Part I: The King's Two Bodies
In the 16th Century, reports on the proceedings of legal cases, including their outcomes and judgments, were not formally published as they are today. The judgments for most significant cases can now be found with a quick internet search. Five Hundred years ago, the public relied upon commentators to provide summaries of cases. Individuals would attend court hearings and note down what they considered important (on some occasions, what they had for lunch or how irritable the judge was). They would then publish their thoughts in what were called ‘Commentaries’.
Of course, this highly unreliable method produced what straddled a legal report and a polemic. Commentators would infuse a judge’s reasoning with their own – or even fabricate the reasons for the decision. Would you trust a report authored solely by Owen Jones or Julia Hartley-Brewer to be totally free from bias? I’d imagine not. The most famous of these commentators is Edward Coke (pronounced Cook, 1552-1634). Coke is the most influential lawyer in English legal history, starting as a barrister to become a judge and a politician. He wrote extensively on English Law, his ‘reports’ being politically charged. Many of his report-polemics form the basic principles of English Law to this day. He is almost solely responsible for the mythical elevation of the Magna Carta from an antisemitic entrenchment of aristocratic interests to the foundation of the Rule of Law. These commentators were hugely influential.
One other such commentator was Edmund Plowden (1518–1585). He wrote in slightly more abstract, philosophical terms than Coke. In 1571, he published Les Commentaries ou Reports de Edmund Plowden (written in Law French). This contained a report on The Case of the Duchy of Lancaster (1561). This concerned Edward VI granting a lease before he reached the age of majority, which would not normally be valid. It was held that the lease was valid as Edward VI was acting as King when he granted it.
Plowden, in his commentary, suggested this is because ‘The King’ has two bodies. One, the Body Natural: the fleshly person who sits upon the throne. The other, the Body Politic: a quasi-spiritual body that “cannot be seen or handled… utterly void of old age and other natural defects and imbecilities”. When a person becomes King, the flesh and the spirit merge into a singular powerful being, simultaneously a man and a deity. The imitation of Christ should be noted, if not already apparent. So, because the Body Politic of the King was acting through Edward VI when he granted the lease – and that Body has no age – the lease was valid.
This sounds very grand. However, transposed into modern language it amounts to little more than: a ghost possessed the child and entered into a lease. It is, of course, a smokescreen for retroactively justifying the illegal actions of the monarch. Legal chicanery in religious clothing. And yet, it is a massively influential distinction that affected how the monarchy is conceptualised – still relevant to this day. In the 16th and 17th Centuries, the Mind-Body Dichotomy was in vogue in philosophical circles – the question of whether the mind is a separate entity from the body. This was most famously asked by René Descartes (1596-1650) in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), concluding that the soul and the body exist concurrently in a human being. Far from being settled since then, the question will be asked for as long as religion perpetuates the fallacious idea of the soul. The British Constitution, nevertheless, provides a definitive answer for one person only: the monarch is flesh and spirit in one.
It is only natural, once it is accepted that the King has ‘two bodies’, to question what on Earth (or elsewhere) this Body Politic looks like. What can it do? Where does it live? Is she pretty? Writing the most influential work of political philosophy in the Western World, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) provided a revolutionary answer in Leviathan (1651). The Body Politic of the monarch is not simply a ghostly man with a metal hat on; the Body Politic of the King is the entire State. It encompasses all state functions. The Parliament, the Courts, the Church, the education system. They are all part of the King’s Body Politic. What’s more, they have, according to Hobbes, voluntarily surrendered themselves to the body of the Monarch.
This idea is captured in the frontispiece of Leviathan:
A close inspection reveals that the body of the King looming over the countryside is made up of people, staring in awe and reverence at the face of the leader. The King is the Leviathan, the great and powerful creature, wielding sword and sceptre, power and spirit, state and church. The quotation above the hulking figure is from the biblical book of Job ‘Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei.’ – ‘There is no power on earth to be compared to him.’
Hobbes argues that being swallowed whole by this Body Politc, this Leviathan, ensures order and peace. Without voluntary entrapment and restrictions on individual freedom, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Indeed, he won the argument. Whether with monarch as leader or otherwise, every single modern state takes freedom from its citizens purportedly to ensure peace. And for the most part, it is consented to. Hobbes remains particularly relevant for those countries, such as Britain, that retain the monarch as head of state.
