ABDICATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 10

ABDICATION

IN BRITISH HISTORY

NO TRUE PRECEDENT

ELEMENTS OF FORCE As Professor Berriedale Keith has remarked, there are no precedents for the voluntary abdication of a monarch in England (wrote B. Wilkinson, Lecturer in History at Manchester University, in the "Manchester Guardian" early in December). There are cases when a monarch has, under compulsion, made a pretence of voluntary abdication, as when Richard II in 1399 owned himself "insufficient and useless" and, with a smiling face, declared himself unworthy to reign; but it is safe to say that in fact no English monarch has ever, since the times when early Anglo-Saxon rulers retired into monasteries, resigned his throne of his own free will. There are no precedents in any case of a monarch abdicating, voluntarily or otherwise, before he has actually been crowned. The coronation of a monarch has always been a solemn and sacred ceremony since shortly after the conversion of England to Christianity. We might have expected some reluctance on the part of Churchmen to crown more than one ruler of doubtful antecedents, such as Ethelred the Unready or Stephen or John. Hubert Walter is indeed said to have expressed some misgivings about crowning John. But we have only one recorded instance of opposition which actually threatened to prevent the coronation of a monarch, that which was offered to King Edward II in 1308, when the I barons threatened to oppose the Coronation unless Edward would dismiss Pierre Gaveston and rule with their advice. HAD TO SURRENDER: He had to surrender to their demands, to obtain his Coronation; and it is probable that it was to mark his surrender that he added a fourth clause to the traditional threefold oath of Anglo-Saxon kings, saying that he would keep the laws and rightful customs. which the community would elect—a clause which greatly puzzled later historians, who could not under- ! stand how or why it came to be added. Apart from this little-known incident, we know of no other occasion when serious friction has threatened the cor- j onation of a king. Whilst there is no precedent for the voluntary abdication of a monarch, there are a number of of deposition or compulsory abdication. The first abdication which ever occurred in historic times was that of Edward II in January, 1327. It was "voluntary"; but Edward did not agree until he had been declared deposed by Parliament and urged to vacate the throne by a solemn delegation and "by clamour of the whole people unanimously persisting in that clamour," so that he is said by one historian to have fallen in a deep swoon at the feet of his enemies. Richard II will always be an enigma; but there is nothing enigmatical in his final attempt to save his throne, or in the forces by which he was overcome. Though his conduct may be hard to understand at times, nobody has ever suggested that Richard was ever prepared—despite his smiling face at his deposition—to give up his throne without a struggle. WORN OUT BY EFFORT. The unfortunate Henry VI, the next monarch to lose his throne, was worn out by the struggle to maintain his power. In the end he was not even formally deposed, but simply imprisoned, whilst his rival, Edward IV, was solemnly asked by a deputation to take up the crown, which was his (it was declared) by hereditary right, and sit on the vacant throne. The question of Charles I's deposition was merged in the greater question of his impeachment as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable enemy of the Commonwealth of England"; it was settled by his condemnation and death. James ll's abdication was perhaps the least heroic, in 1688. He fled before the advancing army of William of Orange, but not before William had been some weeks on English soil and not until resistance was hopeless. He could not be compelled to abdicate because he was safe in France, but the throne was declared vacant because the King had "abdicated the Government," so the end was the same. The causes of a monarch's abdication or deposition in the past have always touched the deep springs of the nation's life. No deposition was, as we have seen, lightly achieved, and no deposition was without momentous results. Edward II fought, and lost his Throne, not only for personal issues and as a result of personal shortcomings but also in defence of a Monarch's right to take his own counsel and advice, to entrust the direction of government to men like Gaveston or Despenser, men of his own unfettered choice. Richard II fell because he confronted baronial ambitions to control the monarch with the sharp challenge of a ruler who claims to discover the source of the law in his own breast. Henry VI was the tragic victim of a conflict which sprang out of the failure of medieval political ideals as much as out of men's personal ambitions and fears; his deposition paved the way for the New Monarchy which culminated in Henry VIII. DEATH OF OLD IDEAL. The execution of Charles I was the death of the old ideal of kingship as the sole fount o£ executive power within the State. The "desertion" of James II was the beginning of Parliamentary government, the end of a long period of stress which witnessed the birth pangs of a modern State. Each deposition was a landmark in the growth of English liberties, though we have long since ceased to regard the English Kings as the consistent enemies of their subjects' freedom and 'rights. The tragedy of these great crises of our history has been the I greatest of all tragedies, when right has confronted right. "For the j people," Charles I said on the scaffold, "truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whatsoever, 'but I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having government, those laws by which their lives and goods may be most their own." The greatness of English history is not least reflected in the story of her vanquished kings. The tragic fall of Edward 11, of Richard 11, and of Charles I, and the no less tragic failure of Henry VI are, indeed, amongst the most moving episodes in our history. Contemporaries knew them as events affecting the very foundations of the State, fraught with incalculable consequences, and they invested them with all the solemnity and in their power. They involved decisions which only the nation in Parliament could properly decide. DEPUTATION ARRANGED. "This ought to be done," It was said at the deposition of Edward 11, "in order that not only the prelates but the magnates, nobles, and chicf persons of every State and condition in the realm may be involved in the business," and a solemn deputation was sent to Edward 11, consisting probably of two earls, three bishops, four barons, one abbot, one prior, four burgesses, and four knights, to compel

him to abdicate. Similar deputations waited on Richard II and (to convey the invitation to the on Edward IV. Not only had all the nation to be involved, through Parliament, but, in the case of these early monarchs, mere' deposition was not enough r a profession of abdication was also required. A king could not simply be transformed into a commoner by his subjects. He had himself to give up his kingly estate. Edward had to be persuaded to abdicate, even though he had apparently already been deposed! No English monarch has, as we have seen, ever been set aside by simple deposition alone. Richard II abdicated, like Edward 11. Henry VI was discovered to have no right to his Throne because Edward IV was the rightful heir; Charles was executed for crimes against the State; James was declared to have abdicated the government by his act of flight. But in no case had the monarch any freedom of choice. No previous monarch, not even James 11. had a practicable alternative to abdication; none could, in the end. have saved his throne. Of King Edward VIII alone, whatever his present decision, it can be said that he could choosc freely until the end, either to go or to remain.