Crown & Sceptre review – a full but flawed history of our monarchy
This is a useful and timely book. It supplies a traditional, chronological narrative history of the Monarchy at a time when such a comprehensive perspective on our past has been removed from the experience of a generation whose history education has largely been reduced to two bubbles (“the Nazis” and “Slavery”), floating in a historical vacuum.
At a time of unprecedented information technology, the British public has never been more poorly informed about its past. Dr Borman, as an academic historian, joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust, is well placed to compose a far-reaching chronicle of Britain’s royal heritage.
Although subtitled “A New History of the British Monarchy, from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II”, until 1603 the book might more accurately be described as a history of the English monarchy. Dr Borman is careful to avoid any impression of 1066 as “Year One” of the monarchy and helpfully devotes half a dozen introductory pages to its Anglo-Saxon antecedents.
The narrative is inevitably tight-packed but never indigestible. The author is notably successful in describing that obscure period in English history, the Anarchy, when Stephen and Matilda contended for the throne. (It is surprising that historical novelists have not more fully exploited the coincidence whereby the two factions in a civil war, during a time when war and politics were mainly male preserves, were led by opposing women of ferociously strong character and both named Matilda).
Less impressive is Dr Borman’s account of the reign of Mary I. While she gives credit to Mary’s success in securing her rights as queen regnant and her decisive behaviour in the face of Wyatt’s rebellion, the author largely subscribes to the traditional caricature of the queen as a Catholic enforcing her religion, through the threat of burning for heresy, upon a mostly Protestant nation. That is a discredited narrative, born of Protestant propaganda, such as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Walsingham’s later Black Legend.
It is more than a decade since the research of Professor Eamon Duffy, whose works are conspicuously absent from Dr Borman’s bibliography, by adducing previously untapped sources, irretrievably discredited that scenario.
Mary I inherited a realm that, despite the impositions of Henry VIII and Edward VI, remained overwhelmingly Catholic. Her religious policies enjoyed considerable success, particularly in employing the printing press (as Dr Borman acknowledges) to re-Catholicize the country.
Dr Borman claims that: “The ranks of sympathizers had grown with each burning [for heresy] so that by the end of Mary’s reign Protestantism had taken a firmer hold than when she had ascended the throne.”
In fact, as Eamon Duffy has shown, the heresy burnings were a successful policy. Nationwide, they accounted for only 280 heretics, in a period when capital punishment was an accepted feature of daily life; Mary’s father Henry VIII has credibly been accused of killing 80,000 people; 60-70,000 would not be a controversial attribution, yet he is known as “Bluff King Hal” and she as “Bloody Mary”.
That is testimony to the success of propaganda, written by victors; but it is the responsibility of historians to tear aside the veil of partisan propaganda, not to perpetuate it.
An aura of failure attached to Mary’s reign, but not due to her religious policy. The problems were her failure to produce an heir and the loss of Calais, though Henry VIII had similarly blundered over Boulogne during his reign. In the post-Reformation period, religion was the dominant theme in politics. Dr Borman deals more successfully with the reign of the other Catholic monarch, James II:
“James had been an enlightened monarch driven by a genuine desire for religious toleration. But the way in which he had sought to achieve this had proved his downfall.”
Few could argue with that. Provocative promotions of Catholics on too large a scale in civil and military posts, unnecessarily forcing the Anglican clergy to read the Declaration of Indulgence from their pulpits, even an unseemly quarrel with the dons of Magdalen College – these were unforced errors. James’s dual policy was to reclaim all of the royal prerogative that had belonged to his father Charles I and to promote Catholicism: his cack-handed pursuit of the latter objective frustrated implementation of the former.
Yet the Whig demonising mythology is absurd. The Declaration of Indulgence, denounced as an exercise of “arbitrary” power, freed Catholics, Dissenters and Quakers from their religious disabilities, while the Bill of Rights – acclaimed as a step towards “democracy” – paved the way for the Penal Laws. In absolute terms, Dr Borman could reasonably have ended her narrative in 1689, when monarchy “by the Grace of God” was replaced by a crowned republic: heads of state who are chosen by parliamentary assemblies are more properly termed presidents.
That usurpation was carried to a caricature extreme in 1701 when the Act of Settlement radically altered the succession to the throne; it was considered so obnoxious that it only passed the Commons by a majority of one, 118-117.
When it was first implemented in 1714, it excluded, on grounds of Catholicism, the first 53 genealogical heirs to the throne, in favour of George I. By 1903, those excluded totalled 6,039, of whom 858 were then living, making Edward VII the 859th in line for the throne he occupied.
There was a similar disregard of legitimacy in 2011 when David Cameron arbitrarily redirected the line of succession, without consultation, allegedly to eliminate discrimination against women. Since 1701 we have been ruled by kings for 174 years and by queens for 146 years – hardly a glaring inequity. But the new rules could produce a change of dynasty three times in any century, destroying continuity. The monarchy’s remaining value is as a source of constitutional stability and as conservator of historical heritage.
This book would make an ideal Christmas present for any young person befogged by today’s disjointed teaching of history. Tracy Borman has provided a helpful recapitulation of a millennium of monarchy, right up to the current year.
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