The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Meddlesome Priests and Meddlesome Princes

Yesterday, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, expressed his opposition to the Prince of Wales's desire to be "Defender of Faith" rather than "Defender of the Faith" ("the" being Christian, or specifically Anglican). Dr Nazir-Ali, himself a former Muslim, believes that Prince Charles's "multi-faith mish-mash" is untenable because of the serious differences between different religions. The merits of their particular arguments need not concern us here, but what the bishop is doing is continuing a long (but not continuous) tradition of dispute between the church and monarchy, two closely intertwined institutions.

Dr Nazir-Ali claims that the monarchy's origins lie in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In this he is wrong. The first Saxon English monarchs, of whom Elizabeth II is heir, were pagans (as were the early Scottish monarchs). There was a Christian tradition in Britain, among the Celts, but not among the rulers of those realms which were to become the Kingdom of England. However, when Roman (as opposed to Celtic) Christianity did arrive on these shores, its association with monarchy began immediately. The Papal missionary, Augustine, arrived in 597 and was welcomed by King Aethelbert of Kent (whose wife was Christian). The king granted him land in Canterbury, thus leading to the establishment of what is still the premier Anglican diocese. King Aethelbert himself was baptised four years later, and, although his immediate successors reverted to pagan religion, the seeds of Roman Christianity, and of its association with English monarchy, had been sown. From the second half of the seventh century, English kings and their realms were Christian. There was a close relationship between the church hierarchy and the crown; kings were crowned and consecrated by bishops, and clerics were often prominent in government.

The relationship was not a trouble-free one, though. The church was a powerful institution and its leaders could be subject to conflicting loyalties towards their temporal and spiritual leaders, king and pope. Inevitably, kings wanted to have some control over who was appointed to powerful Episcopal offices, and were not happy to have law-breaking priests, monks and others be subject to church rather than royal courts.

The most famous of the early church-crown conflicts was that between Henry II and his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket. The two men had been close friends, and Becket was not a very devout man, until Henry had him appointed archbishop. Expecting an ally, the king found that his old friend had dramatically turned religious, and vigorously defended and promoted the church's interests against the crown, demanding, for example, complete church exemption from royal civil jurisdiction. In due course, the conflict reputedly led an angry and frustrated king to ask "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?". Four of his knights took the question as a command, and the archbishop was murdered inside his own cathedral.

Henry's youngest son, King John, came into conflict with the Papacy by refusing to accept the pope's nominee, Stephen Langton, as Archbishop of Canterbury; and the dispute led to the king's excommunication for a time, and the entire realm being placed under an interdict, forbidding any church services. Conflict continued into the following century as Popes tried to impose their control over the English church, and kings responded with Statutes of Praemunire, forbidding appeals to authorities outside of the realm (i.e. to Rome). But worse was to come.

The sixteenth century saw the dawn of the greatest rift in Christendom since the Great Schism between East and West in the eleventh century, and in England the rift was intimately connected with the interests of the monarchy, and, perhaps, the sexual desires of the monarch. It was not the pursuit of spiritual truth which brought about the English break with Rome, for the King was a devout Catholic, but the pursuit of an heir to the Tudor dynasty, and the pursuit of a beautiful but willful young lady.

Just as Henry II and Thomas Becket had begun as firm allies, so too had Henry VIII and the Catholic Church. When Papal supremacy and Catholic doctrine was challenged in Europe by Martin Luther, Henry came to the church's defence by writing a treatise condemning the new heresy. With the king's approval, his Chancellor, "Saint" Thomas More, persecuted Protestant heretics and had them burned at the stake. For his defence of the true religion, Henry received from the pope the title "Defender of the Faith", which Prince Charles now wants to modify.

The need for an heir, the king's infatuation with Anne Boleyn, and the Pope's refusal to grant Henry a divorce from his first wife, changed all that. In the space of a few years, Papal authority was expelled from the realm, the King became Supreme Head on Earth of the church in England, and the many great and small monasteries and convents were destroyed, their occupants thrust out to make their way in a brave new world. It was a world in which the King and Parliament decreed new doctrine; in which the ages-old Latin mass gave way to English services, and the Holy Bible itself could be read or heard in a language which everyone understood. The nature of the divine and eternal was being revolutionised by a prince's ambition.

Religion remained a dominant and disputatious theme in royal life for much of the next two hundred years. Mary I spilt much blood in trying to bring the country back into the Roman fold. Her sister, Elizabeth, undid Mary's work and became Supreme Governor (not Head) of the Church of England, but she tried to steer a careful course between traditional and radical religious elements. Her successor, James I, did likewise, with less success; but he did commission the translation of the Bible which bears his name - one of the greatest works in the English language, and used almost exclusively throughout non-Catholic English-speaking churches until the late nineteenth century.

James lacked Elizabeth's diplomatic skill, and his son, Charles, was even more wanting in that regard. His avid promotion of High Anglicanism in an age of growing Puritanism was a contributory factor to the Civil War and his downfall. His elder son, Charles II, although personally inclined towards Roman Catholicism, had the good sense not to press his religious views over those of the establishment. His younger brother, James II, was not so subtle. James's professed aim was to extend religious toleration in England, primarily to Catholics, but the strongly anti-Papist powers of the time saw this as a surreptitious attempt to bring the kingdom back into the Roman fold. They were not prepared to tolerate that, or the autocratic methods which James employed to get his way. The consequence was the second Parliamentary deposition of a monarch in the century.

The Glorious Revolution resulted in the Bill of Right and Act of Settlement, which barred Catholics from the throne. Religious life in England settled down, and toleration slowly grew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, George III and George IV both opposed proposals for Catholic emancipation, although George IV eventually had to concede to it when pressed on the matter by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington. There was little cause for difficulty between church and crown over the following century until 1936, when Edward VIII decided that he wanted to marry a divorcee, which the church, along with most of the rest of the establishment, was not prepared to accept.

Divorce, or rather the re-marriage of divorcees, has remained the one recurrent issue of difficulty between the monarchy and church since 1936. In 1955, Princess Margaret had to give up the prospect of marriage to the man she loved because he was a divorcee; but over twenty years later she ended up as a divorcee herself. In 1992, her niece, the Princess Royal, pushed the boundaries further by not only divorcing, but re-marrying; but she avoided problems for the Church of England by doing so north of the border, in Scotland. And, of course, the most famous and controversial case of royal remarriage was to come thirteen years later, when the future Supreme Governor of the Church decided to marry his very public former mistress. That decision, combined with his multi-faith interests and sympathies, probably means that the future Charles III is, in church terms, the most "interesting" monarch since the seventeenth century. Should he be Defender of the Faith, or Defender of Faith, or neither? Does it matter? To most British people, I suspect not; but among those to whom it does, doubtless the debate will continue off and on until he succeeds to the throne.

- Paul James