What the British Have Forgotten—and Can Teach Us

Tie in a living tether
the prince and priest and thrall,
bind all our lives together,
smite us and save us all;
in ire and exultation
aflame with faith, and free,
lift up a living nation,
a single sword to thee.
—G.K. Chesterton, “O God of Earth and Altar”

A recent trip to London, which involved a tour of Parliament, reminded me yet again of a terrible truth which should offend both British and Americans.

Before revealing and exploring that truth, it must be said that this writer always marvels over the hold London has over the collective mind and imagination of the entire Anglosphere. Even though our United States have been indisputably independent of Great Britain since 1783; the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since 1931; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh since 1947; and the rest of the Commonwealth subsequently, if one digs into said mental collectivity, the mark of the British Isles—and especially of London—remains as firmly imbedded in the overseas English-speaking psyche as ever it did in the days of George III or Queen Victoria.

Oh, the authors and their characters in our heads! Chaucer and Shakespeare, dear old Dr. Johnson and Charles Dickens! Who has not heard of Ebenezer Scrooge and Sherlock Holmes? Chesterton and Machen in their very different way contributed to London letters, as did Lionel Johnson and Rudyard Kipling. Agatha Christie’s and Dorothy Sayers’ fictional detectives continue to haunt our minds and PBS stations.

The traveler from the United States or one of the other settler countries shall soon find that London still boasts the many famed structures he has read about, seen in the movies, and watched on television: Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral; and further afield such spots as Kew Gardens, Windsor Castle, and Oxford’s “dreaming spires.” It really is all true!

So, too, with the ceremonies that give color and some excitement to London’s life. The most obvious are those connected with the monarchy: the Changing of the Guard, the Opening of Parliament, the usually once in a lifetime spectacle of the coronation, the Tower’s Ceremony of the Keys, the Trial of the Pyx, and on and on. But there are others, like the Lord Mayor’s Show and various ceremonies engaged in by the different livery companies of the City of London. On certain occasions, the Pearly Kings may emerge, and in the remoter boroughs of Greater London such bizarre characters as Jack-in-the-Green and the Morris dancers. 

Aldermen, sheriffs, bailiffs, and all sorts of ceremonial officials may be seen at civic church services. Indeed, the Church of England plays a prominent role in many of these urban rites, as she does in those of the countryside and university; in Parliament, some of her bishops sit in the House of Lords, and the Commons has a special committee addressed to Church affairs. Of course, in the great metropolis these things take place against a background of private clubs and colorfully signed pubs, all of which dispense a great deal more than drink and full fried breakfasts, afternoon teas, and Sunday roasts. Each season of the year has its own contingent of all of these activities.

For the visitor from the Anglosphere abroad, these customs of the mother country are a thrill—even if one is tied only by language and culture, rather than DNA. They are pleasant if quaint reminders of the remote backgrounds of our own civil institutions, and they seem to embody the world that produced our countries. For the natives, of course, they are either proud reassertions of their age-old heritage or embarrassing anachronisms that need to be junked, either slowly or rapidly. But this writer would dissent from either view.

So far from being merely quaint or pleasant and restricted to Britain, they are desiccated reminders of a ceremonial spirit that once animated all of Christendom, from Portugal to Russia—and even the Spanish and Portuguese viceroyalties in Latin America and the East Indies. This is just as the pounds-shillings-pence system—which survived to my childhood—was seen as a purely British eccentricity but was actually designed by Charlemagne and used throughout Europe until the French Revolution. 

So many of what we consider peculiarly British customs and practices are really survivals—shorn of Catholic meaning—that were universal among Catholic peoples prior to the Protestant revolt, and which—like the pounds, shillings, and pence—were banished from Catholic lands by revolution. So it is that the British hold on to the form without concern for the missing content, and Catholics are ignorant and often scornful of what that content was. Nevertheless, that content was the practical recognition of the rights of Christ the King over the State as it has grown up since the conversion of the given country. In this centennial of Quas Primas, it is a good idea to reclaim this knowledge.

The coronation is perhaps the best place to start. A detailed analysis of the correspondences between the rite which Charles III underwent two years ago would be a book-length endeavor. But compare the prayer with which he was handed the sword of state by the Archbishop of Canterbury with that by which Hungary’s was given to Bl. Emperor Karl in 1916.  

Here is Charles III’s version: 

With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God and all people of goodwill, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order: that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue; and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life, that you may reign for ever with him in the life which is to come. Amen.

Although Charles is constitutionally prevented from doing these very things by the Settlement of 1688, the words are retained. Compare them with those by which Budapest’s Cardinal Csernoch gave Bl. Karl his: 

Accept this sword through the hands of bishops, who unworthy, yet consecrated by the authority of the holy apostles, impart it to you by divine ordinance for the defence of the faith of the holy Church and remember the words of the psalmist, who prophesied, saying, “Gird yourself with your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty one,” that by it you may exercise equity, powerfully destroying the growth of iniquity and protect the holy Church of God and his faithful people. Pursue false Christians, no less than the unfaithful, help and defend widows and orphans, restore those things which have fallen into decay and maintain those things thus restored, avenge injustice and confirm good dispositions, that doing this, you may be glorious in the triumph of justice and may reign forever with the Saviour of the world, whose image you bear, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, forever and ever. Amen.

