Melvyn Bragg’s Start the Week

Above: Shrine to the 1953 Annointing.

This morning I listened to Melvyn Bragg’s Start the Week programme, which came on after the Today Programme. Melvyn Bragg had a heavy cold so that his nasal voice sounded like a parody of nasal ness (as if it was Rory Bremner impersonating Melvyn Bragg). Half-way through the programme I had to go into a fifteen minute meeting, so I really only got the start and finish.

The programme examined the concept of the Divine Right of Kings as expressed by the sixteenth and seventeenth century English monarchy. The discussion was performed with a strong sense of immediacy, and Erasmus, Milton and Cromwell were all brought into the debate as if they were witnesses on the Moral Maze waiting to be interviewed. The Papacy was cited as the source of the Divine Right which had been usurped by Protestant monarchs during the Reformation.

It was an interesting argument, but as a medievalist I wasn’t really satisfied, and had I been on the programme I would have made the following points:

• Every European monarchy has culturally distinct origins and sources of authority.
• The Saxon (English) monarch performed three roles: warlord, judge and high priest.
• The Saxon (English) monarchy had from its origin a “divine” component in that the earliest Saxon kings claimed descent from Woden (later in the Saxon period this was Christianised as descent from Solomon and David).
• “Divine” authority was conferred upon Saxon kings by the Annointing during the Coronation ceremony, and this sacrament was retained by all subsequent monarchs.
• The idea of divinity in the royal person did not cease in 1688. In 1953 just after the Coronation of the present monarch, a survey found that large percentage of the population believed the Queen was divinely appointed by God. The Annointing in particular had a huge impact upon people. During the 1953 Coronation ceremony the BBC turned its cameras off at the sacred moment of Annointing. You can still find little shrines set up in churches to mark the 1953 Annointing.

Above: The Old Palace in Kneesworth Street in Royston, Hertfordshire. James I stayed in this house when hunting in the area. The central crossroads in Royston is marked by a large boulder known as Roys Stone or Roi’s Stone - literally the King’s Stone (probably a coronation stone on which tribal chiefs in the Saxon period were invested). The Roys Stone is supposed to shriek if the rightful ruler touches it (I have touched it many times without any discernable result). There are several of these coronation stones around, the most famous being at Kingston in Surrey. Now the Stone of Scone has gone to Edinburgh perhaps the Kingston stone should be moved into Westminster Abbey.

More on the origins of germanic kingship: http://www.amazon.com/Long-haired-Kings-Studies-Frankish-History/dp/0802065007