Sunday 21 November 2010

The faces of Janus – a response to Calvin


Calvin, there are two things you must understand about me: I’m a rationalist…and a romantic! The seventeenth century is by far my favourite period in history, the time of the Stuarts, the time of the Civil Wars. If I had been living then I like to think that I would have been cast in the same mould as Charlotte de La Trémoille, Countess of Derby, a royalist who in 1644 successfully defended Lathom House with only a few men against a much larger enemy force, led for part of the time by Sir Thomas Fairfax in person, the foremost parliamentary soldier.

What was the depth of her attachment? It was based on emotion, on loyalty and on the attractions of legitimacy; on a belief that Charles I, the king, had been divinely appointed and that monarchy was the rightful government of the land. It’s an institution honoured by tradition; it’s an institution that continues to be honoured by tradition. It was for Charlotte de La Trémoille; it is for me.

But, you are right: strip it back and kingship, any form of monarchy, arose in the way you suggest; that it is an original exercise in tribal power obscured by the passage of time, sanctified by the veneer of religion. You might, if you have not already done so, have a look at William Hazlitt’s ‘demolition’ of royalty and divine right in his essays On the Spirit of Monarchy and On the Connection Between Toad Eaters and Tyrants, both written in the early part of nineteenth century, in which he more or less makes the same observation as you: that a king is no more than a rich thug surrounded by a gang of flunkies. As for your point about Mugabe and Blair it’s something I addressed myself in L'etat, C'est Moi – a response to Adam.

You are also right about our present Queen: she is a monarch by honour and tradition alone. Her powers, the powers of the royal house itself, have devolved over time to the office of prime minister, the real source of power in our constitution, more important than parliament itself, with forms of patronage that Charles I would have envied. But the Queen is still transcendent; the Queen and her heirs represent the nation at a deeper level, at a level above politics. We all require some kind of symbolism to identify with, a flag in your case, a person in ours. There are no rational arguments I can draw on here to justify this process, because none exists. It’s all about emotion, all about sentiment.

Now, why do I prefer monarchy to the other traditions you mention? To begin with I would say that monarchy both incorporates and transcends a theocratic tradition, too narrowly based in itself to stand the test of time and change. Purely sacred monarchies had a tendency to collapse when they lost the mandate of heaven. Democracy and anarchy, to take these purely as intellectual concepts, might be said to be so closely allied that there is little practical difference; that pure democracy is anarchy, and anarchy is unworkable as national idea. Roman democracy collapsed in anarchy. The state was only saved by a new form of monarchy.

So, I’m a monarchist, a royalist, to be exact, because royalty gave shape to my nation, because it gave cohesion and identity where there was none; it gave continuity through time. Continuity, now that’s the thing. Thinking specifically about England regicide was the exception, not the rule. Kings were removed, yes, often because of incompetence, but they were invariably replaced by other kings from the same family, not by outsiders. The seventeenth century regicide is the great exception here, when Charles I was replaced by a republic. What then happened? Why, the republic was replaced by a monarchy, which became a republic again, a position of constitutional chaos only resolved by the return of the King!

The King returned in 1660, that’s true, but matters were never quite the same again. Absolutism - which never really existed in England in the sense of Brunei or Saudi Arabia in any case - had but a limited lease. A new monarchy arose in 1688, one that has been adapting and modifying ever since, one that takes the shape of the age. That’s why it’s been so enduring, that and the fact that it was still able to stand above the common political fray.

In the end it all comes down to sentiment and romance, I can give you no better reason for my attachment to royalty than that. The origins are unimportant; only the tradition matters. Besides, I have the luxury, which you do not, of being able to hate the head of government while loving the head of state. Surely there can be no better reason for believing that royalty is the best possible institution for my nation? Others can do things differently. We should just muddle along as we have for the past thousand years or so! And, if I can return to my previous blog, I have now taken Kate Middleton completely to my heart, a sign that tradition and novelty is the Janus image that England shows to the world, looking back and looking forward at one and the same time. I hope we always shall.

19 comments:

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  2. I'd go one further and say that I preferred the old House of Lords to the current cringe-making gang of toadies. The hereditary peerage were and are vile but those "elected by god" have the singular virtue of not being politicians or lawyers.

    The best alternative would be a random selection of reasonably educated, reasonably propertied people of at least 40 years who'd be drafted in for a fixed fee for a fixed term.

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  3. Tradition and novelty, indeed, there is no better balance then that. I know what you mean about such Storge, I feel much the same way when I look at the traditions of my family, the American flag, or even the Confederate flag, and occasionally when reading stories of the West as well. This, right here, is really what history is about. Forget that nonsense about people learning to avoid the mistakes of history - people do that exactly one way through the tradition of folk knowledge, not scholarly history. But what History does teach us is who we, ourselves, are. That is all it teaches us, but could anything teach us more?

