The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 6 October 2004

Crazy Like A Fox

News of the House of Commons' recent vote to ban foxhunting in England and Wales has a right royal resonance. Several media outlets state that Prince Charles intends to go ahead and ride to hounds when the season starts in November, and will continue foxhunting, perhaps with his sons, who are also keen hunters, until the ban goes into effect in July 2006. This despite the certain political repercussions from anti-monarchists. And despite his mother's reported advice to him not to participate.

It is not my purpose here to debate the pros and cons of foxhunting. Suffice to say that it appears as dear to the hearts of English royalty and the aristocratic set as hunting deer is for sportsmen in America. The issue of foxhunting likewise evokes emotional, passionate responses from its supporters as well as its detractors.

The larger principle here, I believe, is the one which Queen Elizabeth has seen all too clearly: that of royal prerogative versus the will of the people. If royalty does something manifestly against the people's wishes, sooner or later there will be a clash of wills. And historically, royalty generally loses.

Throughout history Kings and Queens have pursued many innocent royal pleasures, like music-making, art collecting, stamp collecting, or bicycling: pastimes of the likes of Henry VIII, Charles I, George V, and modern-day European monarchs, respectively. None would disapprove of such harmless royal fun. It would be absurd to deny royalty the same leisure pursuits as its subjects. Some might growl over the cost of such royal activities, but that is not an objection to the activities themselves.

However, foxhunting is deadly to the animal being pursued. As an act of royal volition, that's like, say, a royal command of "Off with your head!"; executing a wife just because she did not give you a son; sentencing someone to death because he or she is a religious or political dissenter; or at the worst extreme, bleeding peasants for your daily bath, as Elisabeth Bathory of Hungary is reputed to have done. In other words, it's the old "I can do it because I'm King" argument. Doesn't matter if it's illegal, or morally wrong, or an animal, not a human. Whether killing foxes or their own subjects, royalty in the past always had the power to arbitrarily mete out death, however and whenever it chose.

And absolute monarchs, like Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, or Louis XIV, got away with it. But in the long run, their successors suffered for their excesses. An obvious example is that of Charles I and his sons, Charles II and James II. The father insisted on his royal right in all matters, and was beheaded for it. The elder son was only restored to the British throne when he compromised in all, gracefully giving up some of his royal privilege. His younger brother lost the throne again (though not his head) when he refused to give up his religion.

Who was right? Who was wrong? Is royalty ever above the law? Does royalty bow to political expediency, or stand by its principles? When should it lose a battle to win a war? Is a royal pastime (or any other disputed royal prerogative) worth losing the public goodwill over, or even a Crown?

On the issue of foxhunting, it seems that the Queen is wisely giving way to the will of her government, rather than trying to flout it, ignore it, or change it. She is a hunter too, but whatever her private feelings, she knows that the law must be upheld. The times they are a-changin' from the traditional nostalgic view of The Belvoir, The Quorn, or The Cottesmore hunt parties, in scarlet coats and polished boots, cantering their mounts over the idyllic English countryside. If a privileged minority should refuse to accept the inevitable and challenge Parliament on this politically sensitive issue, as news video showed it doing violently last month, other royal controversies might deepen into outright warfare.

Apparently enough Britons nowadays are horrified by foxhunting to repudiate it forever. Similarly, if enough Britons wished to abolish the monarchy, it too would go the way of foxhunting. Much more is at stake here, as the Queen well knows, than the hunting of a small red-haired canine. There's the perception of royal arrogance, excess, lack of sensitivity, and obstinacy in clinging to atavistic rituals, even if sport is the only objective. There's something called noblesse oblige. It's embodied in the old story of the nobleman who reined up at the yeoman's gate and demanded that it be opened, to let his hunting party ride through. The yeoman's son refused, because the crops would be trampled. "I am the Duke of Wellington!" the man reminded him. The boy replied, "The Duke of Wellington would never ride over my father's fields." And so he did not, and praised the lad for his stand.

Accountability.makes a good King or Queen. Decent people like Charles I, George III, or Edward VIII often failed, for lack of it, while such bulls in the royal china shop as Henry VIII thrived. He, like his daughter Elizabeth I, didn't trample the fields, so to speak. Nor bleed the peasants. Their subjects prospered, for the most part, and so loved them and went along with their undoubted excesses. Likewise Charles II, restored in the midst of a still very somberly Puritan Britain, opened the playhouses to bawdy works, lived extravagantly, flaunted a parade of royal mistresses, and yet was hugely popular, because he let Parliament do the ruling.

Many other British reigns lasted not so long as a modern presidential campaign. The fact that Elizabeth II's has lasted is due to her deep sense of responsibility to her people. Dance with the one that brung you, as they say in Texas. It's the paradox of inherited office that sometimes it brings out the best in a human soul. She could be given the absolute power of her predecessors with absolute confidence that she would never abuse it. And such royal common sense just may be, in this current heated debate over an ancient royal sport, crazy like a fox.

- Mel Whitney