British Crown

“ And in that dark hour may stain and disgrace fall upon them never; but being borne aloft as emblems of loyalty and truth, may the brave who gather round them go forward conquering for the right, and maintaining, as becomes them, the honor of the British Crown, the purity of our most holy faith, the majesty of our laws, and the influence of our free and happy constitution. ”

“ I note with satisfaction the assurance I derive from your address, that under British rule men of varied creeds and nations live in harmony among themselves, and develop to the utmost those energies which they inherit from widely separate families of mankind, whilst all join in loyal attachment to the British Crown, and take their part, as in my native country, in the management of their own local affairs. ”

“ The authority of the British Crown is at this moment the most powerful instrument, under Providence, of maintaining peace and order in many extensive regions of the earth, and thereby assists in diffusing among millions of the human race, the blessings of Christianity and civilization. ”

“ No one pretends that the English would be less patriotic under a republic; and yet with the strengthening conception of the British Empire, the importance of the Crown as the symbol of imperial unity has been more keenly felt. ”

“ How has the Crown become such an important factor in the modern development of British peoples? The answer is not found altogether in personal considerations nor even in those of loyalty to somewhat vague and undefined principles of government. These considerations have had great weight but so also has the traditional and actual power of the Monarchy in moulding institutions and ideas during a thousand years of history. To a much greater extent than is generally understood in these democratic days has this latter influence been a factor. ”

“ The crown after 1880 became the living symbol of imperial unity, and every year events deepened the impression that the queen in her own person typified the common interest and the common sympathy which spread a feeling of brotherhood through the continents that formed the British empire. She and her ministers in her last years encouraged the identification of the British sovereignty with the unifying spirit of imperialism, and she thoroughly reciprocated the warmth of feeling for herself and her office which that spirit engendered in her people at home and abroad. ”

“ We endorse our assurance with an expression of the wish that, in whatever part of the British Empire your future life may be spent, it may be attended, as in the past, with honour, and, by the blessing of God, with health and happiness for yourself and all those you hold dear.
It is the prerogative of the Crown alone to bestow honours on those who have served their country well, and none have been better merited than those which you enjoy, and to which, we trust, additions may be made. ”

“ Resolved,⁠That these ^united Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the british crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved
NH.—— ”

“ Side by side with these two elements in the situation was the conviction which has now become fixed throughout the Empire that the Crown is the pivot upon which its unity and future co-operation naturally and properly turns; that the Sovereign is the one possible central figure of allegiance for all its scattered countries and world-wide races; that without the Crown as the symbol of union and the King as the living object of allegiance and personal sentiment the British realms would be a series of separated units. ”

“ The rise of the British Empire has immensely increased the significance and importance of these functions, formal and personal, of the Crown. This vast aggregation of sea-divided races, religions, languages, degrees of civilization, laws, and customs, does not rest upon those natural foundations upon which States like England, France, or Germany have been built. Force can annex territory or coerce rebellious minorities; it cannot by itself hold together an empire. ”

“ As the typical instance of a convenient convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our future, the Crown of the British Empire considered as the symbolical figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely well. ”

“ They have been, commonly, individual and private British subjects; men loyal both to the Crown and to the People. Often, they have been men standing in direct lineal descent from the great Barons who dictated the Charter of our liberties, in the meadow near Windsor, and from those who led English knights and English bowmen to victory, on the wooded slopes near Poitiers. ”

“ These different views, with regard to the settlement of the crown, were accidental, but natural, additions, to the principles of the Court and Country parties, which are the genuine divisions in the British Government. A passionate lover of monarchy is apt to be displeased at any change of the succession, as savouring too much of a commonwealth: a passionate lover of liberty is apt to think that every part of the government ought to be subordinate to the interests of liberty. ”

“ These two commonwealths were the portion of the British empire distinguished above all others by the largest liberty. Each was a nearly perfect democracy under the shelter of a monarchy. ... The crown, by reserving to itself the right of appeal, had still a method of interfering in the internal affairs of the two republics. Both of them were included among the colonies in which the lords of trade advised a complete restoration of the prerogatives of the crown. Both were named in the bill which, in April, 1701, was introduced into parliament for the abrogation of all American charters. ”

“ Some members of both Houses have, it is true, been removed from their employments under the Crown; but were they ever told, either by me, or by any other of his Majesty's servants, that it was for opposing the measures of the administration in Parliament? ”

“ And when our kings have the same warrant as they had, whether it be to sit upon the throne of their fathers, or to destroy the house of the preceding sovereign, they will then, and not before, possess the crown of England by a right like theirs, immediately derived from heaven. ”

“ But I must think that an address to his Majesty to remove one of his servants, without so much as alleging any particular crime against him, is one of the greatest encroachments that was ever made upon the prerogatives of the Crown. ”

“ In other countries such a vassal owed fealty to his lord against all foes, be they king or no. By the usage however which William enacted in England each sub-tenant, in addition to his oath of fealty to his lord, swore fealty directly to the Crown, and loyalty to the King was thus established as the supreme and universal duty of all Englishmen. ”

“ On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed Magna Charta—the great charter of England—by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the crown—of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve thier vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial ”

