大象传媒

The People

GUS O'DONNELL: It's incredibly daunting to have your monarch standing over you with a, with a very large sword.

PRESENTER/WILL GOMPERTZ: Former civil Gus O'Donnell on being knighted by Queen Elizabeth the Second at Buckingham Palace. He was touched by more than her investiture sword.

GUS O'DONNELL: Such an honour from what I regard as the ultimate public servant. She's been doing it for sixty years.

PRESENTER: In this programme I'm looking at the relationship between the monarchy and the British public, them and us. In the past sovereigns and subjects have fought shoulder to shoulder. More recently men, women and children have lined the streets to applaud a passing king or queen or celebrate a royal wedding. We have bowed down before them. To some they were Godlike. To others they were unelected and unwanted. One we even executed.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: We're literally standing on top of the remains of King Charles the First.

HELEN RAPPAPORT: That is to me the most extraordinary historical image.

PRESENTER: The art and objects held in the Royal Collection are a mixture of masterpieces and mementos, tasteful acquisitions and quirky gifts. But they all have one thing in common.

JUSTIN CHAMPION: These material objects are not just about the history of the monarchy but they're the public history of the relationship between King, Queen and people, across centuries.

PRESENTER: A relationship that has not always been easy. Over a thousand years the ruler and the ruled have been caught in a cycle of conflict and compromise, threat and reward, martyrdom and betrayal. It has often fallen to parliament to define the rules of engagement between subject and sovereign, you know to help us all get along.

LADY JANE ROBERTS: OK, so here we are. Open the box.

PRESENTER: Let's sit down.

PRESENTER: I'm with Lady Roberts, the Royal Librarian who's plucked a publication from the shelves of the Library at Windsor Castle. It's called The Garter Book. It's a compilation of text and pictures compiled by Sir Thomas Wriothesely, a wily politician and garter knight in the court of Henry the Eighth. About a third of the way through the book there's a painted illustration documenting for the first time the opening of parliament. The event took place on the fifteenth of April fifteen twenty three at Blackfriars in London.

LADY JANE ROBERTS: This is quite a brightly coloured image. We have an arrangement of benches on which the Lords temporal and spiritual sit. The Lords temporal, the peers are clad in beautiful red gowns, the Lords spiritual, in other words the bishops and the abbots are distinguished by the bishops wearing their red and white robes and the abbots black. Then we have the King himself enthroned at the head of the house and he is shown with his crown, golden crown, little touches of gold paint there. To me it's a wonderfully clear visual record of the pre Reformation House of Lords.

PRESENTER: So this is an event at which some of the most important people of the sixteenth century were in attendance.

LADY JANE ROBERTS: Indeed.

PRESENTER: The word "parliament" comes the French "parlez" - to speak, to have a conversation. It was first used in twelve thirty six when parliament was part of the court, a gathering of leading men of the realm called together on a whim by the monarch to deal with matters of state or law when it suited him.

ANNA WHITELOCK: We understand parliament in a very different way than it is today. I mean they don't have sort of regular sessions.

PRESENTER: Anna Whitelock is a lecturer in early modern British history at London University.

ANNA WHITELOCK: It might be you know two or three years where there wouldn't be a parliament and of course tensions would inevitably build up. And often monarchs went to parliament as a last resort when they needed money because this dates back of course right back to Magna Carta where you know no taxation without consent. And so the monarch couldn't grant tax without the approval of parliament. And so when we have Henry the Eighth wanting to go to war, that was the expectation, war needed money, money needed taxes and so therefore parliament was the body that granted that.

PRESENTER: What do you think this tells us about the monarch's relationship with the people through the offices of the Lords temporal and spiritual?

LADY JANE ROBERTS: So far as Henry the Eighth is concerned that is a very interesting question. We of course know that towards the end of the fifteen twenties things began to get difficult. We have Wosley's fall. We then have the break with Rome, the Reformation and so on. And all of those major statutes which embody the Reformation and the break with Rome had to be agreed to in parliament. So Henry the Eighth having, with Wolsey's help, actually done without parliament for much of the early part of his reign then depended implicitly on parliament and it was a very real bond without which he couldn't have got his divorce and he couldn't have established the Church of England as he did.

PRESENTER: This was new territory for a monarch. In the good old autocratic days Henry the Eighth could just get on with it. Now he had to develop his political skills and curry favour to ensure the system was working for him. Andrew Thompson, history fellow at Queen's College Cambridge explains how life had become a good deal more complicated for the sovereign.

