The King Wakes: The Contemporary Record

ALCOTT: It is twenty-four minutes past five. I am going to tell you what we know, and it is very little, and then Grace Ebanks, who is outside New Westminster General, is going to tell you what she has seen.

At about a quarter past four this morning the Queen’s car arrived at the hospital from Columbia Palace. A little under an hour later a second car arrived from the palace. Nobody has said anything about either. Grace.

EBANKS: Stephen, I have been here since ten to five, and I did not see the first car. Our crew did, and I have the times from them. The Queen’s car came up to the side entrance at about a quarter past four, and it was the only car, and she went in. It came from the palace and not from anywhere else, which our crew could tell from the direction and from the escort.

At about a quarter past five, which I did see, a second car from the palace came to the same entrance and somebody went in. I have asked the Royal Household who it was. I was told that the Prince of Columbia is at the hospital with his mother, and that there would be nothing further before the physicians had something to say.

ALCOTT: Is that all the Household said.

EBANKS: It is all of it, Stephen. I asked whether the physicians would be saying something this morning, and the answer was that the Household would not anticipate the physicians.

ALCOTT: I want to be careful about this, and I am going to say it once. The Queen has been to the hospital at a great many hours of the day and night in the last three weeks. We do not know why she went at four o’clock this morning, and we do not know why her son followed her. We are not going to guess, in either direction.

EBANKS: I would add one thing, Stephen, which is that we have pictures of the second car. We are not showing them. The only thing in them is a boy going to see his father.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you. Some other outlets are reporting this morning that the King’s condition has changed. The ABC has nobody saying so. When somebody entitled to say it does, we will tell you, and we will tell you who.

ALCOTT: The Governor-General is at New Westminster General. Grace Ebanks.

EBANKS: Stephen, her car arrived at a few minutes before six, from Government House, and she went in by the same entrance as the Queen and the Prince. Government House has confirmed that she is at the hospital. It used one word I want to give you exactly: she was sent for. It would not say by whom or why.

It is getting light here, and the crowd has grown since five. There were perhaps forty people on the pavement when I came. There are some hundreds now, and more coming from the direction of the Metro. They are quiet. Nobody has told them anything either.

ALCOTT: The first official word this morning has come from London, which is not where we expected it. The BBC’s Jonah Feld is in Downing Street, where it is just after midday.

FELD: Stephen, at about five to twelve, our time, the Prime Minister’s spokesman gave the lobby one sentence, and I will read it. “The Prime Minister was informed this morning by His Majesty’s Household of a change in His Majesty’s condition, and awaits the bulletin of His Majesty’s physicians.”

That is the whole of it. He was asked what kind of change. He said that he had read the sentence and would read it again if we wished. He was asked when the Prime Minister was told, and he said this morning. He would not say whether it was good or bad, and I am not going to say what I think he meant by not saying.

ALCOTT: A change in the King’s condition.

FELD: Those are the words, Stephen. I would point out only that Downing Street was told before the public in either country, and that it has chosen to say that it was told, which is not the same as saying what it was told.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you. Delia Moreno is outside Charter House.

MORENO: Stephen, Charter House has said less than Downing Street. The Prime Minister’s office told me ten minutes ago that the Prime Minister has been informed by the Household, that he will say nothing before the physicians do, and that he will be in Parliament this afternoon. I asked whether he had been sent for, as the Governor-General was. I was told that he had been informed. I took that to be the answer.

ALCOTT: So the Governor-General has been sent for, and the Prime Minister has been told, and the difference is in the verbs.

MORENO: That is all I can give you, Stephen. Both offices chose their verbs.

ALCOTT: Delia, thank you. The Household has said that the physicians will issue a bulletin. It has not said when. We will read it to you when we have it, and we will read the whole of it.

ALCOTT: The King’s physicians have issued a bulletin. I am going to read it to you whole, because it is short.

ALCOTT: The King is awake. Grace Ebanks is at the hospital.

EBANKS: Stephen, the bulletin was read out on the steps of the side entrance a minute after eight, by a member of the Household’s staff, to the press and to whoever could hear. I could hear the crowd behind me hear it. There was no cheer. There was a sound I would describe as a great many people breathing out at the same time, and then some of them began to cry, and then somebody at the back began to clap and stopped, and then a great many of them clapped.

