Today I was a virtual attendee at the annual Mick Aston lecture by Dr Julian Richards. No write-up is needed this time because Cotswold Archaeology put the whole recording online.
Stonehenge: Old Rocks, New Theories
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Monthly Archives: May 2025
For Gareth and the Empire!
Recently Gareth Ratcliffe, who represents Hay-on-Wye on Powys County Council, Tweeted a photograph of the royal warrant by which he was appointed an Ordinary Member of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
I have seen photographs and scans of similar documents before, but usually they were from a great many decades ago. I was interested to look at an up-to-date example.
The warrant begins with the sovereign’s full style (in English, of course) and concludes with the place and date. Notably it is accredited to St James’s Palace (which, rather than Buckingham, is the true headquarters of the crown), though I am quite certain that neither the monarch nor his clerks were actually in that place on New Year’s Eve signing thousands of such warrants in one go.
King Charles’s signature appears at the top of the page and Queen Camilla (in her capacity as Great Master of the Order) signs at the bottom. Six months ago I was told by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office that warrants of appointment to these orders of chivalry do not depict a coat of arms, only the seal of the respective order. Embossed at the top of this warrant I can see that the seal itself actually contains the royal arms of the United Kingdom in the English arrangement, so the critical question of whether the design changes when in other realms is not necessarily resolved.
Also in the news this week was the 300th anniversary (or Tercentenary) of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. The King (as Sovereign) and the Prince of Wales (as Great Master) attended a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate. The cover of the Order of Service shows the seal of the order, which likewise has the British royal arms. I even found a photograph of a bound copy of the Statutes of the Order, which has the seal illustrated in full colour. There were also photographs taken of the stallplates of current and former Knights Grand Cross, including Great Masters. One hopes to see Prince William’s plate appear there too at some point, if only to get visual evidence of his full heraldic achievement as heir apparent.
The Railway Series at 80
Illustration of “Edward, Gordon and Henry” by William Middleton
Five years ago, for the seventy-fifth anniversary of The Three Railway Engines I came up with a poem based on Tolkien’s work adapted to be about the engines on Sodor.
Today is the eightieth anniversary of said book. I have pondered calling it 3-E Day, but doubt that would catch on. I would like to turn to verse again. This time, instead of adapting another poem, I have thought about what an anthem for the island might be. Truth be told, I don’t think The Island Song really works diagetically – it is too obviously written to be about a children’s television series. Instead here is something simpler: A variation on the royal hymn.
While the first verse of God Save The King! is almost universal across the realms and territories of the Commonwealth, there have often been custom extra verses with lyrics specific to the locality, albeit with many of the same core concepts (and indeed rhymes) cropping up in more than one place. This is my submission for the Sudrian stanza:
Our island is to me,
Homestead and sanctuary,
By Britain’s shore.
Bless this enchanted isle,
That years may ne’er defile.
Grant all Thy children smile,
For evermore!
Sealing the Deal
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This is the old one, obviously.
A mere thirty-two months into the New Carolean era, a new Great Seal of the Realm has been unveiled. The design is largely the same as the version made for Elizabeth II in 2001 – the obverse shows the monarch enthroned, the reverse shows the royal armorial achievement (as illustrated by Noad).
Noad’s heraldic drawing is well-known by now. The depiction of Charles on the front* has attracted some criticism: The King is, as at his actual coronation, wearing trousers rather than the more traditional stockings, and his shoes appear to jut out too much. Personally, I think they resemble the feet of 2006-era Cybermen. It is also notable that the crown shown on the monarch’s head is the idealised depiction of the Tudor crown, as opposed to the Imperial State Crown or the Crown of St Edward which he wore at the coronation itself.
The inscription around the outer rim is CHARLES III DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGNORUMQUE SUORIMQUE CETERORUM REX COSORTIONIS POPULARUM PRINCEPS FID DEF.
This is the official Latin equivalent of CHARLES III BY THE GRACE OF GOD OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AND OF HIS OTHER REALMS AND TERRITORIES KING HEAD OF THE COMMONWEALTH DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, and the formulation is similar to that used by British sovereigns for centuries, though even I, eleven years on from having formally studied Latin, can see that it is not a perfectly literal translation.
