The Tripartite Crown

I am a tripartite monarchist. By that I mean I consider myself part High Church Royalist, part constitutional monarchist and part British Crown loyalist, the three parts of the equation that make up my understanding of monarchism. To deprive me of just one of these pillars, would probably cause me to question whether the whole venture was even worthwhile. Monarchism = Royalism + Constitutionalism + Loyalism.

The High Church Royalism is the Tory part, the lust for hierarchy and ceremony and tradition, the joy of pomp and pageantry, the honour of chivalry and heraldry, the love for anachronism. 'Dieu et mon droit', 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' is the ancient side of monarchy, the symbolic side, the sentimental side. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "No one can understand tradition, or even history, who has not some tenderness for anachronism."

Cavalier tastes, but Roundhead values. The constitutional part of monarchy is the principled Whig formulation that gave us the 'Glorious Revolution', the Act of Settlement and the supremacy of Parliament. This is the practical part of monarchy: the legal Crown, the Fount of Justice and the Constitution of Liberty; the Sovereign or Head of State; Her Majesty's Government; the Commander-in-Chief. Constitutional monarchy is necessarily dedicated to the notion of the nation-state and its working components.

The Loyalist side of monarchy is not. United Empire Loyalists, the Royal Over-Seas League - that's the fraternal part, the personal side of monarchy. We are all subjects of Her Majesty, regardless of nationality and statehood. All Crown Commonwealth countries are in Personal Union with the British Monarch. It is a fraternity, an Anglo fraternity if you like, a fellowship we can extend to the United States and all nations who grew up under the British Crown; indeed, to all those Americans who still feel a certain attachment and personal bond with our Queen. Of the three pillars of monarchy, the pillar of kinship is the most in need of shoring up. It was strongest at the peak of Empire, but also prevailed magnificently during the Second World War, the splendour of the Queen's Coronation and even for a time following the most recent Royal Weddings, where the residual magic and mysticism of the British Monarchy still lingered. Unfortunately the fraternity and kinship of which I speak is now all but dead.

There is a reason for this, and again we turn to Chesterton who pointed out that the "fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of positive religion...only where death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel their fellowship." Therein lies our drift, I think, the drift that pronounces with increasing confidence that our Queen and Crown are foreign. Loyalty is dead. Long live the individual.