Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Today’s royal nuptials are a far cry from previous norms
Meghan marrying Harry would’ve previously been a ‘no-no’
WHEN Prince Henry of Wales – known as Harry – and Meghan Markle stand before the altar at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a refuge of the British monarch for a thousand years, the Archbishop of Canterbury will tie the knot with vows from the Common Book of Prayer that read “to have and to hold until death do us part”.
Not so very long ago, this wedding would have been impossible.
Not because Markle is an American and a commoner, marrying a prince now sixth in line for the throne.
And not because the actress is biracial, raised Episcopalian and attended Catholic school in Los Angeles.
No, such a service would have been opposed by the Church of England hierarchy because Markle is divorced and her former husband, Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson, is alive.
“That would have been a no-no,” said Andrew Goddard, an Anglican priest at St James the Less in London and an authority on the history of Christian attitudes toward marriage.
Even though the Anglican church was founded by a king wanting to rid himself of his queen, the British royal family and the religion it heads have been struggling with divorce and remarriage for centuries.
“It’s not until the last half of the 20th century that divorce becomes common and the stigma begins to fall away,” Goddard said.
Harry and Markle’s ceremony today will be the first full-blown royal wedding of a divorced partner to take place with the loving embrace of the fusty English church.
The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed his joy. “I am so happy that Prince Harry and Ms Markle have chosen to make their vows before God,” said the Most Reverend Justin Welby.
Welby baptised Markle using holy water from the River Jordan in a “secret ceremony” in March at the Chapel Royal, with Harry by her side, allowing Markle to take communion.
This is a historic moment for a bedrock British institution. Church and crown, at various points, have resisted its arrival. But the House of Windsor has generated a century’s worth of headlines about adultery, separation, divorce and remarriage. The royal family’s lapses have mirrored those in greater society, and some say helped the church leadership to modernise.
Queen Elizabeth II is not only the sovereign but the “supreme governor” of an official state religion, the Church of England.
At her coronation in 1953, church officials draped her in the Imperial Robe and placed in her hand the Sovereign’s Orb, brought from the altar at Westminster Abbey, a cross above a globe that represents, according to the Crown Chronicles, “‘Christ’s dominion over the world’, as the Monarch is God’s representative on Earth”.
The queen approves the appointment of each bishop. Elizabeth’s many titles include “Defender of the Faith”, passed down to her from Henry VIII.
Henry, you may recall, had six wives. As the ditty goes: One died, one survived, two de- wedded, two beheaded. When he broke with the pope and declared himself head of a new church in 1533, it was because he wanted to “annul” his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to produce a male heir. (Henry’s remains rest in St George’s Chapel, right below Harry and Meghan’s feet, alongside Jane Seymour, the only one to give him a legitimate son.
Oliver O’Donovan, a scholar- priest who taught at Oxford and Edinburgh, explained the Church of England was very much opposed to divorce from the medieval age to the 19th century. Asked what British marrieds with irreconcilable differences did back in the day, O’Donovan said: “I should think of mistresses and poison.”
Couples wishing to formally divorce needed an Act of Parliament. This was a rich man’s game.
In her essay The Heartbreaking History of Divorce in Smithsonian magazine, historian Amanda Foreman wrote that before 1857 and the passing of new laws on ending marriage, only 324 couples suc- cessfully petitioned for divorce – and only four instances were initiated by women.
Even after divorce became legal, remarriage remained a thorny question.
In 1936, Edward VIII, a popular royal and notorious playboy, abdicated the throne when his proposed marriage to Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American, could not be reconciled with his role as head of the Church of England.
Edward’s brother, George VI, ascended, to be followed by daughter Elizabeth.
The queen is a devout Christian. She’s also a model of matrimonial endurance, married for 70 years.
In 1953, not wanting to be seen as condoning divorce, she withheld her approval of the hoped-for union between her sister, Princess Margaret, and the divorced Captain Peter Townsend.
It wasn’t until 2002 that the Church of England’s conservative governing body accepted that divorce is a sad reality of the modern age and allowed its priests to offer second and even third “further marriages” in “exceptional cases” to divorced members whose former spouses were alive.
The “exceptional” is now routine.
Three of Queen Elizabeth’s four children have divorced: Princess Anne in 1992. Prince Andrew in May 1996 and Prince Charles.
Anne and Charles have remarried.
Robert Lacey, a royal biographer, said divorce today is not the crisis it once was, even for the “totemic, idealised” royal family who in the past were expected to be “the last to surrender.”
“The monarchy changes with the times,” said Dickie Arbiter, the queen’s former press secretary. – The Washington Post