Taking Liberties

A Good Day for Princess Anne?

Today we learn that Downing Street and the Palace have discussed plans to change the rules of succession to the throne, removing the bar on marrying Roman Catholics and discretionary primogeniture.  If this happens, and at the moment there is just a Private Members' Bill, then Princess Anne would leapfrog Princes Andrew and Edward (and their children) in line to the throne.  Possibly not an idea she would relish.  And, again getting ahead of ourselves, Kate Middleton could more easily convert to Catholicism if she wanted.

There are further complications.  The Commonwealth needs to be consulted to ensure that they would be happy with any changes, or there could be a variety of heads of state (which might share the work around...) There may be some concern about the monarch's role as governor of the Church of England and her relationship with the Church of Scotland.  The legislation is complicated, too: the law date from the Act of Settlement (1701), but have also been restated in other acts, such as the Act of Union (1707).  I wonder what would happen if a case was brought under the Human Rights Act, too. 

The government is clear that all this may take some time, and it points to some of the problems when two very different ideas of the constitution clash.  In 1701, the monarch, the established church and, indeed, the nation, were seen as bound up, inseparable, and mutually supportive - a somewhat mythic, organic whole.  Counter to this view might be a more contractual, rights-based society, based on consent and the principle of the separation of powers.  The British story of liberty has always been about the tension between these two views of society, but the caution currently being shown in such matters suggests that the political balance may still lie with the former.

I wonder what Henry VIII would have made of either such caution (he'd have cut this gordian knot quickly, I imagine) and the legacy of the Reformation.

God, what a terrible State to be in

A drama set during the Civil Wars, The Devil’s Whore, started on Channel 4 last night. Thanks to the attractions of the Cardinals I missed it, but heard the writer, Peter Flannery, on Start the Week.

A couple of things struck me. The first was the difficulty of cramming the historical arc into four hours; the second was the dramatist’s problem of bringing to the fore the way religion informed so much of life in the past. Making the selections for the exhibition gives me some sympathy for the former.

I also taught two classes this week at Birkbeck on the 16th-century French Wars of Religion, also known as the French Civil Wars. As it happened the two seminar groups settled on very different lines. The first concluded that the wars were about religion, and that religion cannot be separated out from the early-modern world view. The second was much more sceptical, and remained convinced that religion was a tool for political ends or class interests. Both were interested in how religion could justify violence, and how people could see the state or kingdom as something sacred, threatened or polluted by unbelief or opposition.

Looking at many of the documents from this period in the exhibition, such as the Death Warrant of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell’s oath as Lord Protector, and the slightly later Bill of Rights brings home just how similar - and how different - people of that period were to us.

But the big news this week, in terms of rights and freedoms, is the leaking of the BNP membership list. It’s the classic case of the tension between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of speech – and one, it could be argued, made redundant by the fact of the internet.