ALCOTT: So the King is awake, and he knew the Queen and the Prince, and he has spoken.

EBANKS: He is awake, Stephen, and he has spoken, and the bulletin is careful about what else. It says that he knew the Queen. It says that he spoke a few words, and it does not say what they were. And it says the thing that I think matters most for the next weeks, which is that it is too early to say how complete his recovery will be, and that he is not to receive Ministers or perform any function of the Crown.

ALCOTT: Which means the regency continues.

EBANKS: It means the physicians say he is not to act, Stephen. Whether the regency continues is for the five officers here and for each of the other realms under its own law, and none of them has said anything yet. I would not run ahead of them.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you. We will be at the hospital, and at Parliament House, for the rest of the morning.

ALCOTT: Before anything else, a correction. At six minutes past eight, after reading you the physicians’ bulletin, I said that the King had known the Queen and the Prince. The bulletin does not say that. It says that he knew the Queen. It says that the Prince was sent for and has been with him, and nothing about whether his father knew him. I added the Prince myself, because I supposed it, and nobody had told us so.

I am going to read you the bulletin’s first sentence again, as it was written. “His Majesty woke in the small hours, knew the Queen, and spoke a few words.” That is what the physicians have said, and it is all they have said.

EBANKS: Stephen, I asked the Household about it twenty minutes ago, because it was being repeated, and not only by us. The Household said that the bulletin said what the physicians were prepared to say, and that it would not add to it.

ALCOTT: Thank you. The other realms. The Regency Office at Columbia Palace, which conducts the Queen’s business as Regent for the thirteen realms, confirmed to the ABC at about half past seven that it had informed each of the King’s other realms this morning. The first statements have come in. The government of Raj, in Delhi, where it is evening, said at about half past eight our time that it gives thanks for the King’s waking, and that its regency remains in place under its own Act until its own law provides otherwise. The government of Ireland said much the same about a quarter of an hour ago, in two sentences, the second of which was that the Queen continues as Regent of Ireland.

EBANKS: I would only say, Stephen, that they are two statements and not one. Neither mentions the other, or the Realm.

ALCOTT: And the crowd.

EBANKS: It has doubled since eight, and it is not doing anything. People are standing on the pavement and on the steps of the church at the corner, and some of them have brought flowers and do not seem to know where to put them. The police have opened a second side street. There is a crowd at the gates of Columbia Palace as well, I am told, as large as this one.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you.

ALCOTT: The Prince of Columbia has issued a statement. Grace Ebanks.

EBANKS: Stephen, it was issued at half past nine by his Press Secretary, Rosalind Aird, who told me that the Prince wrote it at the hospital, by hand, and that it was typed as he wrote it. It is three sentences.

“My father is awake. He knew my mother and he knew me. Thank you for waiting with us.”

ALCOTT: He knew me.

EBANKS: That is what the Prince says, Stephen, and it is the first time anybody entitled to say it has said it. It was not in the bulletin.

ALCOTT: I want to be clear about this, because it matters to the corporation if it matters to nobody else. At six minutes past eight I said something that the Prince has now said. That does not make what I said at eight o’clock right. Nobody had told us. We know it now, because he has told us.

EBANKS: The Press Secretary said one other thing. Today is the day the Household’s fortnightly note on the Prince was due, and she said that this was the note. And she said that the Prince will go to school this afternoon, which was his own wish and his mother’s.

ALCOTT: To school.

EBANKS: To Ellicott, after lunch. The ABC will report that he went, if he goes, because the Household has told us. It will not show him going.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you.

ALCOTT: The British Prime Minister has spoken in Downing Street. The BBC’s Jonah Feld.

FELD: Stephen, Alistair Rennie came out onto the step at a quarter past three and spoke for about two minutes. He said that the country gave thanks for the King’s waking and that the Government’s thoughts were with the Queen and the Prince. And then he said the thing he had come out to say, which was about Britain’s regency, and I will read it as he said it.

“The Regency Act of this Parliament provides that the regency ends when each House resolves that His Majesty is again capable of performing the royal functions. Neither House will be asked to so resolve except upon the certificate of physicians appointed for that purpose by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom. Until then the Queen continues as Regent of Great Britain.”