ANDREW THOMPSON: One of things about the reformation is that it means that the crown gets a huge boost in terms of lands that it's taken over from the church. But the thing they then have to do is win the support of members of the elite so Henry gives a huge amount of land to members of the English elite. But of course this creates problems because they are then left with a situation in which those major land owners are demanding more in the way of rights and representation. You then get problems about the rights of monarchs to raise taxation and disputes about whether they have to consult parliament in all instances. And eventually these disputes leave into a series of troubles in the middle of the seventeenth century which results in open warfare and civil war within Britain.

PRESENTER: Thomas Wriothesley's Garter Book captures a moment when parliament was working well for the monarch. It shows the great and the good gathered on the King's terms before the game changed a few years later and parliament started to assert itself. An uneasy partnership between king and country ensued in which the two parties tussled over where the real power lay. It was to be a long running disagreement that culminated in Charles the First losing his head in sixteen forty nine.

WILL GOMPERTZ: .. my left are the remains of ..

PRESENTER: I'm in the heart of St George's Chapel Windsor with Caroline de Guitaut curator of decorative arts at the Royal Collection. She has positioned us on a very specific spot.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: We're literally standing on top of the remains of King Charles the First who's buried beneath this black and white floor here.

PRESENTER: Which isn't an all together pleasant thought. Nor was knowing that if I took one step back I'd be standing on top of Henry the Eighth whose dependence on parliament you could argue was indirectly responsible for Charles the First's execution. Caroline then added to the macabre atmosphere by reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small, square object.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: Inside this box we have this marvellous miniscule ..

PRESENTER: It is miniscule.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: .. little memento mori of the late king, Charles the First and ..

PRESENTER: It's a ring.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: It's a gold ring into which is set this enamelled portrait.

PRESENTER: Now this is a memento mori you say so ..

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: It's a memento mori, this is ..

PRESENTER: .. Charles the First is dead.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: Charles the First is dead and we know that this ring was produced after his death because if we look on its reverse you can see the skull enamelled there, I hope.

PRESENTER: Oh I can.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: It's very, very tiny but you ..

PRESENTER: It's tiny.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: .. can just make it out.

PRESENTER: And also ..

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: And that signifies that this was made post his death.

PRESENTER: Should there be any doubt that the monarchy retained a loyal support in the years following Charles's execution this ring provides the evidence. Of course Cromwell was fully aware that the dead king still had followers and therefore did his utmost to play everything down as Professor Justin Champion, Head of History at Royal Holloway College explains.

JUSTIN CHAMPION: The new regime is absolutely anxious around the sort of martyrdom of Charles the First. And they ensure that he is buried at Windsor with an absolute minimum of public recognition and ceremony. Of course when he dies, when he's actually executed it's a very bloody affair and almost straight away we know there are people dipping their handkerchiefs in the blood that's tripped over the edge of the scaffold. We know that his hat and his shirt and his waistcoat and other bits of his clothing are immediately become relics. The consequence is a little bit like the last cross of Christ. We have more shirts that Charles could possibly have worn. But the key thing is almost straight away in sixteen forty nine these relics are seen to perform miracles and there is a sense in which the sacredness of monarchy, something we've lost all together, still a new monarch will be crowned under coronation sort of rituals that have holy oil but we forget how important the King's body was in this time.

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: There are a number of these rings which survive today which is quite surprising in a way.

PRESENTER: What, Charles the First rings?

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: Yes, of this type, memento mori. Quite often they are inscribed around the, the hoop with "Prepared be to follow me" or "Remember" and other such inscriptions which obviously they were designed to be worn by the king's parliamentarian and royalist supporters and it was a way ..

PRESENTER: So there was, there was a clandestine message?

CAROLINE DE GUITAUT: It's a way of keeping - yes, absolutely. You know essentially he was a martyr king and this was a way of keeping his memory alive, a way of his supporters being able to show undoubtedly in secret that they were keeping his memory alive, keeping the memory of the King alive. And these were not the only form of memento. I mean there are a number of badges, of medals that were produced and engraved by Nicholas Briot who was a great medal maker at the time and also by his pupil Thomas Rawlins and these badges were often worn by the royalist supporters both during the civil war, but following the King's execution worn and numerous supporters were found with them underneath their clothing. So they were worn in secret.

