The Accession: The Contemporary Record

ALCOTT: It is twenty-four minutes past nine. The House of Commons has passed His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Bill. Delia Moreno is in the Members’ Lobby. Delia.

MORENO: Stephen, the House sat at eight, which it has not done in my time here, and it has taken every stage since then, the second reading, the committee of the whole House and the third reading, in a little over an hour, and there was no division at any of them. The Speaker put the question three times, and three times nobody called for the lobbies.

ALCOTT: Who spoke?

MORENO: Harold Penhallow moved it, as Father of the House, from the bench he has sat on since 1986. He spoke for about four minutes. He said that the House had been asked to do one thing, and that the whole of its duty was to do that thing exactly, and not to add to it. And then he said this, which I wrote down: “The King has told us what he cannot do. It is not for us to say that he could.”

After him the leaders of the parties spoke for a minute each, and one after another they said very nearly the same thing, which is not something this House does often. Nobody proposed an amendment. In committee the Chairman read out the single clause and the schedule, and the House agreed them without a word.

ALCOTT: And when it was done?

MORENO: When the Speaker declared the third reading carried, Stephen, the House did not cheer and it did not get up. It sat. There was perhaps a quarter of a minute in which nobody moved, and then members began to file out, quietly, and the bill went along the corridor to the Lords, who sit at ten.

ALCOTT: Britain has acted. Jonah Feld is in Downing Street. Jonah.

FELD: Stephen, the bill passed both Houses here this morning without a division in either, and it received the Royal Assent at the British High Commission in your own capital at about half past eight your time, because that is where the Regent is, exactly as the Regency Act did on the second of October. So Britain’s part is done, and it was signed on your side of the ocean before most of you were at work.

ALCOTT: And the Prime Minister?

FELD: Alistair Rennie spoke in the Commons for under three minutes. He said that Britain had drafted the terms and would not be the realm that finished them, which is the same thing he said a week ago in different words, and he sat down. Nothing else will happen here now until six this evening, which is your two o’clock.

ALCOTT: Why six?

FELD: Because that is the hour the terms set, Stephen, on whatever day the last realm acts. Somebody had to pick an hour, and London picked one in its own working day.

ALCOTT: The House of Lords has passed the bill. Delia.

MORENO: Stephen, all its stages, in under an hour, and again no division. The Prime Minister spoke, because he sits here, and he was short even by his standards. He said: “We have done what the law asked of us, and nothing else. What remains is the Regent’s, and it is not for this House to watch her do it.” And he sat down, and that was the end of it.

ALCOTT: So the bill now goes to the Regent.

MORENO: It goes to the Regent, Stephen, and to nobody else. The Governor-General cannot assent to it. A representative of the Crown cannot perform an instrument that touches the succession, and this one is the succession. It has to be the Queen, as Regent, and it has to be in person.

ALCOTT: At eleven forty-two the Regent gave the Royal Assent to His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Bill, at Columbia Palace. It is now an Act. Grace.

EBANKS: Stephen, the Household has told us only the time and the place, and that the Queen signed it herself, in her study, with the Clerk of the Parliaments present. There was no ceremony, and there were no cameras. The Governor-General was not asked to be present and was not.

ALCOTT: And with that the Realm has acted.

EBANKS: The Realm has acted, and the Realm was the last. Every one of the King’s realms has now given effect to the abdication, each in its own law. It does not take effect now, though. Under the terms it takes effect at six this evening in London, which is two o’clock here. So for a little over two hours Ernest the Fifth is still King, in every one of his realms, and everybody knows exactly when he will stop.

ALCOTT: And the Prince?

EBANKS: The Prince is at school, Stephen. He went in this morning as he does on a Tuesday. The palace says he will stay there, and that is all it will say, and the press understanding about school means that is all any of us will report.

ALCOTT: It is two o’clock in New Westminster, and it is six in the evening in London.

The reign of King Ernest the Fifth has ended, in every one of his realms at once. His son is King. He is fifteen years old, and he is King George the Fifth.

Jonah Feld is in Parliament Square.

FELD: Stephen, the clock has just struck six here. There are a few thousand people in the square and along Whitehall, people on their way home from work who stopped, and when the last stroke went there was a sort of sound, not a cheer, more as though everybody had let out a breath at once. Then somebody near me started to sing the anthem and most people joined in, rather badly, and that was all.

It is the same day here as it is with you. Britain and the Realm will both date the reign from today. In Sydney and Manila and Kuala Lumpur it is already tomorrow, and they will date it from the first of November, and everybody will be right.

ALCOTT: Grace.

