PRINCESS MARGARETS BETROTHAL

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29192, 30 April 1960, Page 10

PRINCESS MARGARETS BETROTHAL

Four- Cen furies- Old Precedent tßv CYRIL F. J. HANKINSON, Editor of -Dtbrett's Petragu, Baronetape, KnipMap® and Contpantonape ] 'THE news of the engagement of Princess Margaret 1 to Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones was received by the British public with great satisfaction. The idea of Princess Margaret becoming engaged to a man without title appealed vastly to the people, for no British princess has married a “Mr” since 1503, when Cicely, third daughter of King Edward IV, married Thomas Kymbe, a man of obscure origin. Although Mr Armstrong-Jones does not come of the nobility, he has the distinction of being descended from Llewelyn the Great of Wales, and also from King Edward I of England, who annexed Wales to the English Crown.

Despite the inevitable restrictions of her exalted background, Princess Margaret has for some years past lived her life with a very considerable degree of freedom. thus typifying the changes which have taken place during this century, when more and more of the barriers between Royalty and Commonalty have been swept aside.

She has met many young men —some of titled family and some not—and now that her choice has been made, the people of Britain are glad to feel that she has been left to follow the dictates of her heart.

In Tudor days Mary (younger daughter of King Henry VII. and widow of Louis XII of France) married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and became the royal ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill. And afterwards until the time of

Queen Victoria, British prin[cesses were hustled into matriimpny without consideration of .their affections, for diplomatic [reasons, and no daughter of a British sovereign married outside the Royal circle. New Tendency Then, however, a democratic tendency began to show itself. Queen Victoria—not quite the autocrat she is sometimes made out to have been—having herself made a love match, was sympathetic and encouraging to those of her descendants who wished to marry for love, even if their choice fell upon someone outside the royal circle. The first to wed a husband not of royal descent was the Queen's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, who, in 1871, became the bride of the Marquess of Lorne, afterwards, the ninth Duke of Argyll. Eighteen years later her niece and namesake, the eldest daughter of King Edward VII. married the fifth Earl of Fife, who was raised to a dukedom two days after the wedding. The younger daughter of this marriage, the late Princess Maud, married, in 1923, Lord Carnegie, afterwards the eleventh Earl of Southesk. In 1919 Princess Patricia, daughter of the Duke of Connaught, married the Honourable <now Admiral Sir) Alexander Ramsay, and, in 1922, Princess Mary (now the Princess Royal) married Viscount Lascelles, who later became the sixth Earl of Harewood. Although all of these were technically commoners at the time of their marriage, three, as heirs, bore peerage titles by courtesy, and the other was “the honourable” as the younger son of an earl. None of them, therefore, was plain “Mr.” Scottish Descent The Duke of York, second son of King George V, who succeeded to the Throne as King George VI, himself married outside the Royal Family. Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, now the much-loved Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was a member of an old Scottish family, for her father, the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore, traced his descent back to King Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Princess Margaret's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, also chose his bride from a Scottish family of ancient lineage—Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott, daughter of the seventh Duke of Buccleuch, a very old friend of King George V. Princess Margaret's titles and constitutional position will be in no way affected by her marriage. It is true that both Princess Patricia and Princess Maud, by permission of King George V, dropped their royal rank and became Lady Patricia Ramsay and Lady Maud Carnegie respectively. However,- they were not the daughters but were the granddaughters, of a sovereign, and were, therefore much further removed from the Throne than Princess Margaret, who is fourth in the line of succession, after the Prince of Wales, Prince ANdrew, and Princess Anne.

In 1917 King George V decreed that in future the children of princesses should no longer derive any titles from their mother. This means that any children bom to Princess Margaret and Mr Armstrong-Jones will derive their status from their father and not from their mother.