JUSTIN CHAMPION: In one sense these little mementos of the dead king perform preparatory work for the legitimacy of Charles the Second. You know royalists do not simply disappear. We know in the forties fifties they attempt to keep the bloodline of the church going by secret sort of worship under the book of common prayer even though it's illegal. We know around the south west, in the north, in Scotland, in Ireland royalist sort of plots persist into the sixteen fifties. So the image of the dead king dying for especially the Church of England is a very, very powerful resource. And these little memorial rings are a symbol, just a little symbol of the sort of dominant force. It's difficult for us to really imagine. You've killed God when you've executed Charles the First. And the representation of the martyred King in these visual forms is absolutely core to keeping that tradition going.

PRESENTER: As we all know the republic didn't last long with Charles the Second being restored to the throne in sixteen sixty, after which things went quite well for a bit. But when he died and the Catholic James the Second ascended to the throne anarchical life took a turn for the worse. The King's pro-Catholic, pro-France stance was not popular with parliament, the people's representative who forced him out. His daughter Mary eventually became Queen ruling jointly with her fervently Protestant Dutch husband William the Third. But not before they'd signed up to a fundamental change in the royal relationship with the country, as set out in a heavily revised coronation oath. They could still be head of state but when it came to the laying down of the law, well that was now going to be parliament's department. The first steps towards a constitutional monarchy had been taken.

JUSTIN CHAMPION: The compromise is that James the Second is regarded as having abdicated the throne and we know in his last weeks James is in a terrible panic and does indeed run away throwing the great seal of state, the symbol of legal authority into the Thames. So he's sort of given away his right to be king. And what the new regime, the Williamite regime attempts to do is broker a compromise. And this process of coronation is very much a symbol of that. So there's a sense in which there is a contract between King and people.

PRESENTER: And evidence of that moment of political theatre where last minute negotiations were taking place to smooth the way towards a constitutional monarchy can be found at the Tower of London in the form of a seventeenth century gold plated tray-like object called a caddinet which acted as a rather fancy place setting for the King.

KATHRYN JONES: The word "caddinet" derives from the French word for padlock - cadenas.

PRESENTER: Kathryn Jones, the Royal Collection's Curator of Decorative Arts.

KATHRYN JONES: You could cover it with a napkin and then on that you would place your bread which would obviously be in the form of a roll at that stage and actually the longer part of the box would probably have contained cutlery and then the small box was used for your salt or spices. The idea originally was that you could lock the salt ..

PRESENTER: So you don't get poisoned.

KATHRYN JONES: Exactly.

PRESENTER: I think the most striking think is the inscription of the coat of arms.

KATHRYN JONES: Yes, this is the coat of arms of William and Mary from a date between February and April sixteen eighty nine so ..

PRESENTER: It's very specific.

KATHRYN JONES: Very, very specific. In February the crowns are offered officially to William and Mary by the English parliament and William and Mary then sign the declaration of rights which eventually went onto become the bill of rights. But Scotland didn't have their convention to accept William and Mary until April, only six days before the coronation. So when this piece was made in preparation for the coronation banquet they had to replace the arms of Scotland with the arms of Ireland.

PRESENTER: Who had accepted William and Mary.

KATHRYN JONES: Yes they had at that date. So the Irish arms are repeated twice.

PRESENTER: The caddinet is an elegant and unusual object which doesn't look out of place amongst the glitter and sparkle of the crown jewels. But it is the engraved coat of arms that take it from being simply a splendid piece of tableware into a significant object of historical record. It captures the essence of the bargaining that went on right down to the wire between the politicians of England and Scotland and demonstrates the strategic importance of Scotland to the new monarchs who realised that to achieve a United Kingdom requires tactical diplomacy. William and Mary's coronation heralds the creation of a constitutional monarchy in Britain. The age of autocratic kings and queens was over. Democracy was on the way but it took its time.

SONG

PRESENTER: In eighteen forty eight in London's Kennington Common just over the river from the Houses of Parliament the great Chartist Meeting took place. It was a mass gathering of working class man petitioning for the right to vote. It was the same year that the French were embarking on yet another revolution leading to their second republic. Not surprising then that there were concerns here that the chartist movement could lead to a revolution in Britain although ironically the monarchy's relationship with the public at the time was good. The protests were aimed at parliament's ruling elites who were running a self-serving closed shop. All the same Prince Albert decided to take matters into his own hands and keep an eye on events by dent of some photographic surveillance.

SOPHIE GORDON: There was the very imminent fear that this would erupt into something far more than a meeting. On Kennington Common there was the potential for revolution.

PRESENTER: Sophie Gordon, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Royal Collection.

