Freedom of the City of London

In my new found quest to receive the Freedom of the City of London, The Monarchist is pleased to inform our dear readers that with the generous sponsorship of a true gentleman, he has joined the Honourable Company of Freemen of the City of London in North America.



The granting of the Freedom of the City of London is one of the oldest surviving traditional ceremonies still in existence today, first presented in 1237. The medieval term 'freeman' meant someone who was not the property of a feudal lord, but enjoyed privileges such as the right to earn money and own land. Town dwellers who were protected by the charter of their town or city were often free - hence the term 'freedom of the City'. It is not to be confused with receiving the 'Key to the City', which is a tradition more prevalent in the United States and elsewhere. Furthermore, the granting of the freedom in London is not the awarding of an honour by townhall ceremony, but an actual courtroom procedure conducted by the Chamberlain of London at Guildhall, who confers the legal status of a Freeman upon those who make the Declaration and swear a solemn oath to Her Majesty promising to keep the Queen's Peace in London.

Interestingly, there are a number of ancient rights and privileges traditionally but apocryphally associated with Freemen — the right to drive sheep and cattle over London Bridge; to a silken rope, if hanged; to carry a naked sword in public; or that if the City of London Police finds a freeman drunk and incapable, they will send him home in a taxi rather than throw him into a cell. Now admittedly the right to herd sheep over London bridge, to go about the City with a drawn sword, and if convicted of a capital offence, to be hung by a silken rope, may be of questionable authenticity and more a product of collective memory than of documented evidence, but other advantages are said to have included the right to avoid being press-ganged, to be married in St Paul's Cathedral, buried in the City and, as noted, to be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest.

All useful and valuable privileges, I'm sure you will agree, although I don't expect to put them to the test anytime soon. It may seem quaintly odd for someone to aspire to be a free Citizen of London when he doesn't even live there, but I am a Roman at heart and how fantastic it is indeed to be associated in some symbolic way with the centre of this once great civilisation!

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Support for republic plummets in Australia!

Good news from the Queen's great Southern Realm - Australia: A poll of 1,400 Australians shows support for a republic has dropped to a 16 year low, with monarchists now taking the lead! Remember this is asking people about some undefined republic. Support for a republic would drop even more once the republicans put forward a model - which they must do to be taken seriously.

Monarchists still have a long way to go here with Labour governments doing every thing they can to undermine the Crown but we are buoyed by this poll.

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When did Churchill lose his hair?

That would be the four years between 1900 (photo left) and 1904 (photo right). It has surely got to be one of the most spectacular examples of rapid hair loss for men.

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Barry Lyndon

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Why did America never adopt the pinnacle rank of Field Marshal?

The military rank of field marshal is the highest general officer rank for most countries that have land forces. Traditionally British monarchs hold the rank, even though Her Majesty has never officially assumed it (no real need if you are already Queen, Commander-in-Chief and Head of your Armed Forces). In times of peace, the rank is usually the preserve of senior royals like the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Kent, although there have been some notable exceptions over the decades. Extraordinarily, the Duke of Wellington was field marshal in twelve different armies. Only one American can lay claim to the rank: General Douglas MacArthur was appointed a field marshal of the Philippine Army.

Field Marshal Marshall doesn't exactly roll off the tongue
As for why America never adopted the pinnacle rank, one may be forgiven for thinking it was thanks to George C. Marshall (see photo above), the very first 5-star army general (field marshal equivalent) of the United States. Field Marshal Marshall would have sounded undignified, and leads immediately to the theory that President Roosevelt out of deference to his chief military advisor (in Churchill's words, the "organizer of victory", the man who, after all, expanded the size of U.S. military forces forty fold), instead proposed a new rank to Congress called "General of the Army". The rank was duly approved and General Marshall was promoted on December 15, 1944. (General MacArthur received his promotion the following day, not because he was less senior to Marshall, but by virtue of not being in Marshall's shoes as Army Chief of Staff, the same position that MacArthur held more than a decade earlier.)

Indeed the need for American field marshal status came to a head in September 1944, when the irascible general, Bernard Montgomery, was promoted to the highest rank in the British Army. How could (4-star) General Eisenhower carry out his superior function as combined Supreme Commander in Europe, if he was of lower rank than Field Marshal Montgomery? As noted, the issue was solved by an act of Congress in December 1944, and Eisenhower became a 5-star General of the Army one week after MacArthur.

