Crown & Country: A History of England Through the Monarchy (78 page)

The last time the royal role was formally redefined was in the even greater upheaval of 1917. Then the crown, finally shorn of executive power, was left with two strings to its bow: as the family monarchy, it was ‘the Head of Our Morality’, the focus of national sentiment and the guardian of the British way of life; as the fount of the modernized honours system, it was the patron and prime mover of public service and the voluntary sector. The former was dominant for most of the twentieth century; the latter, I am sure, will come into its own in the twenty-first. The time is ripe; and it is also this which Charles with triumphant success has made his own.

And here too he is building on precedent rather than rejecting it. It was his great-great-grandfather, Edward VII, during his fifty-year stint as prince of Wales, who began to change the traditional royal role of patron of good causes. He and his wife Alexandra were assiduous in travelling the length and breadth of the country to open People’s Parks and People’s Palaces. But these were the fruit of local self-help and municipal enterprise. In medical charities, however, Edward was proactive, using his friends among the new plutocracy of the City to endow a fund later known as the King’s Fund, which was central to the financing of the London Hospital in the half-century before the establishment of the National Health Service.

Beatrice Webb, the Fabian socialist and co-founder of the London School of Economics, was scathing about the King’s Fund, which she saw (eccentrically) as unworthy and something that might have been dreamt up by a ‘committee of village grocers’. Instead she had a vision of what ‘a sovereign of real distinction’ would do. He would, she confided to her diary, ‘take over as his peculiar province the direction of the voluntary side of social life [and] cultivate in a rich and leisured society a desire to increase the sum of real intellectual effort and eminence’. ‘What might he not do’, she concluded, ‘to further our civilization by creating a real aristocracy of character and intellect?’

None of Edward’s successors had the character or the ambition to undertake such a programme. Nor were the times right, since they found ‘the voluntary side of social life’, as Webb put it, marginalized by the burgeoning welfare state. This was funded out of compulsory taxation rather than voluntary contributions, and, at its apogee in the 1940s and 1950s, aspired to replace voluntary effort more or less completely.

Typical was the experience of Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise. Following her return to England and her peremptory divorce by her German princely husband, she devoted herself to art, good works and spiritualism. One of the plethora of charities she founded, the Princess Club, provided desperately needed practical antenatal education for poor women in the East End. But, come the NHS, Marie Louise was told it was ‘of no more use, as the State and the County Council would do all I had tried to do’. If only!

And it was not only health. Schools, the universities, theatres, opera houses, museums, libraries and art galleries were all given state funding and subjected to increasingly direct state control. As was broadcasting and even that rarest, strangest and most personal of the arts, the writing of poetry. Moreover, alternative funding was cut off at its root as the punitive rates of taxation needed to sustain this elephantine structure all but destroyed the noble tradition of charitable giving on which so much of the creative achievement of Victorian Britain had rested.

But now at last the tide is turning. The arts and universities are slowly and often painfully being weaned off state funding. Alternative forms of finance are being sought for schools. Even the sacred cow of the National Health Service is being subject to covert privatization. And it is not simply a matter of resources. Most important of all, perhaps, the state has lost confidence in itself. State welfare is seen as part of the problem rather than the solution. The capacity of the state to deliver anything at all is challenged and its characteristic instruments of bureaucratic control despised. It is no longer even confident of its distinctive ethos. Instead, business values and the cash nexus rule all. New Labour vies with the Tories as the party of business and has continued the Tory policy of eroding the ‘not-for-profit’ ethos of the public service through market reforms, PFI, targets and managerialism in all its forms.

Nevertheless, it remains as true as it always was that human beings are not motivated only by money. They may even, as with increasing numbers of our new rich, want to give it away in prodigious quantities. But if the state and civil service won’t recognize this, who will? And who will encourage and honour those who do? And shape, inspire and coordinate their efforts? The answer, surely, is the monarchy.

And with Charles we have, for the first time since Prince Albert in the nineteenth century or the young George III in the eighteenth, a royal patron who does aspire to ‘direct the voluntary side of social life’; who dares to talk of ‘real intellectual effort and eminence’, and, above all, who puts his money where his mouth is.