This is more chicanery. Power vested in a singular body, kingly or otherwise, does not lead to order and peace. It leads to death and decay. The most abhorrent tragedies in human history have not come from tribal communities or systems of localised power. Papau New Guinea and Switzerland are not known for their genocides. It is highly centralised state power systems that create the most disorder and destruction.
The King of the United Kingdom does not have absolute power, it is true. He holds the dregs of it in his swollen, gammy fingers. Formally, he is still the source of all legal and political power in the country. The British passport states that the freedom of the bearer is given in the name of His Majesty. We exist in a culture of servitude and idol worship, just like the figures in the body of Hobbes’s Leviathan. We deserve much greater. We cannot know true freedom – political, cultural, and spiritual freedom – until we rid ourselves of the flesh of this beast. For that, we need an equally monstrous guillotine: a guillotine of free people. A guillotine to separate the King’s head from his body (the Body Politic, not the body natural, of course). Only then can we crawl from the open wound to flourish in the green pastures of prosperity.
Part II: A Royal History of Decline
The history of the British Monarchy has been a journey from absolute power to a toothless (or toothy) figurehead. This journey has not been linear. The royal wagon has lurched forward and then backwards; towards and away from the current state of affairs. Now it trundles along the route of liberal democracy, the cobbled path chipping away at its ornate wheels. It loses the right to secret correspondence here, immunity from lawsuits there. But the wagon proceeds.
Although, as noted above, the Magna Carta 1215 is not the font of all democracy, it’s created marked a significant step towards limiting the power of the monarch. The monarch now had to get the consent of the aristocracy before implementing certain laws. Certain clauses are still in force today:
Clause 39: No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.
Clause 40: To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.
The Magna Carta officially created Parliament. Parliament, full of barons and lords, strengthened in power over time, marking the transition from absolute monarchy to aristocracy. The House of Commons became the dominant House, marking the start of a transition from aristocracy to (representative) democracy. The franchise expanded to the middle class, to women, to the poor. Power slowly decentralised. It became closer to the people and further from the throne. Devolution may also be seen as part of this process – shifting power from a centralised government in England to regional governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. While this progress is undeniable and laudable, the picture is much more complicated.
The monarch no longer has absolute power in practice. Britain has a ‘constitutional monarchy’ (which really means nothing, all monarchies form part of a constitution one way or another – note also the overlap in terminology with ‘Body’ and ‘Constitution’). Legally, however, the monarch does have absolute power, which is derived from god [sic]. As part of the coronation process, the new monarch is presented with the ‘Sovereign’s Orb’. This is intended to remind the monarch that its power is spiritual.
In turn, all of the legal and political power of the state is derived from the monarch. His majesty’s government; his majesty’s courts; his majesty’s prison service. Legislation is only valid once it receives royal assent, the formal approval from the monarch that turns a Bill into an Act of Parliament. We have what is called the Royal Prerogative, which is a direct use of the monarch’s power to create policy or make decisions. This can be exercised by, for example, the Prime Minister to declare war. Or to create legislation without any input from Parliament via what is called an ‘Order in Council’. The monarch also reserves the personal right to grant knighthoods and other honours.
The monarch does not have the power to initiate parliamentary legislation directly. But it does have the power to influence it. The monarch meets with the Prime Minister regularly in what is called an ‘audience’ to discuss the Government policy. When King Charles was Prince Charles, he wrote ‘black spider letters’ to the government informing it of his opinions. The town of Poundbury in Dorset, a new town built in the style of Edwardian architecture, was spearheaded by him.
In addition to its soft power, the monarchy also retains a ‘negative’ power. There is a lesser-known mechanism of the legislative procedure called ‘King’s Consent’, different to Royal Assent. Royal Assent is required to formally create legislation. This is usually not done by the monarch – old Charlie does not have the time (or inclination) to read and review every bit of legislation produced by Parliament. Someone approves it on his behalf. King’s Consent is where the monarch and other interested parties review legislation and decide whether they consent to be bound by it.
If the King does not like what he sees in a proposed piece of legislation, he can simply say ‘I do not wish this to apply to me, thanks!’. And then it does not. There are around 160 statutes in Britain which do not apply to the monarchy, including those relating to inheritance tax. If your parents have built an estate from nothing through their own innovation and creativity, the state claims around 50% of that before it passes to you. If you were born into the most privileged position in Britain where your mother’s personal wealth has been siphoned from the taxpayer, you keep it all.