General MacArthur for his part, was later considered for an unprecedented new 6-star rank, "General of the Armies", which planners were calling for in July 1945, given the sheer scale of the invasion force being contemplated for Japan and its surrounding islands. The Institute of Heraldry produced a single sketch of how the insignia for six star rank would appear, which was later filed into Douglas MacArthur's service record. The 6-star rank was not to be, however, and the Instrument of Japan's Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945. Interestingly, the United States came within a hair's distance of establishing a military rank superior to that of even a field marshal.

That said, the senior 5-star (initially a 4-star) rank of "General of the Armies of the United States" (a development that goes back to 1799, which is the substantive reason why field marshal was not chosen) does currently exist and is the highest possible officer rank of the United States Army. Only two soldiers have been granted the rank of General of the Armies; John J. Pershing in 1919 to honor his service in World War I, is the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to such a rank; and George Washington (a retroactive Congressional edict passed in 1976 promoted General Washington to the same rank but with higher seniority), as part of the American bicentennial celebrations, to commemorate his leadership and involvement in the founding of the United States. As mentioned above, Douglas MacArthur was considered for the rank, both during and after World War II, but a formal promotion order was never issued.

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King MacArthur on his Throne

Brigadier Douglas MacArthur seated in a French chateau, September 1918

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Monarchist MacArthur

I was surprised to read in Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries (a jolly good book in which I shall provide a later review) that General Douglas MacArthur was a lifelong monarchist, and apparently even a member of the Royal Stuart Society, after that monarchist society was established in 1926. Prominent Americans are not (never?) renown for this.

Photo of General Douglas MacArthur inscribed to Admiral Nimitz
Mind you, when you look at the man - his jaunty appearance, that invincible confidence of his, the trademark corncob pipe, the way he carried his riding crop like it was a royal sceptre, or - and especially - here, seated as if upon his throne, photographed in a French chateau at the Front in September 1918. Vanity and hubris was the stuff of the future "American Caesar", who as Supreme Commander seemed to run the war as if it were a one-man show. The old soldier of the ballad acted the part of an absolute monarch.

And indeed he did as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and military ruler over that of defeated Japan, which included the Emperor himself. When MacArthur confirmed that the emperor's abdication would not be necessary, he did so over the objections of many members of the imperial family as well as Japanese intellectuals who called for abdication and the implementation of a regency. While the decision to constitutionalize the monarchy in occupied Japan and to establish a Westminster parliamentary democracy would have ultimately required the approval of the American government (with input from the Allies), MacArthur no doubt wielded enormous influence in those discussions, and indeed operated with unilateral control over Japanese reforms until about 1948, when the U.S. State Department stepped in.

As we prepare to mark the 65th anniversary of the Japanese surrender this September 2nd, how about a toast to the old soldier who did his duty as God gave him the sight to see that duty; who now sleeps without the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, and the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

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"almost nothing civilized save steam and patriotism.”

That was Henry James assessment of Kipling. It is not, as you can imagine, our view or that of Roger Kimball:

How different it once was. Around the turn of the last century, at the apogee of Kipling’s fame, Mark Twain wrote that he was “the only living person not head of a nation, whose voice is heard around the world the moment it drops a remark, the only such voice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail but always travels first-class by cable.” In Kipling, the zeitgeist briefly found its impresario. For a time, his authority was as much political as literary. Kipling gave speeches advocating British supremacy in India and South Africa. He opposed the suffragettes and home rule for Ireland. He could be downright strident. It was Kipling, one of his biographers speculates, who popularized the metonymy “Huns” (actually, he insisted on “huns” with a small “h”) for “Germans,” a subject on which he grew increasingly ferocious. By 1915, Kipling was insisting that there were “only two divisions in the world … human beings and Germans.” Kipling consistently refused state honors (a knighthood, the Order of Merit, the post of poet laureate) but by the late 1890s he was the undisputed if unofficial laureate—but also, which is sometimes forgotten, the Jeremiah—of Imperial Britain.

But then he fell, fast and hard. In the span of a few years he went from acclaimed genius, the youngest literary nobel laureate then or since, to being the very personification of camp and bigotry. It was not, as I've noted in this space before, for Kipling's faults that he was, and still is, despised. He is hated for his virtues.

