Woe to Thee, O Land? Some Final Thoughts

Abstract

The continued existence of the British monarchy can be explained by a multiplicity of factors, one of which is its extraordinary historical flexibility. As R. A. Griffiths has suggested, over the long march of English history, royal minorities offered an early yet substantial contribution to the erection of a conceptual model for the subsequent development of constitutional monarchy, in which a democratically elected parliament governs Britain in the name of a duly consecrated monarch, whose royal personage embodies the nation’s sovereignty. Much of this has to do with the employment of political fictions, one of the more enduring features emergent in the big picture of the historical evolution of the monarchy. Today, Queen Elizabeth II possesses awesome temporal and spiritual power which she does not personally exercise, a form of suspended belief first conjured up for the benefit of both nine-year-old Henry III and the magnates and prelates responsible for his government in 1216. Two centuries later, to the political nation of 1422, the accession of nine-month-old Henry VI sharply brought into focus the theoretical relationship between the king as a flesh and blood individual and as an undying institution inhabiting distinct private and public spaces both simultaneously and indivisibly.

“… and thy princes eat in the morning.”

Ecclesiastes, 10:16.