Allowing for the more obviously Catholic tone of the latter, we see a shared view of what the role of the monarch should be. If it is a dead letter in the case of Charles III, that is not his doing but is universally accepted as part of “democracy.” On the other hand, it was his refusal to violate his coronation oaths that led Bl. Karl to his tomb on the lonely isle of Madeira, and which formed his view of his monarchical role.

One of the more interesting rites of the modern monarchy in Britain is the Royal Maundy. This is the distribution of specially minted “Maundy Money” by the sovereign to a group of elderly folk on Maundy Thursday. Some of the attending officials carry towels and wear aprons. Although these are not used any longer. It is the sole remaining remnant of a custom which was once universal at royal courts wherein the emperor or king would wash the feet of a group of poor elderly, serve them a banquet, and send them off with some money. This commemorated Christ’s fusing of His Davidic Kingship with the Communio of the Church—from that time on, legitimate Christian monarchs attempted to participate in the Kingship of Christ. The foot washing on Maundy Thursday was a powerful symbol of this, as Dom Guéranger tells us in his Liturgical Year: 

The holy King Robert of France, and later, St. Louis, used frequently to wash the feet of the poor. The holy Queens, St. Margarite of Scotland, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary, did the same. …Yea, there are still to be found Kings and Queens who, on this day, wash the feet of the poor, and give them abundant alms.

In England, the Catholic James II was the last reigning king to actually wash the feet of the poor, although his son and grandsons continued the practice in exile until the death of the last of these in 1807. The man who usurped his throne and accepted the 1688 settlement, William III, ended the foot washing element and ceased to attend the banquet and distribution of money from 1699. From that time on until 1937, the monarch did not attend; but in that year, George VI decided to preside over the affair. Elizabeth II decided to hold it in a different cathedral every year—and so ended up visiting each one in her kingdom over her long reign; it became a big part of her personal devotion, as it has remained for her son. 

The kings of France performed the full rite until the 1830 Revolution. Bl. Karl and the kings of Bavaria and Saxony performed it until driven into exile in 1918. Spain’s Alfonso XIII did it until he was driven out in 1931, and it was not restored with the monarchy in that country until 1975.  

King Charles does not attend another important Rite in his Chapel Royal, which is the bestowal of the gifts he donates to his Chapel Royal every Epiphany of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This, too, was once a universal custom throughout Christendom, as Dom Guéranger tells us: 

Theodosius, Charlemagne, our own Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, Stephen of Hungary, the Emperor Henry 2nd, Ferdinand of Castile, Louis 9th of France, are examples of Kings who had a special devotion to the Feast of the Epiphany. Their ambition was to go, in company with the Magi, to the feet of the Divine Infant, and offer him their gifts. At the English Court, the custom is still retained, and the reigning Sovereign offers an ingot of Gold as a tribute of homage to Jesus the King of kings: the ingot is afterwards redeemed by a certain sum of money.

The monarchy delineated by all of these customs is one of God-given authority, powerful in itself but regulated by God and the common good—an effective monarchy. But what of Parliament? Among the prayers offered every morning at the House of Lords is the following: 

Almighty God, by whom alone Kings reign, and Princes decree justice; and from whom alone cometh all counsel, wisdom, and understanding; we thine unworthy servants, here gathered together in thy Name, do most humbly beseech thee to send down thy Heavenly Wisdom from above, to direct and guide us in all our consultations; and grant that, we having thy fear always before our eyes, and laying aside all private interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all our counsels may be to the glory of thy blessed Name, the maintenance of true Religion and Justice, the safety, honour, and happiness of the King, the publick wealth, peace and tranquillity of the Realm, and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same, in true Christian Love and Charity one towards another, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Certainly, this sounds like what ought to be the goal of every legislature in the world. But just as 1688 eliminated the ability of the king to protect, defend, and govern his people, it also assured that Parliament would be master, rather than servant, of people and monarch alike. The dichotomy between form and substance has been less obvious in some reigns and some Parliaments than others. But one would be hard put today to find any legislature in any place that seriously sought “the glory of [God’s] blessed Name, the maintenance of true Religion and Justice, the safety, honour, and happiness of the King [if any!], the publick wealth, peace and tranquillity of the Realm, and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same, in true Christian Love and Charity one towards another.” If anything, there would be few—to include our own Congress—that does not seem concerned primarily with pursuing the opposite.

What, then, has all of this to do with us today? Well, if the election of Mr. Trump and the string of victories of the so-called “far Right” (whatever that elastic term might mean) in Europe signify nothing else, it is that the Liberal Order we have lived under for so long is nearing the end of its tether. It must and will be succeeded by something—better or worse. If we have learned nothing else from the past few decades, we should have learned that there is no such thing as a philosophically or religiously neutral state in the long run. A set of beliefs and values shall dominate the State—it is simply a question of which one shall do so. If the election of Mr. Trump and the string of victories of the so-called “far Right” in Europe signify nothing else, it is that the Liberal Order we have lived under for so long is nearing the end of its tether.Tweet This

The value of the things we have been looking at is that while on the one hand they are deeply implanted in the heritage of the Anglosphere, taken literally, given life, as it were, they are indications of what we might look for in future leaders in a better, saner day. This is not to say that one need expect Charles III to take his coronation blessing literally; if he did, he would doubtless end up no better than Bl. Karl, and possibly worse. While it is a noble thing to demand heroism out of oneself, one should not expect it of others. But if examining these customs and practices in detail can give us a clearer and better picture of what once worked to the temporal and spiritual welfare of millions, it may help us make better choices in the morning.

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