Imperialism became an epithet in the early twentieth century because, according to Lenin, it was the highest form of capitalism. Apologists of empire were, therefore, running dog lackeys of the bourgeoisie, slowing down historical inevitability. Capitalism and imperialism are not necessary corollaries, the latter predates the former by millennia. So far as the early European empires had any ideological rationale, it came from mercantilism, not the laissez-faire capitalism that replaced it. In the 1860s, at the very height of classical liberalism's influence on British policy, there were serious discussions about simply getting rid of the Empire, including Canada. Capitalism leading to imperialism was pure myth, but a Leninist myth that gained wide currency among communists, their fellow travellers, and a long train of useful idiots.

Kipling was one of communism's first intellectual victims in the West. But the hatred of Kipling was more than political, it was visceral. The Left of the middle decades of the last century hated his politics, but it was his sense of life that they found truly repulsive. He was not a good intellectual, because he did not celebrate the educated elite, and their struggles with middle class morality. The engineer, the businessman, the solider, and the ordinary, practically minded man in the street, were feted by Kipling. They were his people. The doers and makers, however humble. He could find the grandest nobility in a water bearer. Very little among the aesthetes.

Such common nobility was an affront to modern intellectuals. Ordinary people were suppose to be weak and foolish, needing to be ruled over. The intellectuals were to be the rulers and guiders. There can be only one noble class in a nation, and Kipling found his in the barrack rooms, not the salons.

He committed three unpardonable sins. First, he was an imperialist at the wrong moment in history, second he despised intellectuals (not as a type, but as a class) and third because he was so competent. Being told you don't matter is one thing, being told you don't matter by a master of the language is something else. Kipling rhythms and scans. It is poetry as most would have recognized it before the twentieth century. It was definitely not modern. Kimball quotes, a mostly well intentioned review, of Kipling by T.S. Elliot. The modern master criticizes the author of If and The Gods of the Copybook Headings for having “excessive lucidity.” A problem which does not, in anyway, afflict either modern poets or intellectuals.

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The Very Few

First they came for the fleet. Now the planes.

But the RAF will bear the brunt of the planned cuts. The Air Force will lose 7,000 airmen – almost one sixth of its total staff – and 295 aircraft. The cuts will leave the Force with fewer than 200 fighter planes for the first time since 1914. In addition, the Navy will lose two submarines, three amphibious ships and more than 100 senior officers, along with 2,000 sailors and marines.

The Army faces a 40 per cent cut to its fleet of 9,700 armoured vehicles and the loss of a 5,000-strong brigade of troops.

The Telegraph has also learnt that the “black hole” in MoD finances, caused by orders which have been made but cannot be paid for, is approaching £72  billion over the next decade – double the amount previously suggested.

Plenty of money made available to bail out irresponsible bankers, the bloated mess of the NHS and countless dependency creating welfare schemes, but not enough to keep up a word class military. A nation voting itself into irrelevance. These stories make me sick, physically ill. I'm not exaggerating for effect. It is a moral crime to send men into battle without proper equipment and supply. It is as sinful as it is foolish to strip a nation of its defences.

In my bleaker moods I've thought of making it mandatory for all welfare recipients, who are physically fit and without dependants, to serve their nation in uniform. I hesitate solely because I would hate to inflict such malingerers on the forces. So much damn waste in modern Britain, and the focus is all on the only parts of the country that still work, and are still regarded as being globally first rate, the monarchy and the military.

Is there not an overweight PC, a safety inspector or diversity enforcer in the realm who cannot lose their stipend? Must the very best be punished for the sake of the very worst? What perversity and madness is this? Terrorists and religious fanatics caper freely, but fox hunting is banned! There is moral outrage at bull fighting, but one can obtain a lunchtime abortion!

Could those who are murdering Britain not have the decency, the plain decency, of at least waiting until all the veterans of the last great war die off? Must the few remaining soldiers, sailors and airmen of 1939-1945 live out their last years in this strange place? Where crowds of foreigners - who have inexplicably been granted residency and even citizenship - insult the honoured dead returning from Afghanistan. I have no problem with immigrants - my parents are immigrants - only with the ungrateful sods who have no intention of integrating. The strange death of Mother England.

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Quote of the Day

This judgment goes to the heart of Kipling’s character. He was a conservative in the sense that he believed civilization to be something laboriously achieved which was only precariously defended. He wanted to see the defences fully manned and he hated the liberals because he thought them gullible and feeble, believing in the easy perfectibility of man and ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms.