“ Have I given any symptoms of an avaricious disposition? Have I obtained any grants from the Crown, since I have been placed at the head of the treasury? Has my conduct been different from that which others in the same station would have followed? ”

“ His watchword is honour, his pay is renown,—
God strike with the Gallant that strikes for the Crown!
They may boast of their Fairfax, their Waller, and all
The roundheaded rebels of Westminster Hall;
But tell these bold traitors of London’s proud town, 15
That the spears of the North have encircled the Crown.
There’s Derby and Cavendish, dread of their foes;
There’s Erin’s high Ormond and Scotland’s Montrose!
Would you match the base Skippon, and Massey, and Brown,
With the Barons of England, that fight for the Crown? 20
Now joy to the crest of the brave Cavalier! ”

“ I am sensible that as things now stand, if a manifesto or memorial should be sent them, humbly representing to their high mightinesses, That Great Britain is an independent monarchy, governed by its own laws: that the queen is supreme over all orders of the realm: that no other prince, prelate, state, or potentate, has, or ought to have, any authority and jurisdiction over us: that where the queen, lords, and commons, solemnly consent, it is a law; and where the collective body of the people agree, it is the sense of the nation: that the making war and peace is the prerogative of the crown ”

“ England held that safety against anarchy within and against attacks on the national independence from without was to be found in the Crown alone, and that obedience to the Crown was the first element of national order and national greatness. ”

“ The Crown became identified with the thought of national prosperity, almost with the thought of national existence. Loyalty drew to itself the force of patriotism. Devotion to the crown became one in men's minds with devotion to their country. For almost a hundred years England lost all sense of a national individuality ”

“ We Englishmen believe that our crown is held by somewhat different rights from yours of France. At the coronations of our kings, we by our free voices confirm them on their throne. The people of England have a say in the question of a monarch's title; and without that recognition they are not kings of England. To our present sovereign, the nobles of the land offered their homage ere the crown was placed upon his brow; but he, as wise in this as in all else, would receive none till he was proclaimed King, not by a herald's trumpet, but by the tongues of Englishmen. ”

“ For if the King had been a man to be trusted, and if he had frankly accepted the army programme of free religion, a free Parliament, and responsible advisers, there is little doubt that he might have kept his crown and his Anglican ritual--at least for his own worship--and might yet have concluded his reign prosperously as the first constitutional King of England. ”

“ The completion of the Sixtieth year of the Queen’s reign will be the occasion of much retrospect and review, in the course of which the great men who, under the auspices of Her Majesty and her predecessors, have helped to make the British Empire what it is to-day, will naturally be brought to mind. ”

“ The mighty outburst of enthusiasm which greeted the queen, as loudly in the colonies and India as in the United Kingdom, gave new strength to the monarchy. Thenceforth the sovereign was definitely regarded as the living embodiment of the unity not merely of the British nation but of the British empire. ”

“ Laws were passed against noblemen keeping large retinues, and were not suffered to remain a dead letter. The nobility of England learned to stand in awe of the Crown in a way they never did before, and never have done since. Every branch of the royal family, except the reigning dynasty, was on one pretext or another lopped away. Every powerful nobleman knew that just in proportion as he was great, it was necessary for him to be circumspect. ”

“ India to-day is honoured by another distinguished guest—the most distinguished, indeed save only one, whom the citizens of the British Empire could welcome, namely, the heir to the Empire's Throne—His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. ”

“ Even in case of such an union, as the nobles have lost the affection and attachment of their peasants, what could they do in opposition to a standing army of [152] thirty thousand men, entirely devoted to the Crown? The establishment of standing armies has universally given stability to the power of the prince, and ruined that of the great lords. No nobility in Europe can now be said to inherit political importance, or to act independent of, or in opposition to, the influence of the crown; except the temporal peers of that part of Great Britain called England. ”

“ Throughout the Middle Ages, while exchanges centred in North Italy, Great Britain hung on the outskirts of the commercial system of the world, and even at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. she could not compare, either in wealth, refinement, or organization, with such a kingdom as France.
203 The crown had not been the prize of the strongest in a struggle among equals, but had fallen to a soldier of a superior race, under whom no great nobility ever grew up. No baron in England corresponded with such princes as the dukes of Normandy and Burgundy, the counts of Champagne and Toulouse. ”

“ The king's courts and the king's officers pushed their jurisdiction into a widening realm, until the king's authority had become supreme, in fact as well as in name. Even the measureless misery of a hundred years of war with English kings brought power, in the end, to the crown, by weakening the greater lords, and by bringing into existence a fixed military force. A. D. 1337-1453. Hundred Years War. Happy accidents, shrewd marriages, and cunning intrigues gathered the great dukedoms, one by one, into the royal domain, and the solidarity of modern France was attained. 16th-17th centuries. ”

“ But it has been the peculiar privilege of the kings of England that neither in life nor in death have they been parted from their people. As the Council of the Nation and the Courts of Law have pressed into the Palace of Westminster, and engirdled the very throne itself, so the ashes of the great citizens of England have pressed into the sepulchre of the kings, and surrounded them as with a guard of honour after their death. ”