ALCOTT: Britain’s own physicians.

FELD: Britain’s own, Stephen. He was asked whether a certificate from New Westminster General would do. He said that he had answered that in the statement. He was asked again, and he said that Britain takes its own advice on its own Crown. Which is, you will have noticed, very nearly what he said on the second of October about following nobody.

ALCOTT: And the evidence Britain acted on in the first place.

FELD: That is the question that was put to a senior official afterwards, and I think it is a fair one, so I will put it in plain words. The Regency Act 2028 was passed on the evidence of a certificate signed by the King’s physicians at New Westminster General on the thirtieth of September. That certificate was laid before both Houses. Britain began its regency on a New Westminster certificate and has now said that it will not end it on one.

The official’s answer was that a declaration of incapacity and a declaration of capacity are not the same question, and that the Houses would want different evidence for the second. He would not say why. He was asked whether that meant British physicians would examine the King in New Westminster, and he said that the arrangements had not been made.

ALCOTT: Has anybody in London said when.

FELD: Nobody, Stephen. And nobody has said anything about the minority bill, which is still in committee and was not mentioned.

ALCOTT: Jonah, thank you.

ALCOTT: The bells of Columbia Cathedral are being rung. We will come back to them. First, the five officers of the Regency Act have met. Delia Moreno.

MORENO: Stephen, they met at ten, in the Speaker’s rooms, and sat for a little over an hour. All five were there: the Governor-General, Michelle Lujan Grisham; the Chief Justice, Nathaniel Brooks; the Lord Speaker, Lord Rathmore; the Prime Minister; and the Speaker, Mark Kelly. One of the King’s physicians attended to answer questions, as on the thirtieth of September. Government House published the resolution at twenty to twelve, and I will read it whole.

MORENO: So the declaration stands, Stephen, and the Queen continues as Regent in the Realm.

ALCOTT: And the Speaker’s note.

MORENO: It is three sentences, and it answers the question everybody has asked him since the thirtieth of September. He wrote then that the declaration should end when the King wakes. The King has woken this morning, and the Speaker has signed a resolution that it should not end yet. What he has written is that he meant something by the word, and has said what. I asked his office whether he would say more. I was told that he had written what he meant and would be in the chair this afternoon.

ALCOTT: Is there any doubt that the regency continues.

MORENO: Not in the Realm, Stephen. The Act ends it when three of the five declare that the King is capable again, and the five have declared this morning that they will not until the physicians certify it. When that will be, nobody has said, and the physicians have said that it is too early to say.

ALCOTT: Delia, thank you. Grace, the bells.

EBANKS: Stephen, they began at noon, and you can probably hear them behind me, faintly; the cathedral is about a mile from here. The chapter decided to ring them this morning, after the bulletin, as they were rung on the evening of the twenty-ninth of September. Nobody asked them to.

And I should say what is not happening. Government House has said that no observance has been ordered, and none will be. There is no salute and no day of thanksgiving. No flags were lowered when the King was lost, so there are none to raise. The national flag is flying over Columbia Palace, as it has every day since the twenty-fifth of September, and the Household has said nothing about changing it.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you.

ALCOTT: The Prime Minister has been at the bar of the House of Commons. Delia Moreno.

MORENO: Stephen, he was in the Lords at one, and made his statement there first, and then he came along the corridor and stood at the bar at a quarter past two, with the lectern the Serjeant-at-Arms brought him in September. Before he was admitted, the Speaker said from the chair that the morning’s resolution was not an exercise of the power in the Act, but that he had undertaken to report every meeting of the five, and would rather report too much than too little. He read the resolution and his own three sentences, and sat down, and nobody said anything.

The Prime Minister’s statement was short. He gave thanks for the King’s waking and for the physicians and nurses of New Westminster General. He said the regency continues on the five officers’ resolution. And then he spoke about the question this House referred to the law officers on the twenty-sixth of September, which is the one everybody had expected someone to ask him about. I will give you his words.

