Month: January 2014

King Charles the Martyr?

In some quarters, yesterday was considered the feast of King Charles the Martyr, better known to most people as Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Charles probably had one of the unhappiest reigns of any English monarch. A strong believer in the Divine Right of Kings, he was almost constantly at loggerheads with Parliament, and he sought to rule as an absolute monarch. The final straw was when he tried to force Anglicanism on Scotland, resulting in the Bishops’ Wars, which served as a prelude to the English Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651.

A right royal prat
After Sir Anthony van Dyck [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
As many of you know, Charles was ultimately defeated, put on trial, and executed. But of course the monarchy was eventually restored, and in 1660, the Convocations of Canterbury and York decided that the day of Charles’ execution should be commemorated with a special service in the Book of Common Prayer. The service was subsequently annexed to the Prayer Book by a royal warrant of Charles II along with the services commemorating the Gunpowder Plot and the restoration of the monarchy.[note]Legally speaking, they were an addendum to the Prayer Book since they were not included in the text that was attached to the Act of Uniformity 1662.[/note]

The service itself was a piece of ecclesiastical masochism filled to the brim with handwringing over the evils of executing a divinely anointed sovereign. By the mid-nineteenth century, this attitude seemed increasingly out-of-date, and Queen Victoria removed it from the Prayer Book in 1859 at the request of both Houses of Parliament along with the Gunpowder Plot and Restoration services.[note]Some Anglo-Catholics question the validity of Victoria’s warrant discontinuing these services, but since the services were enjoined by royal fiat rather than statute, they could be removed by an executive act of the sovereign alone.[/note]

Nowadays, the cult of King Charles the Martyr has largely faded from public view, though he still appears in the Calendar of Common Worship, the book of ‘alternative’ services that has replaced the Book of Common Prayer in many Church of England parishes. Although some Anglo-Catholics bewail the downgrading, the cult of King Charles the Martyr is an aberration best left in the seventeenth century.

One of the justifications for his continued commemoration is that he was a martyr for Anglicanism. Anglo-Catholics often paint him as a stalwart defender of episcopacy and Catholic tradition in the face of militant Presbyterianism.[note]In reality, Charles was a pragmatist who was willing to throw the episcopate under the bus if he thought it would help his cause. For example, after he was captured by Parliamentary forces in 1647, Charles signed a secret treaty with the Scots (known as ‘The Engagement’) wherein he promised to impose Presbyterianism on England for three years in exchange for military support.[/note] Now I have no problem with episcopacy (I am, after all, an Episcopalian!) or Catholic tradition, but I’m not sure they’re more important than the liberties of Charles’ subjects. This was a man who had no problem imprisoning people without trial and imposing illegal taxes, and his behavior was seen as problematic even by seventeenth-century standards.

I’ve heard defenders of Charles try to get around his failings by pointing out that nobody’s perfect, and just because a person has flaws doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of veneration by the faithful. But by the same token, just because someone displays certain virtues doesn’t mean they should be venerated either. It’s ultimately a question of balance, and in the final analysis, Charles seems rather wanting.

Introducing Woseribre Senebkay

The list of pharaohs has just gotten a bit longer. The University of Pennsylvania has uncovered the tomb of a pharaoh named Woseribre Senebkay, who apparently ruled as part of a previously unknown dynasty based out of Abydos. This news has made it into the mainstream media, but I highly recommend reading the official Penn Museum announcement. A lot of the mainstream coverage has been sort of silly (such as this gem from the Daily Pennsylvanian: “Most tombs have unadorned walls, stripped of their decorations by ancient plunderers”.[note]Tomb walls were decorated with frescoes and carvings. Not exactly something a tomb robber would make off with![/note]).

As is so often the case, the tomb was plundered in antiquity, so there isn’t a lot of bling left. Poor Senebkay even suffered the indignity of having his mummy torn apart by grave robbers. Judging from the remains of his canopic chest (which had the name of a previous royal owner covered over with gilding!), it seems that his burial may have featured a lot of ‘recycled’ material.

Senebkay reigned c. 1650 BCE during a time scholars call Second Intermediate Period. The SIP was a time of political fragmentation and disorder, and we don’t really have a firm grasp of the chronology. Until now, Senebkay was pretty much unknown to history, though the Turin King List contains two fragmentary references to kings with similar throne names.

Ratty bits of history.
The Turin King List. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Although Senebkay styled himself ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’ in his tomb, he was probably little more than a local potentate whose domain was limited to Abydos and its environs. In his time, the Delta was under the control of foreign kings who belonged to a group called the Hyksos (a word that’s derived from the Egyptian Ḥq3-ḫ3st, or ‘Rulers of Foreign Lands’), while Thebes was ruled by a dynasty that would eventually expel the Hyksos and reunify Egypt. The presence of reused material suggests that he might have been comparatively poor, though it’s also possible that he simply died before he had time to acquire his own funerary equipment.