A recent example is the rescue of Dumfries House. The house is that rarest of things: a noble Georgian mansion still furnished with the fixtures and fittings that were designed and made for it by the most eminent cabinetmakers of the day, including the great Thomas Chippendale himself. The state-funded heritage bodies laboured for years but were unable to come up with a solution that would save the house for the nation. Then, at the eleventh hour, and only weeks before a sale that would have dispersed the collection for ever, Charles cut the Gordian knot. And he did so by borrowing £20 million. The security was the assets of one of his charities; and the sum will be paid off by the development of a Scottish Poundbury – a model village, built in the Lowland vernacular style, on a site adjacent to the estate.

So not only have quangocrat heads been banged together, circles have also been squared and conservation and high culture will be combined with the economic regeneration of a depressed area. Only the prince could have done it. For only he has the necessary combination of social and economic power and imagination to pull it off.

A leading member of the prince’s staff describes this as ‘charitable entrepreneurship’. And its heart is the core group of charities known as the Prince’s Charities. The prince raises their funding – £110 million each year – and sets their main areas of activity. These include ‘opportunity and enterprise, education, health, the built environment, responsible business, the natural environment and the arts’. Most are leaders in their field; they venture into areas where others dare not and blaze trails that others – in particular, state organizations – follow. The outstanding example is the Prince’s Trust. This helps disadvantaged young people into employment to become worthwhile members of society. Most of its clients have done badly at school, are poor and come from broken homes. But, above all, they are poor in aspiration. The Prince’s Trust uses a wide variety of techniques including individual mentoring to give them confidence to help themselves. Its rate of success is striking and politicians – New Labour and Newer Tories alike – strive to learn from it and emulate it.

Here, then, is a new kingdom of the mind, spirit, culture and values which is not unworthy of a thousand-year-old throne.

Index

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Abell, Thomas 292–3

Abdication, Act of (1936) 484

absolute monarchy: as a divine right 302; Charles I and 331, 333; Civil War and 361; Edward II and 221; French model of 269, 274, 367, 378, 379, 438, 440; Henry VIII and 274, 276, 277–8, 293; James I and 328; limited monarchy and, differences between 269–70; Mary I and 310; modern monarchy and 378; Roman 5, 6; William of Orange and 378, 380

Accession Council 457, 487

Addison, Joseph 422

Adela of Blois, Princess 149

Adelard of Bath 144

Adeliza, Queen 148, 159

Adrian IV, Pope 177, 178

Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia 88

Ælfgifu, Queen of Northampton 72, 75, 77

Ælfheah of Canterbury, Saint 72

Ælfthryth, Queen of Wessex 65

Æthelbald, King of Mercia 36, 37

Æthelbald, King of Wessex 45, 46, 58

Æthelberg, Queen of Northumbria 34

Æthelberht, King of Wessex 46

Æthelbert, King of Kent,
bretwalda
of England 28, 29, 30–1, 32, 33, 34, 37, 55

Æthelflaed, Queen of Mercia 55

Æthelfrith, King of Northumbria 33, 34

Æthelred II ‘the Unready’, King 65–6, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 122

Æthelred, King of Wessex 46, 47, 50

Æthelstan, King 60–1

Æthelweard (
ealdorman
chronicler) 75

Æthelwine, Bishop of Durham 110

Æthelwulf, King of Wessex 42, 45–6, 58

Agatha, Princess (wife of Edward the Exile) 90, 107

Agincourt, battle of (1451) 247, 283, 408

Agricola, General Gnaeus Julius 9, 22

Aidan of Lindisfarne, Saint 34

Ailred of Rievaulx, Abbot 168

Alaric the Goth 11

Alban, Saint 19

Albert, Prince 458–9, 460, 461–2, 465, 466–7, 468, 490, 491, 499

Alcuin of York 40, 41

Alexander II, Pope 111

Alexander III, King of Scotland 217

Alexander III, Pope 178, 186, 187, 190

Alexandra, Queen 475–6, 480, 488, 497

Alfred the Great, King xix, 44–5, 46–7, 48–9, 50, 51–9, 60, 62, 63, 74, 114, 115, 119, 287, 429