“On the twenty-sixth of September this House asked the law officers whether anything that occurred in consequence of the loss of the King’s aircraft, in this Realm or in another, engages Article II.8 of the Charter. That question was asked because the King might have died. He has not, and this morning he woke. The reference stays open. The question survives the King’s survival. It was never only about this King, and the Charter does not answer it any better today than it did a month ago.”

ALCOTT: And the questions.

MORENO: There were forty minutes of them. The first was from the Leader of the Opposition, Dale Ambrister, who asked whether, now that the King was awake, the government would withdraw the reference and stop asking the law officers about the succession to a King who is alive. The Prime Minister said that it was not the government’s reference but the House’s, and that he would not ask the House to withdraw a question because it had become less frightening. Mr Ambrister said that the Prime Minister had been in office for under six weeks and had spent most of them on the King. The Prime Minister said that that was true.

A Labour member asked when the law officers would answer. He said that they had given no indication, and that he had not asked them to hurry. A Liberal member asked whether the King had said anything about the regency. The Prime Minister said that he had not seen the King, would not see him until the physicians allowed it, and knew nothing of what the King had said beyond the bulletin.

ALCOTT: He has not seen the King.

MORENO: He was told by telephone, Stephen, at about half past six this morning, by the Household. He told the House so. He has not been to the hospital, and he said that he would not go until he was asked.

ALCOTT: Delia, thank you. Grace Ebanks has moved to Columbia Palace.

EBANKS: Stephen, two things. The Household has confirmed that the Prince of Columbia went to Ellicott High School after lunch, as his Press Secretary said he would. The school has said nothing, as always. We do not have a picture and are not looking for one.

And the crowd at the palace gates is the largest I have seen here since the twenty-ninth of September. The forecourt is open, as it always is, and people are standing in it and along the railings. It is very quiet. A man near me has been here, he says, every evening since the twenty-fifth, and he said he had come at lunchtime today because he could not wait for the evening.

ALCOTT: And the realms. The ABC’s count, at a quarter past three: eleven of the twelve other realms in which the Queen is Regent have made statements, each through its own government and each in its own terms, and every one of them says that its regency remains in place. After Raj and Ireland this morning came the Philippines, South Africa, Hanover, Britain, Brunswick, New Albion, Normandy, the West Indies Federation, whose government is still dealing with the hurricane of Monday and issued its statement from Kingston, and the River Plate. None of them has said what would end its regency, except Britain. The ABC asked four of them, and was told by each that its own law would say.

The one realm that has not spoken is New Wessex, where it is now a quarter past six on Saturday morning. Malaya, which needs no regency, has sent a message of thanksgiving from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

EBANKS: I would add, Stephen, because it will be written that the realms acted together: they did not. Twelve governments have each decided the same thing, under twelve different laws, in the course of one day, and none of them mentions any of the others.

ALCOTT: Grace, thank you.

BARROW: Good evening. The King’s physicians have issued their evening bulletin, and I am going to read it whole.

BARROW: Grace Ebanks is at the hospital.

EBANKS: Naomi, it is the longest bulletin we have had since the thirtieth of September, and it is still very short. I would point you to three things in it.

The first is that it says he knows his family. That is the physicians’ word, and it is the first time the physicians have said anything about the Prince.

The second is that it says he is very weak, and that he is awake for short spells. It does not say how short, and I asked, and was told that the bulletin said what the physicians wished to say.

The third is the sentence about the water. He remembers being in the water, and he remembers nothing of the aircraft striking it. The physicians have chosen to tell us that, and I think they have told us because it will be asked, and because it is the first thing the King has been able to say about what happened to him. They have told us what he remembers. They have not told us what he said about it.

BARROW: Have we asked what he said.

EBANKS: We have, Naomi. I asked the Household this afternoon, and again after the bulletin, what the King had said this morning, to the Queen or to anybody. The answer both times was the bulletin’s: a few words. I asked whether the Household would say what they were, today or later. I was told that it would not, today or later, and that the King’s words were his own. I am telling you that we asked and were refused, because you should know both.

BARROW: And the last of the realms.

EBANKS: New Wessex made its statement from Sydney at about ten past six, our time, which is ten past nine on Saturday morning there. Its regency remains in place under its own Act. So by this evening every one of the twelve other realms in which the Queen is Regent has said, separately and on its own authority, that she remains so. Twelve statements, Naomi, and twelve laws.