This discovery just goes to show that, despite all the advances that Egyptology has made over the past 200 years, there are still gaping lacunae in our understanding of Egyptian history.

The Parliament Acts and the EU Referendum Bill

A while back, David Cameron told his backbenchers that he was prepared to use the Parliament Acts on the European Union (Referendum) Bill. Although this announcement won plaudits from many Tory MPs, using the Parliament Acts to get the bill onto the statute book will be highly problematic.

The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 allow for laws to be made without the consent of the House of Lords in certain circumstances. In order to qualify, a bill must be rejected by the Lords in two successive sessions of Parliament, and at least a year has to elapse between the bill’s second reading in the Commons during the first session and its third reading by the Commons during the second session (yeah, it’s complicated). Use of the Parliament Acts is incredibly rare–they’ve only been used seven times since 1911 (the last time was in 2004 when the Blair government used them to get the Hunting Act onto the statute book).

By JLogan (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons


Time is not on the European Union (Referendum) Bill’s side. It’s currently in the House of Lords, where a second reading debate has been scheduled for January 10. If it receives a second reading (and it almost certainly will–the Lords rarely reject bills outright), convention dictates that at least two weeks should elapse between second reading and the start of committee stage in order to give peers plenty of time to table amendments. Committee might take a while (the Lords consider every amendment, and the bill’s opponents will likely table a lot of them to slow things down), and another fortnight will have to elapse between the end of committee stage and report stage. Then three days have to elapse between the end of report and third reading/passage.

However, there’s a very important catch: if the Lords amend the bill (which seems likely, given the number of Europhile peers), the bill will have to return to the Commons so they can vote on the Lords’ amendments. But since the bill is a private member’s bill rather than a government bill, the amendments can only be considered on certain Fridays, the last of which is February 28. I highly doubt that the Lords will be finished by then–I suspect that an alliance of Labour and Europhile peers will do everything they can to prolong the proceedings (and unlike our Senate, there’s no “nuclear option” to curtail debate!). If the Commons can’t find the time to consider the Lords amendments, the bill will automatically fall when Parliament is prorogued ahead of the State Opening of Parliament in May.

David Cameron seems to think that, if the European Union (Referendum) Bill is reintroduced in the next session, the Parliament Acts can be used to force it onto the statute books. But as I mentioned earlier, the Parliament Acts can only be used if a bill has been rejected in two successive sessions of Parliament. Section 2(3) of the Parliament Act 1911 states that “A Bill shall be deemed to be rejected by the House of Lords if it is not passed by the House of Lords either without amendment or with such amendments only as may be agreed to by both Houses.” But it’s not clear if that would apply in a situation where the Commons didn’t even consider the Lords’ amendments due to procedural restrictions. Calling that a “rejection” by the Lords would seem rather perverse!

This is uncharted territory. In the past, the Parliament Acts have only been used for government bills, so finding legislative time was never an issue. Ultimately, it will be up to Speaker John Bercow to decide whether or not the Parliament Acts can apply.

There’s another potential catch: even if a bill meets the requirements of the Parliament Acts, the Commons can decline to present it for Royal Assent.[note]See section 2(1) of the Parliament Act 1911.[/note] This has never happened before, so it’s not clear how this discretion would be exercised in practice. In the past, it’s been a moot point since the Parliament Acts have only been used for government bills, and the government obviously has a majority in the Commons. But Cameron is in a coalition, and his Liberal Democrat partners are strongly Europhile. If they were to join forces with Labour, they could outvote the Tories and prevent the bill from being presented for Royal Assent under the Parliament Acts.

I suspect that Cameron would personally prefer to let the European Union (Referendum) Bill die out rather than open an enormous can of worms by invoking the Parliament Acts. But Europe continues to be a festering boil on the body of the Conservative Party, and he might decide that it’s best to lance it once and for all, even if it results in a lot of sturm und drang.

 

There’s another potential catch as well.

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The Telegraph’s World War I Archive

The Telegraph is doing something cool to mark the centenary of World War I. They are republishing every issue of the Telegraph that came out between January 1, 1914 and December 31, 1918.

I highly recommend checking it out, even if you’re not a WWI buff. There’s a wealth of fascinating material in the January 1 issue alone, from coverage of Archduchess Isabella of Austria’s unprecedented decision to become a nurse[note]Her marriage ended in divorce (which was rather scandalous at the time), and custom dictated that she should retire to a convent.[/note] to the continued fallout from the Kikuyu Controversy[note]Two Anglican bishops in Africa attended an ecumenical conference, and the Bishop of Zanzibar (who was a staunch Anglo-Catholic) denounced them as heretics for cozying up to nonconformists.[/note]

However, hindsight has made the editorial rather poignant:

Happily, our foreign relations are such as to cause no sort of uneasiness, and there has been a steady improvement in the tone and temper of our intercourse with Germany. Everyone will hope that the New Year may pass without the outbreak of further trouble in the Near East.