Alfred Ætheling 76, 77, 87

Aliens Act (1705) 411

Amalia, Princess Dowager 368

America 3, 12, 162, 398, 412, 414, 424, 429, 434–9, 441, 442, 444, 455; Boston Tea Party (1773) 436; Constitution 3, 23; Continental Congress 12, 436, 437, 438; French fight British in 399, 414; Stamp Act, 1765 and 434–5; Scottish trade with 412; War of Independence (1175–83) 419, 437–9, 441, 442, 455

Angevin Empire 151, 159, 173, 193, 195, 197, 212, 246

Angles 18, 20, 29, 55, 60, 61

Anglo-Normans
see
Normans

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The
5, 18, 58, 59, 60–1, 62, 64, 69–70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77–8, 79, 82–3, 84–6, 90, 91, 93, 103, 104, 105, 107, 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 128–9, 131, 146, 153, 167–8, 172

Anglo-Saxons 12–97, 136–7, 210; arms, importance of 23–4; aristocracy 63, 66, 110, 114–15, 131, 164, 197, 236; birth of Anglo-Saxon monarchy 26–7; burial sites 25–6; chose/‘elect’ kings 24, 32; Christianity, conversion to 28–32, 58; consensual monarchy 24, 104–5;
cynehelm
(helmet of the people) 27; English Common Law 21, 132, 256; eradicate Romanized Britain 4, 20–1, 28; feudalism 114–15, 119, 442;
Fürstengräber
(‘princely graves’) 24–5; language 5, 19, 21, 59; law 32, 70, 73, 92, 232, 393; pagan 27–32, 33, 35, 36; political system 21, 50–1, 63, 66, 69–70, 71, 73–4, 75–6, 84–5, 97; Saxon Conquest
see
Saxon Conquest; society 21, 22–4; wealth increases extremes of rich and poor 24–5;
witan
(council) 47, 50, 56, 58, 66, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 82, 85, 87, 104, 117, 130

Anjou 102, 103, 117, 135, 151, 152, 157, 177, 194, 195, 196, 199, 246

Anjou, House of xii-xiii, 151–2, 157, 165–6, 170, 171, 172, 173–274

Anne, Queen 388, 389, 391–2, 398, 399, 405–10, 411, 412, 413–15, 416, 471

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury 127–8, 131, 133, 146, 281

Antoinette, Marie 438

Appeal from the Country to the City, An 373–4Apollinaris, Sidonius 14

Aquitaine 178, 194, 195, 246

Arthur I of Brittany, Duke 197

Arthur, King 227, 229, 282, 285, 286, 462

Arthur, Prince of Wales (son of Henry VII) 275, 277, 280

Articles of Accusation (1327) 225, 226

Ashingdon Minster 72

Asquith, Herbert 477

Asser 46, 56–7

Assertio Septem Sacramentorum
(‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’) (Henry VIII) 287, 295

Athaulf, Visigothic King 20

Athelney 48–50, 51, 53

Attainder, Act of 381

Attlee, Clement 486

Augustine (Italian monk) 30, 31, 32, 34, 37

Augustus, Emperor 7

Aurelianus, Ambrosius 19

Badestone, Lord 231

Baldwin V of Flanders, Count 46, 77, 102

Baldwin, Stanley 483, 484

Balliol, John 217, 218

Balmoral Castle, Scotland 483

Bank of Amsterdam 364, 403

Bank of England 402–3, 424

Bannockburn, battle of (1314) 224, 229

Barbarica conspiratio
(‘The Conspiracy of the Barbarians’) 10, 15

Barnet, battle of (1471) 265

barons: Edward I and 214, 215, 216; of the Exchequer 143, 144; Henry II and 175, 196; Henry III and 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212; John and 199, 200–1, 202, 203; Magna Carta and 201–2, 209; Norman 121, 132, 156, 157, 199; birth of Parliament and 209–12; required to demolish unlicensed castles, ‘Treaty of Winchester’ 175; Stephen and 156, 157, 166