hell, there must be doubt that a Roman Catholic Monarch would always put his/her country and people first and would not be open to subversion by a 'foreign prince', IE, the Pope in Rome. This was a consideration in the framing of the Act of Settlement which forbade non Protestants being Monarch. Nowadays, most British people are quite happy for ordinary people to believe whatever they like, but they expect their rulers to put Britain first.

Changes to the rules of succession would be timely now. It is no longer tenable to discriminate against people on gender grounds and British history in any case offers plentiful examples of women rulers who outshone their male contemporaries, from Boudicca through Aethelflaed Lady of the Mercians, the Empress Matilda, Elizabeth I and Victoria to our current Queen. Religion is a more difficult problem, as argued above and perhaps Prince Charles himself has charted the future course here. He has expressed the wish to be not simply 'Defender of the Faith' but Defender of Faiths. This would seem to envisage future Monarchs as guarantors or protectors of all religious groups, not merely the Christians or Protestants. If future Monarchs accepted this as part of their responsibilities and promised not to favor any one sect or religion whatever their own personal beliefs might be, the way might be cleared for Roman Catholics and others to be eligible to succeed. However, the question does remain whether a true Roman Catholic could fail to do as the Pope instructed, and whether a clash of loyalties could be avoided. In an age when very many people are not religious this may seem to some a purely academic issue, but real dangers lurk within it.

Learn more about this author, Mark Hopkins.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.