SOPHIE GORDON: The royal family were naturally concerned that this might be a very real threat to the established order. So the Prince was concerned and he was constantly asking for updates while all of this was happening.

PRESENTER: Albert acquired a daguerreotype photograph of the meeting which now forms part of the collection at Windsor Castle.

SOPHIE GORDON: It shows the group of people gathering around a central cart which had the leaders ..

PRESENTER: There's what, a couple of thousand people there?

SOPHIE GORDON: Well reports actually vary of anything from twenty thousand to two hundred thousand so it depends on the sources that you read who you believe about this. There's a certain element of propaganda and wanting it to be an extremely large group of people.

PRESENTER: By the chartist supporters?

SOPHIE GORDON: Yes. Yes. Chartists were largely working class men hoping to get reforms in the labouring laws, in political representation and taxes, a sort of social, early socialist ..

PRESENTER: It's an early form of socialism wasn't it?

SOPHIE GORDON: Yes. And it was happening at a time when other countries in Europe were undergoing revolutions or sort of quite violent reform processes.

PRESENTER: Yes just look over the Channel and it was chaos.

SOPHIE GORDON: Exactly.

PRESENTER: Here we have a major social challenge happening in Britain and yet our monarchy is feeling reasonably secure.

SOPHIE GORDON: They are feeling reasonably secure although they did take the precaution of sending the royal family to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight at the time of this, this particular meeting.

HELEN RAPPAPORT: That is to me the most extraordinary historical image.

PRESENTER: Helen Rappaport is a historian and author who has written extensively on the life of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

HELEN RAPPAPORT: Because it's got the movement. Because they weren't all standing still you get a sense of the excitement of that crowd. It's a fabulous piece of history.

PRESENTER: What does it tell us about not just Albert but how the monarchy saw their place in British society? I mean let's not forget this is a time when France is kicking off in a major way.

HELEN RAPPAPORT: Yeah, eighteen forty eight revolution.

PRESENTER: Exactly.

HELEN RAPPAPORT: The interesting thing about Albert is if Victoria had had her own way she could have been quite a despotic monarch. She didn't take very lightly to having to kowtow to constitutional monarchy. It was Albert who dinned it into her that she had to make these compromises, that she had to serve the nation and that it was all about duty. And if she'd married someone different I think well, I think we might have had a revolution here quite honestly.

PRESENTER: So this daguerreotype was taken in eighteen forty eight. Why is it in the Royal Collection?

SOPHIE GORDON: Mainly because of Prince Albert's interest. He had a certain amount of sympathy with the working man. And following the chartist meeting he became far more involved in debate over the welfare and reforms that were directed towards working men and he went in fact to speak to a society and this was regarded as completely revolutionary in itself at the time. It was felt he was putting himself into physical danger but he insisted on going to speak and to be involved and to show to these people that he was concerned for them. He had a personal concern for their plight and understood and would try to do something about it. So that's really why these, these images have remained in the Royal Collection until today.

SONG

PRESENTER: Empathy for your fellowman proved to be a winning strategy. Prince Albert's mulled monarchy had won the support of the people. When he died Queen Victoria wanted to continue his policy appearing to be accessible and considerate. And what better way to do that than invite some members of the public around to Buckingham Palace for a cuppa. I popped over there myself, not to have tea with the Queen mind, but to look at a painting by Laurits Tuxen with Jonathan Marsden Director of the Royal Collection.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: This is one of the larger pictures you'll find here. It's about, what is it, about four feet by six and it shows the famously extensive back garden of Buckingham Palace what Americans still call the back yard, with these enormous trees, part of the rich, green, central sort of lung of London. And it's thronging with people, people in their finery with the men in top hats. Those in the front have taken them off because the Queen is passing but those in the background have still got them on but the picture records a particular event, the garden party on the twenty eight of June eighteen ninety seven, the diamond jubilee year of Queen Victoria.

ANDREW THOMPSON: I think with garden parties what you've got is a very good example of what you might call the soft power of monarchy.

PRESENTER: Andrew Thompson history fellow at Cambridge University.

ANDREW THOMPSON: This is not coercing people to loyal, it's persuading them by giving something that makes them feel warm inside. Going back in time you can see examples of favours being done at court, cases where someone would give someone's friend or relation a particular job, a particular task which would be a similar sort of way of trying to bind them in towards this network of loyalty and association.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: It's often thought that the Queen is somehow out of touch with the people. I would say she's probably met more publicans, fish and chip owners, launderette manageresses, regular people than anyone alive.

