England has a bad History with Kings named Charles

Richard Hershberger in reply to Ken S says:

To expand on the various other replies with a long-view historical perspective, most Medieval European kingdoms had some sort of consultative body: France had the Estates General, the Holy Roman Empire the Imperial Diet, and so on. These were necessary because a Medieval kingdom had very little administrative machinery, so the king had to get his subjects (at least the important ones) on board with any program. It was a response to the lack of bureaucracy.

Where English Parliament went a different direction was that it managed to both seize and hold onto the power of taxation. The King of France could impose taxes unilaterally, and so long as he didn’t push his subjects into open rebellion he could ignore their opinions and simply not convene the Estates. In England, Parliament refused to go along with the program unless it got to also agree to the taxes that were, inevitably, associated. The implication was that it could also refuse those taxes.

Now jump forward to the Elizabethan era. Free speech was a big issue. Not free speech in the modern sense. No one supported anything that crazy. In the Elizabethan context it was the question of whether Parliament could debate topics of its own choosing, or only what the Queen convened it to talk about (which was, of course, the taxes Parliament should grant her). Everyone agreed that the monarchy had to sign off on anything Parliament passed in order for it to become law, but Parliament could hold those taxes hostage.

This was an ongoing debate, both with her and her successors. It reached the point with Charles I that he went for over a decade without calling a session of Parliament. Government had long since passed the point where the king could actually do this on his own resources without additional taxes, so Charles resorted to various stratagems to raise funds. Some of these were legal but a bad idea, such as selling monopoly rights to various industries. Others were taxes where his legal position was borderline at best. Eventually even this didn’t work, and he had to call Parliament, with ultimately poor results for the connection between his head and body.

This is followed by a decade of the Interregnum, which began as Parliament holding executive powers directly and ended with Oliver Cromwell as a military dictator. When he died, they could only think of two ways to go: either make the military dictatorship hereditary, or bring back the monarchy. Richard Cromwell was unsuitable to and did not want the job, so they went with Charles II. He was a merry king, and very interested in maintaining his head-body connection, so he didn’t cross Parliament in anything that mattered, such as religion. He was succeeded by his brother, who lasted about three years before a strong Parliamentary faction invited his sister Mary (for her bloodline) and her husband William (for his army) to invade. This was the Glorious Revolution. Wags invariably pipe in at this point that it was neither glorious nor a revolution. Perhaps not, but it ratified the principle that the monarch shared power with Parliament, and could only push it so far.

Jump forward another couple of decades and, through an accident of marriage and religion, a middling-minor German dynasty inherits the throne of England. They hadn’t a clue how to run England, so Parliament took on many of the day-to-day functions of government. The king still had real power in some areas. He was in charge of foreign policy and the military, but he could not dictate domestic affairs. (You can see the powers of a late 18th century British monarch by looking at the powers of the US President. This was not lost on the Jeffersonian small-government types during the debate over the ratification of the US Constitution.) This status quo went on until Victoria’s reign. The first part of her reign was business as usual, but then Prince Albert died. She did not take it well, and she withdrew from public affairs for some years afterwards. This created a power vacuum, which Parliament via the Prime Minister and his cabinet filled, and have not left since.

So what are the powers of the monarch? On paper, late Victoria had the same powers as had early Victoria, who had had essentially the same powers as her n-Greats Grandfather George I. Go back to the 17th century and you find actual agreements in writing amending the division of power, but the more recent shifts had been de facto, not de jure. In theory, Elizabeth II has the same powers as did her predecessors going back three centuries, but she chooses not to exercise them. In practice, there is ample precedent for Parliament making new arrangements.

What could Charles III (assuming he keeps the name) do that would provoke a crisis? He could refuse to sign an act that Parliament had passed. He could dissolve Parliament on his own volition. He could name ministers to government without Parliament’s consent. He could take personal command of the military and order it to do things contrary to the wishes of Parliament. These would result in a constitutional crisis, rather than merely a referendum like Scottish Independence did. The difference is that the authority of the monarch does not, in theory, derive from the popular will. He is God’s Anointed–literally so: it is part of the coronation ceremony. Furthermore, he personally receives the homage of his subjects. While most consider this a quaint anachronism, not everyone does. Who does the army take orders from? If the army itself isn’t sure, then wackiness can ensue.

Not that I think any of this is likely. I think it far more likely that Charles III will bore his ministers, followed by their going about their business as usual.Report