The King is also immune from criminal prosecution: legally, the king prosecutes alleged criminals, so it would be legal nonsense for him to prosecute himself. Further, it is the ‘Crown’ that prosecutes – the Body Politic, rather than the Body Natural. The ‘Crown’ has a nebulous legal definition, sometimes it is used to mean ‘Officers of the Crown’ as well as the monarch alone. This could mean that the legal immunity extends to senior members of the Government as well as the monarch, but this has never been tested.
This is the inherent paradox of having a monarch as a figurehead: in theory, the monarch may well be a monument; in practice, it is very much a person with interests to protect. Exorcise the spirit of the King’s Body Politic, and there remains only flesh. One person’s flesh should not have more political, legal or social privilege than any others. To believe otherwise is to spit in the face of the last 800 years of progress.
PART III: Abolition
The solution to the above is to remove the head from the Body Politic of the King and set the people free. We need to abolish the monarchy from the British Constitution. Expanding on the above, I will briefly address some of the arguments for abolition. I do not pretend to say anything massively original here, but the arguments are worth repeating wherever possible: cost; political neutrality; meritocracy.
A: Cost
Whenever the abolition of the monarchy is mentioned, it is inevitable that someone will claim what good value for money it is. That they generate tourism and bring revenue to the public coffers. This is totally perverse reasoning. Profitability should not be relevant to our system of government. States should be organised according to moral principles, not finance. The argument is painfully familiar, however. It was made by slave owners when slavery was abolished; by landowners when peasantry was abolished; by men when women entered the workforce – that it would simply be more profitable not to give people their freedom.
Even if one were to humour the morally vacuous idea that profitability is relevant, the revenue generated by the royal estates every year is a pittance in comparison to the total value. THE Koh-I-Noor diamond and the two Cullinan Diamonds forming part of the crown jewels are worth half a billion pounds by themselves. They are the most expensive diamonds in the world. Together, all the crown jewels are worth ten billion pounds. The most visited palaces in the world no longer have royals in them: The Forbidden City in China (17m p/a), the Palace of Versailles in France (8m p/a), the Peterhof Palace in Russia (5m p/a). By comparison, Buckingham Palace had half a million visitors every year prior to the pandemic – now it is down to a third of that. Far from tourism revenue disappearing with the abolition of the crown, it may well increase. It is also worth noting that the royal family has such vast ‘private’ wealth because Victoria illegitimately siphoned money from the taxpayer in the 19th Century, claiming it was needed for the maintenance of royal households. This was then subject to mass investments in the 1980s which saw the private fortune rise to around £500million.
B: Political Neutrality
The last quality we should desire from a state institution is political neutrality. Not only is this impossible (as above, individuals always have an interest in one outcome over another) but it turns democracy upside down. A cornerstone of democracy is that our institutions are politically accountable. Their behaviour must be subject to the scrutiny of the populace. They should not be neutral; they should be very much in the service of the people and adapt their behaviour and policies according to the interests of the people.
The idea of the monarchy as a unifying force in the face of political division is revealed to be a mirage when one considers that the monarchy itself is a source of political division. On the morning before the coronation of Charles III on 6th May 2023, protestors were arrested by the Met Police for simply unloading placards which read ‘Not My King’. YouGov polling indicates that 62% of Britons overall want to keep the monarchy but this falls to 36% of 18-24 years old. Both figures were 73% but ten years ago. Far from engendering unity, the monarchy is striking division in British society.
C: Meritocracy
The most hypocritical supporters of monarchy are the Conservatives. Prima Facie, they support liberal capitalism. A system in which an individual is purportedly able to rise based upon their own merit: their hard work, their talents, and skills. This applies not only to private positions of status and wealth but also positions of political power. This is entirely antithetical to the monarchy. The position is not earned but inherited. No matter how hard an individual strives, no matter their virtues, they may never reach the most important political position in the country: the head of state. What’s more, as we discussed above, the constitutional justification for even having a monarchy is authorisation by a Christian god:
Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
So much for religious plurality. The monarchy is not a symbol of aspiration, it is a symbol of subordination. Subordination to an old aristocrat justifying his privilege by reference to a fictional god, at that. In the name of all that is politically just, the King’s Body Politic Must Be Beheaded. What remains of his Body Natural is a separate question.