    "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." -William Faulkner.

    I dream of many things. I dream of the Civil War, I dream of the Wild West which would be my home growing up, I dream of Culloden and my ancestors on that fateful and lost battlefield long ago. I dream of Canada, and where they would end up after. And I dream of the many exploits of many ancestors, from my Viking kinfolk sailing against England, to my Scottish kinfolk high in the mountains and destroying rival clans, to Genghis Khan and his hordes out on the steppe, and the whole Sami side of the family through which I am descended from him, and finally, my welsh side, and my distant connection to Henry Tudor. I dream of all these things, and they give me strength.

    I would never agree with America having a Monarchy, we have our own ways and they are far more like Chinas tradition of philosophy and ideas then people and families, but England always should. We are a Zhongguo (center of the heavens, metaphorically of course), England is a kingdom, and the Indian tribe my dad works for, they're a tribe, and that is how it should always be, because this is part of life.

    "sanctified by the veneer of religion." I don't think there is any form of government that has ever existed that has not been sanctified such by someone, including the Quakers, Methodists, and Puritans, and their sanctification of the traditions of township and neighborhood that would later become American Democracy.

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  5. Adam, Cromwell was to discover exactly what would happen if power went unchecked. Charles' personal rule was positively benign compared with the rule of the Lord Protector and the Major Generals.

    Please don't be so melodramatic: nobody wants to crucify you. :-)

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  7. Suciô, the present H of L is certainly not that inspiring. Quite frankly I would rather have no second chamber than a set of mediocre worthies.

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  8. Jeremy, thanks. Your own tradition and background is clearly a very rich one.

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  9. Adam, I'm sorry you think so, that is not my intention. I suppose it's just as well that you have never come across me in Union debates, then you would really see what crucifixion is about. :-)

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  11. Sorry, I missed your point about Charles I. What excesses? Anyway, it's been fun but I do have to go now. Too much wine with dinner. :-)

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  15. Thanks for this post, Ana. I'm not unsympathetic to your position, even though I cannot share it.

    There's no doubt we are suckers for a tall fellow wearing a big, shiny hat. That seems to be the key visual characteristic of most forms of hierarchical organization among our brand of ape. Pope, president, pharaoh, prince - you can spot 'em a mile off. The glittering costumes and the careful choreography of deference that surrounds the 'elite' are rituals that make exceptional social status instantly obvious to the rest of us. Add in the elevated platform, the formalized submission gestures of courtiers and the imposing shadows of menace from bodyguards and no one could mistake the VIP for common clay. But who really exercises power? Is it the nominal head honcho, or the back-room bureaucrats? Beyond a certain level of social complexity, no individual has the capacity to make every decision, and we find ourselves forced to classify and codify petition and judgement: we create a body of law based on precedent administered by civil servants: autopilot.

    There must be something we apes find comforting about the idea of 'superape' leadership; we keep returning to the same form despite repeated failures of the idols themselves to meet expectations. I don't share or understand the eagerness of so many to be led, but the desire is unquestionably a real part of most people's makeup, whether innate or induced through early indoctrination.

    Perhaps because I am descended of a long line of non-conformists, or because my early life was split between cultures, I seem to be immune to the reflex of awe in the face of authority. In fact, the forms of pomp and prestige often make me laugh, they are as transparent as the emperor's new clothes.

    Is there more to this arrangement than a cynical con trick exploiting the gullible? Is there a genuine mystery of power and authority behind the stage management? The power of the artist, the power of the shaman, the power of kings: is there anything more intriguing than these aspects of our remarkable species?

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  16. Adam, I think you mean the Ship Money, a measure meant to ensure the proper naval defence of the land, hardly excessive by any standard. The legality was tested in the courts, which found in favour of the king. Parliaments at the time were irregular features of the political process in England, only called occasionally to grant supply. If Charles is to be accused of excess here so, too, should every monarch right back to the reign of Henry III. Charles was obliged to rule for eleven years without proper supply because in the early parliaments of his reign the puritan gentry, headed by Pym and Hampden, were producing demands almost impossible for the crown to meet.

    All I think I said on your own blog is that your attitude to a young woman you continually refer to in a wholly ungallant manner as 'the commoner' without name is that you would be in good company with Stanley Baldwin and Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the abdication of Edward VIII. You are stuck in the past, which I do not believe you consider to be an insult.

    Thanks for your vow; very nice.

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  18. Calvin, in answer to your question about power and authority behind the stage management, yes, I believe there is. More than that, I think there is majesty and perhaps even mystery. But then I'm a sucker for the Cat, or the Ape, in the Hat. Still, your cynicism is a challenging antidote to my enthusiasm. :-)

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  19. Pagan Holiday - Feast of Janus on January 9

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