Evelyn Waugh

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A Ship Fit For A Queen

Gerald Warner - the Telegraph's resident Arch-Tory Reactionary - has an excellent idea:

The ideal Jubilee present to the Queen would be a new royal yacht. The refusal to replace the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1997 was an example of New Labour spitefulness. The hypocritical plea of economy did not prevent Tony Blair from ordering an executive jet – “Blair Force One” – for his own convenience, at a projected cost to taxpayers of £100m, almost twice the cost of a new royal yacht: it was cancelled by Gordon Brown. It was ideological prejudice that denied the Queen a replacement for Britannia; but, so far from saving money, it increased the cost to the taxpayer.

Well naturally. Should Britain ever become a republic - wicked, wicked thought - the first President of the British Republic would order up a splendid plane and yacht, because after all the state must have its dignity. One can only imagine the non-entities who would aspire to such a role.

Jacobins often posture as paragons of moral virtue. Certainly the great butcher Robespierre talked a lot about virtue and reason, all the while sending innocent men and women to their deaths. His modern descendants, at least in Britain, are far too delicate for guillotines. The gentle entanglements of the nanny state, and the consequent slow suffocation of civil society, are more to their taste. Don't raze the temples, just subvert them. Subversion under the cover of virtue.

One of the tenants of virtue is frugality. The spendthrift's career is a short and pointless one. It takes a certain restraint not to bankrupt oneself, especially in the modern age where credit is ubiquitous. Denouncing the monarchy as extravagant is an easy way to posture as virtuous. That the monarchy is, per capita, the most efficiently and cheaply run aspect of the British state, is of course ignored. Frugality and gilded coaches don't go together. The coaches, however, date from the Georgian era, and much of HM wealth is private not publicly derived. It is the careful product of centuries, not the looted wealth of the living.

The Queen, and immediate members of the Royal Family, do live in splendour, most of which is inherited from centuries past. They are also almost always "on call." Being Queen of the United Kingdom, and fifteen other commonwealth realms, is not a job it is a vocation. The word - from the Latin - means a calling. In its Christian meaning it is a calling from God to service. A more secular approach would describe it as doing what you were meant to do. A vocation is not something one picks up and discards as a matter of convenience. It is you. HM has made it quite clear she will never abdicate. John Paul II - despite crippling illness - refused to relinquish the pontificate. Both had sworn before God to serve until they died. The Pope is never not Pope. The Queen is never not Queen. It is who they are.

You might regard this as quaint nonsense, and mystical nonsense at that, but it is a spectacle of the profound. In a shallow and transient age the monarch is being monarchical, i.e. eternal in the flux. Constant as the northern star. In her service to the country the Queen is delivering a lesson to her subjects. I mean this. I am this. I will always be this. Change you, ministers and mores, I do not change, except in the superficial.

The yacht is a superficial thing. Whatever private royal pleasures taken from Britannia, its chief function was as a floating diplomatic mission of the British government. Just as Buckingham Palace is private residence, museum and theatre for state functions. A new Royal Yacht would serve a practical function as well as a symbolic one. It would be a simple thank you to a woman who has accepted her vocation and performed it superbly. I suspect she would refuse the offer of a new yacht. The PR would be bad for her and the monarchy, extravagance in the midst of fiscal retrenchment. This does not change the fact that she deserves it.

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"The Right Honourable" splendidly back in vogue in New Zealand

From the latest Buckingham Palace press release:

At The Queen’s request, new rules for the granting and use of the title “The Right Honourable” will apply in New Zealand to preserve an important mark of distinction for the holders of the Nation’s highest public offices.

Henceforth, those appointed to the offices of the Governor-General, Prime Minister, Speaker and Chief Justice will be granted the title “The Right Honourable” ex officio, for life. This will bring a measure of association and continuity with the recent past; formerly, the most senior members of the Judiciary and the Executive in New Zealand gained this right upon appointment to the Privy Council, a practice which no longer exists.

Of course, the republican leveller Lewis Holden believes titles are just pompous holdovers, and insinuates that Her Majesty is being disrespectful in making this honour on the grounds that Prime Minister John Key reportedly said he was not interested. No kidding he's officially not interested, since obviously that would be akin to bestowing the honour upon himself. Mr. Holden is bright enough to see the political side of this, which means he's just being downright disingenuous with the ridiculous charge he levels at the Palace.

In any event, this splendid decision by New Zealand (coming on the heels of its restoration of royal honours) is consistent with the practice in other Realms with the notable exception of Australia, whose prime ministers, chief justices and governors general seem content with the lower title, "The Honourable". Australia should immediately seek to reinstitute the grander honour for its highest office holders, if for no other reason than to bring it in line with the other Commonwealth Realms, like Canada and the United Kingdom.

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