BARROW: Grace, thank you.

BARROW: Grace Ebanks is at Columbia Palace, where the crowd has stayed into the night.

EBANKS: It has, Naomi. There are perhaps two thousand people in the forecourt and along the railings, and there have been since the evening. There is another crowd at the hospital, smaller, which the police have asked to keep the side entrance clear, and it has. Nobody is singing. A few people lit candles at about nine, and then a great many did.

I asked a woman beside me why she had come. She told me she was a nurse who had come off a shift at New Westminster General at seven, and that she would not say anything about the hospital, or the King, or her work, and would I please not ask. She said she had come to the palace because it was the one place she could stand with other people tonight without anybody asking her anything. Then she apologised for having said that much.

BARROW: And the Queen and the Prince.

EBANKS: The Household has said nothing about where either of them is tonight, Naomi, and the ABC is not going to find out. The Queen has made no statement of her own today. The Prince made his this morning and went to school in the afternoon.

BARROW: Grace, I want to ask you what we still do not know, tonight, after a whole day of it.

EBANKS: A great deal, Naomi. We do not know when the King will be able to act, and the physicians have said twice today that it is too early to say. We do not know what will end any of the thirteen regencies, except that in the Realm it will be the five officers on the physicians’ certificate, and in Britain both Houses on a certificate from Britain’s own physicians, and that the other eleven will each be ended by their own law, and need not end together. We do not know what the law officers will say about Article II.8, because they have not said anything. And we do not know what the King said this morning, and we have been told that we will not.

BARROW: Grace, thank you.

That is the end of our continuous coverage tonight. The Household has not said when the physicians will issue their next bulletin. It is twenty to eleven.

King Ernest V woke at New Westminster General in the small hours of Friday, twenty-five days after the Royal Air Force aircraft carrying him from London to Ottawa went into the North Atlantic east of Newfoundland, and twenty-one days after he was admitted to the hospital with a serious head injury. His physicians said in a bulletin at eight o’clock that he knew the Queen and spoke a few words, and that the Governor-General, the Queen and Prince Frederick had been sent for. They said in the evening that he had been awake for short spells during the day, that he knows his family, that he speaks in short sentences and is very weak, and that he remembers being in the water and remembers nothing of the aircraft striking it.

The physicians said that it is too early to say how complete his recovery will be, and that he is not to receive Ministers or perform any function of the Crown.

The Royal Household has said that the King spoke a few words, and has declined to say what they were. Asked by the ABC whether it would do so later, it said that it would not.

The five officers named in the Regency Act 1811 met in the Speaker’s rooms at Parliament House at ten in the morning and resolved that their declaration of 30 September stands until the King’s physicians certify that he is capable of performing the royal functions in right of America. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Mark Kelly, who had written beneath the declaration of 30 September that it should end when the King wakes, wrote beneath the resolution that by wakes he had meant able to act, and that he concurred. The Queen continues as Regent in the Realm.

Each of the twelve other realms in which the Queen is Regent said in the course of the day, by its own statement and under its own law, that its regency remains in place. The British Prime Minister, Alistair Rennie, said in Downing Street that neither House at Westminster would be asked to resolve that the King is again capable except on the certificate of physicians appointed by the British government. Malaya, whose elected king is its head of state, needs no regency.

The Prime Minister, Caleb Whitlock, Lord Whitlock, made a statement in the House of Lords and at the bar of the House of Commons in the afternoon, and said that the question the Commons referred to the law officers on 26 September, whether anything arising from the loss engages Article II.8 of the Charter, remains open. The law officers have not answered it.

Prince Frederick, who is fifteen, was at the hospital before dawn. His statement, issued at half past nine, was the third in his own words since the loss: “My father is awake. He knew my mother and he knew me. Thank you for waiting with us.” He went to Ellicott High School in the afternoon.

Crowds gathered through the day at the hospital and at Columbia Palace, and the bells of Columbia Cathedral were rung at noon. Government House said that no observance had been ordered.

The ABC reported at 8:06 a.m. that the King had known the Queen and the Prince. The bulletin said that he had known the Queen. The corporation corrected the report at 8:52 a.m.