EBANKS: Stephen, it is very quiet here. The crowd has grown through the morning, I would say to two or three thousand, all the way across the forecourt and out into the street. The flag over the palace has not changed. Nothing has changed that you can see. The King is not here. He is at school, somewhere in this city, in an afternoon class, and that is all anybody outside the school knows, and I find I would rather not know any more.

ALCOTT: A few things, to be clear about them, because the afternoon will be full of them.

The King is fifteen. Until his sixteenth birthday, on the second of May, his mother, Queen Christina, acts for him as Regent, in thirteen of his realms, each under its own law. In Malaya he performs no act and needs no Regent.

The Governor-General’s commission is issued to the Crown and not to any King, and it continues this afternoon exactly as it was this morning.

The King’s father is at New Westminster General, where he has been since the night of the twenty-ninth of September. Downing Street has said that the first instrument of the new reign in Britain will be the letters patent creating him Duke of Cumberland, on the Prime Minister’s advice, this evening. Ernest Augustus held that title before he became Ernest the First in 1840, so the first King of the reunited Crowns and the King who has just given them up will hold the same title.

The heir presumptive to the King is his aunt, Queen Caroline of Hanover, the mother of the German Emperor. The heir’s titles the King held as Prince of Wales and Prince of Columbia have merged in the Crown, and nobody holds them.

And the King lives here. He lives at Columbia Palace, and he goes to school in this city, which is where he is. For the first time since the Charter, the sovereign of this Realm is ordinarily resident in it.

ALCOTT: Grace Ebanks is at New Westminster General. Grace.

EBANKS: Stephen, the King’s car came in at a few minutes before four, by the side entrance, the one it has used every day since his father was brought here. He went in. He is with his father now, and the Household says that he will be there until five, as he is every day, and that he has his homework with him.

ALCOTT: He went to school, and then to the hospital.

EBANKS: He stayed at school until the end of the day, Stephen, the palace says, and then he came here. There are people on the pavement opposite, perhaps two hundred, and when the car went in nobody called out. One woman held up a timetable. I don’t know whether he saw it.

BARROW: Good evening. The Privy Council has met at Columbia Palace, and the proclamation is to be read from the steps. Grace.

EBANKS: Naomi, the Council sat at six, for about twenty minutes. We are told that the King attended it, at the table, in the chair he has sat in since the thirtieth of September, and that he did not speak. That is the first Council of the reign. The doors have just opened, and the Clerk of the Council is on the steps with a paper. The crowd has gone completely silent. I am going to stop talking.

CLERK OF THE COUNCIL: Whereas His Majesty King Ernest the Fifth has by his Declaration of Abdication given up the Crown, and the Parliament of this Realm has given that Declaration effect, the Crown of the United Kingdom of America is solely and rightfully come to His Royal Highness Prince Frederick Alexander: We, the Lords and others of His Majesty’s Privy Council, do now proclaim him George the Fifth, by the Grace of God King of the United Kingdom of America, Supreme Governor of the Church of America; and we acknowledge Her Majesty Queen Christina as Regent in his name until he attains the age of sixteen years. God save the King.

EBANKS: “God save the King.” Naomi, they said it back. All of them, all across the forecourt. And then nobody knew what to do, so they stayed.

BARROW: Columbia Palace has issued two statements, one from the Regent and one from the King. Grace, will you read them.

EBANKS: I will read them both exactly, Naomi. The first is from the Queen.

“My son became King this afternoon in every one of his realms. He is fifteen, and until his birthday in May I shall act for him, as I have acted for his father. He has asked that tomorrow be an ordinary day, and it will be. Christina.”

The second is from the King. It is his fifth statement since the loss of the aircraft, and like the other four it is signed with his given name.

“My father is still in hospital, and I will see him tomorrow at four. Thank you for being kind to him. I am going to try to be good at this. Frederick.”

BARROW: Signed Frederick.

EBANKS: Signed Frederick, Naomi. He does not sign as King until he reigns in his own right, and the palace did not explain that and did not need to.

There are three more things. The Household has announced that Theo Hartigan, the King’s schoolfriend, is to be a Page of Honour from today, with three duties and no others, at the State Opening, on the Eleventh at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and at the accession, and that the King will finish at Ellicott High School with his year. Both of those were reported in a Milwaukee paper yesterday, and neither was confirmed until now.

From London, with the British government’s agreement, the Household has announced that the King will be crowned in Westminster Abbey after his sixteenth birthday, on a date to be fixed. The Regent has taken the Regent’s oaths. The oaths a sovereign takes on his accession wait for the King to take them himself, on the second of May.

And the letters patent have been sealed. The King’s father is His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland.

BARROW: Grace, thank you. That is the end of the day, and the beginning of the reign.