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Seeing the new title of King Charles’ wife, the queen consort, on Queen Elizabeth’s death has left me a surprised and befuddled American. I would love to hear about the Church of England’s role in modern British public life from those who know about it.
The Backstory
As a child I was taught in school that King Henry VIII founded the Church of England because he wanted a divorce from his wife, which Roman Catholic doctrine would not allow. But this is misleading. What Henry sought from the pope was in modern terms an annulment; Henry’s wife Catherine was the Holy Roman Emperor’s aunt, and the pope’s political and military situation was precarious, so the pope stalled. This led Henry to claim supremacy over the church and get the English clergy to grant his annulment. The Church of England still regarded divorce per se, dissolving the valid marriage of two living spouses, to be impossible.
Fast-forward four hundred years to 1936. The new King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom proposed to marry Wallis Simpson, an American in the process of divorcing her second husband. The prime ministers of the Commonwealth realms were not prepared to accept a disreputable queen, and publicly flouting the church of which Edward was in principle the head threatened to create a constitutional crisis. He decided to give up his throne and his responsibilities to marry her anyway. His brother became King George VI, and George’s daughter Elizabeth became the heiress presumptive.
Prince Charles’ Reprise
In 2002 the Church of England decided to allow the divorced to remarry in church – depending on the circumstances and the pastor. In other cases it may be possible to have a church blessing service after a civil wedding.
This is what Charles, Prince of Wales, did when he married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. His ex-wife having died, his divorce was presumably no impediment to the marriage, but her ex-husband was still living. Neither of his parents attended the civil wedding, though they did attend the blessing afterward. Queen Elizabeth acknowledged the awkwardness by announcing that Camilla was to be known as Duchess of Cornwall rather than Princess of Wales while Elizabeth lived and as princess consort rather than queen afterward.
The constitutionality of this decision was disputed, and it wasn’t clear whether Charles would follow his mother’s wishes once he was king. So I was surprised when, on Queen Elizabeth’s death, references to Camilla as queen consort occasioned no commentary. It turns out that in February Elizabeth changed her mind and spared Charles the trouble.
What does this imply about the Church of England?
It’s nothing new for the powerful or influential to demand that Christian churches capitulate, and it’s hardly unprecedented for unprincipled pastors to grant those demands. It may be that Elizabeth’s piety and Charles’ sense of duty were the only things that kept him from a church wedding in the first place. But I can’t escape the impression that the Church of England has ceased to be a legitimacy-granting institution beholden to God, at least in principle, and has come to have its own legitimacy judged by how well it follows the Zeitgeist.
Representatives of the Church of England’s laity narrowly turned down a measure in 2012 that would have allowed women to become bishops; some of those voting against the measure were conservatives who opposed the change and some were progressives who thought the measure didn’t take a hard enough line against the conservatives. (The change went through in 2014.) The Archbishop of Canterbury said at the time:
Where does all this leave the Church of England? I’m interested in insights from anyone who has them, but I would particularly love to hear the perspectives of English Anglicans and other members of state churches.
You forgot to mention Princess Margaret and her own romantic entanglement, where she was in love with, and received a proposal of marriage from, a man who was divorced. There was an entire scandal over this, with public opinion (or at least, public opinion as the press expressed it) divided; most disapproved, but some said 'why not?' The big sticking point was the abdication crisis of her uncle, which is how her father came to the throne,and which was still exerting a lot of influence over political considerations,
Divorce was still faintly scandalous even up to the 60s. Margaret eventually had to publicly announce that she was breaking it off with her boyfriend:
Now, with regard to Camilla, it's not so much the Church of England (which has always been lagging behind society as customs change and it tries to hold the line on doctrine, while giving in on social changes due to 'pastoral sympathies'). Because it's a state church, the government can have the final say in what doctrines it does and does not get to legally enforce.
The kerfuffle around Camilla ad what title she would get was not about the Church of England disapproving of divorce; it was due to the Diana Factor. She was seen as the home-wrecker who had destroyed the fairy-tale marriage. She was The Other Woman, and Diana up to the divorce made hay of that: the (in)famous "three of us in this marriage" interview with Martin Bashir. All of this was very publicly played out in the media, with leaks, phone taps and the like being tabloid fodder.
And then Diana's death in that car crash put the final kibosh on matters. Had she lived on for years, while the temperature cooled about the marriage and divorce and all the rest of it, then things would have been easier. But at the height of the hysteria over the Princess of Hearts, even the Queen was coming under pressure for not being sufficiently supportive of her. So Camilla had to be shoved into the background, and any speculation about Charles as King has to downplay that Camilla would be Queen, not Diana. You can even see that in how she was referred to as the Duchess of Cornwall, not Princess of Wales, even after Diana's death. In fact, to cool down the excessive public heat about Diana being "denied" her rightful title, and the perception that the public would never ever accept Camilla as queen instead of Diana, the issued an announcement when Charles and Camilla got married that she wouldn't be queen, she would be princess consort:
A lot of tact and hard work went into rehabilitating her image, including work by the royals. And now it has been years since Diana died, Camilla was step-by-step integrated into the Royal Family, she gets on well with her stepsons, and now she will be Queen Consort, her proper title. She is not Queen in her own right as a reigning monarch, and she is not mother of the heir to the throne, so she is Queen by virtue of being married to the King. For the other side, see how Queen Elizabeth's husband was the Duke of Edinburgh (not King Consort) and the husband of Queen Victoria was Prince Consort (not King Consort, though she wished to create that title for him, but it was strongly resisted by the politicians).
The bit about "the queen's wishes" may seem like the usual boilerplate, but it is absolutely essential to smooth the transfer of power and for Camilla to use the title of Queen:
If you are a Loyal Subject, you can't disregard the intentions (politely phrased as a wish) of the queen as to what she wants done.
I hadn't realized the impact of Diana's popularity! That makes a lot of sense, silly as it seems to me.
That's adorable! I didn't know she had wanted to call him king consort. Royal marriages do run the gamut from the sordid to the sweet.
Victoria and Albert really do seem to have been a love match, she was besotted with him. But since the title of "king" generally meant "ruler" and not "husband of queen", there was historically a lot of reluctance to give this title to someone who married the female monarch, particularly in the days when the husband ruled the wife. They didn't want to hand over rule of the country to a foreign prince (that was a big part of the problem for Elizabeth I - how could she marry a foreign prince who wouldn't demand to be at least co-ruler, and if she married a commoner who was her subject, that wouldn't do either). It was also part of the travails of Mary, Queen of Scots; her second husband eventually grew impatient with just being a consort and demanded to be co-ruler (and he eventually ended up murdered for his troubles):
I'm old enough to remember the hysteria around Diana's death and funeral, and there really were some elements whipping up anti-royal sentiment and even criticising the queen for not being publicly emotional enough in her grief. Saying that Camilla (the wicked Other Woman who had made Diana's marriage suffer) would be Queen and not Diana would really have lit a fire. So to manage public sentiment, the statements about "Duchess of Cornwall not Princess of Wales" and "Princess Consort not Queen" were issued.
Yes, I see avoiding the implication that he ruled jure uxoris. That said, what would have been the implications if he had become co-ruler? It's hard for me to see how Britain would have been worse off for giving Albert or Philip more influence.
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