PRESENTER: She's even had the occasional radio presenter over.

JENNI MURRAY: It is the highest accolade in a way that a woman can have.

PRESENTER: Jenni Murray who was made a Dame by the Queen.

JENNI MURRAY: I got a little upset when I realised that my husband would be a nothing whereas were I a "Sir" he would be a "Lady". My sons are terribly disappointed that I didn't get a sword clamped onto either shoulder. But seriously it means a lot.

PRESENTER: Jenni might not have been dubbed on the shoulder but I have. Not to be honoured obviously but Jonathan Marsden kindly fished out the Queen's investiture sword and took me through the knighting process.

PRESENTER: Jonathan we're in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace standing at the de... the side the Queen would stand I assume and in front of you you have a fine looking sword which is used for the investiture is that correct?

JONATHAN MARSDEN: Yes, this is an object which really I suppose one might say is rather a standard, ordinary object because it's a military issue word for a guards officer. But it is rather a special one because it's the sword that belonged to the late king, King George the Sixth, as colonel of the Scots Guards. What it is, it's this sort of, the last vestige of the military character of, of knighthood. And everybody knows about knights in armour, the sort of equestrian aspect of medieval knights and military service that knights had to pay. Today none of that really applies. But there's this last little vestige which is the use of the sword in the ceremony itself.

ANDREW THOMPSON: I think it's important to give recognition to important subjects. This is something that goes a very long way back.

PRESENTER: Andrew Thompson again.

ANDREW THOMPSON: Initially it might have been by granting someone a knighthood or giving them lands to try to bind them in terms of loyalty to the monarchy itself. These days we don't necessarily need large tracks of land but having a nice decoration I think gives someone a warm feeling inside and also creates a sense of loyalty towards the person that has given you that honour in the first place. And I think that's really what the honours system relies on, creating a sense of acceptance and advantage through the giving of tokens, outward symbols of importance and prestige.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: I suppose in a way the blade is the best part. It's etched all over with the badges, mottos and battle honours of the Scots Guards regiment. And looking at them they go all the way back to the eighteenth century, to Detting...

PRESENTER: Shall I have a practice kneel? You never know your luck.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: Yes.

PRESENTER: So here, so I kneel on this, so it's rather like being in church isn't it, going to prayer?

JONATHAN MARSDEN: A little bit.

PRESENTER: And then you, you hang onto this - it's rather comfortable actually. And then you hang onto this velvet handle and you look up I suppose.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: And you, you await your, your fate. And the Queen will give you a very light touch on the, the right shoulder and then the left shoulder.

PRESENTER: Yeah.

JONATHAN MARSDEN: Actually what she never will do is the sort of cartoon phrase "Arise Sir Will". You will never hear that I'm afraid. But then the Knight will stand up and the Queen will bestow on him the badge of a knight bachelor or the badge of the specific order because there are several orders and they each have several classes of knighthood and at that point a word might be said.

JENNI MURRAY: To watch the faces of all the people going through and the pride in going up to the Queen and speaking to her and shaking her hand was palpable. You know you could feel the pride just bursting out of them.

PRESENTER: The Queen's ability to command that level of respect and reverence comes in part with a job but also in the way in which she has tackled it. In the year she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee the concept of having a monarch as head of state appears more assured than it has for many a year. But then as we know from Henry the Eighth onwards popularity is not always a monarch's most loyal friend. The ever changing relationship between the King or Queen of Britain and the country's people is reminiscent of a long marriage. At times it seems like the best thing ever. At others, that life would be better apart. That the monarchy survived the country becoming a republic, the advent of democracy and a period where rule royal became deeply unfashionable across a globe is a mark of its resilience and more importantly our acceptance. We are in a long term relationship with the monarchy some of the ups and downs of which are captured and revealed in the objects we've looked at from the Royal Collection. The historian Justin Champion.

JUSTIN CHAMPION: Unpeeling material history of why they were important and why they are significant now gives them a value I think beyond monetary wealth. You know these are the material artefacts of the British past. And monarchs have been incredibly important in that past but so have the people who obeyed, followed them, saw them as loyal symbols of some sort of authority. They're important for us as people as well because they represent what has gone in the past.

PRESENTER: In next week's programme I'll be examining how the monarchy has dealt with the nemesis for many an institution - change. Do you fight it? Do you seek to influence it? Or do you simply take credit for it?

WOMAN: His role in promoting progress, the arts, sciences and industry is something which was genuinely important.

PRESENTER: It's all part of the art of monarchy.

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