Judging by the talk pages for both the English and Latin Wikipedias, it is clear I am not the only one to notice this. Britanniarum Regnorum just means “Kingdom of the Britains”** with no specific reference to Hibernia Septentrionalis.
Oddly it seems that the seals used from 1930 to 1953 actually did specify MAG BR and HIB, short for Magnae Britanniae and Hiberniae as distinct items, but seals used both before and after do not. Uniti does not appear in any of them. The exact name in English of the polity ruling these isles has, of course, gone through many changes due to the evolution of our constitutional arrangements and is very confusing even to natives, but it is interesting to note that the Latin title doesn’t exactly move in step with the English one.
The use of Consortionis Populorum Princeps to mean Head of the Commonwealth of Nations is also a bit odd – “princeps” is of course whence we derive the words “prince” and “principal”, but it originally meant “chief” or “first in rank”. “Consortio Populorum” (“Partnership of the Peoples”?) is probably used because a more literal translation would probably be something more like “Respublica”, but of course in modern English (or British English at any rate), the words commonwealth and republic have diverged almost entirely to where the former means an organisation headed by a monarch and the latter means precisely not that.
Perhaps it is fitting that this event should take place just as a new Pope emerges – we’ll be seeing a lot of official Latin in use very soon!
*The many news articles I have found relating to this story all seem to be nearly word-for-word the same, and none of them identify the portrait artist.
**This is distinct from “King of the Britons”, which would be “Regnum Brittanorum”
On Terence Etherton
Official parliamentary portrait from 2021 by Roger Harris (CC-BY-3.0)
The Lord Speaker today announced the death of Terence, Lord Etherton.
Etherton only took his seat in the House of Lords in 2021, having recently retired from the office of Master of the Rolls. Aged 73, he was only slightly older than the median for the Upper House, and still below the recently re-raised mandatory judicial retirement age.
Etherton is another of those people whose armorial bearings I know to exist but have never seen: That he received a grant was noted in the College of Arms newsletter no. 65, and a vague description is given on the Birkbeck, University of London website, which is repeated in Joshua Rozenberg’s obituary for him. While we are told that the motto was the Hebrew word הננ (Hineini) – “Here I Am.” we are not given any blazon for the rest of the achievement, only that it features sapphires and a sword.
Etherton’s career in fencing was, of course, also mentioned in the infamous “Enemies of the People” headline published by the Daily Mail in 2016.
I will have to hope that a photograph of the late noble and learned lord’s arms emerges at some point, for he was created too late to appear in the final print edition of Debrett’s Peerage and so it may be impossible to find out in the traditional way.
Carney Summons The King
In the lead-up to, and immediate aftermath of, the Canadian general election, there were a few news pieces about the prospect of King Charles visiting in person to open the new Parliament. Most of these seemed like mere idle speculation or, indeed wishful thinking.
Today, however, it has been confirmed by both Buckingham Palace and the Office of the Prime Minister that Their Majesties will indeed be visiting for that purpose. This is unusually short notice for an overseas trip, particularly given the sovereign’s ongoing health problems and the length of the journey. As the couple are due to arrive on May 26th and leave on May 27th, it looks as if this will be a flying visit to Ottawa to perform the state opening and not much else, in contrast to last month’s state visit in Italy or last year’s royal tour of Australia. There has been no further detail about the hinted royal tour in 2026, but I presume any more elaborate plans are still delayed until then.
I know nothing at this point of the actual contents of the speech, and indeed suspect that the text will not be especially interesting from a literary perspective (throne speeches rarely are). Their Majesty’s attire may prove the more politically-contentious topic: When Elizabeth II opened Parliament in 1957 and 1977 she prominently wore the Order of the Garter, while Prince Philip wore a military uniform with his many decorations on it.
This will be the first time that the monarch has opened Parliament in person since the Patriation of the Constitution and, as much as Mark Carney is obviously an Anglophile, the purpose of this excursion is to reassert Canada’s sovereignty and national identity in the face of aggression from the United States. The King & Queen of Canada will need to find a distinctly Canadian look for themselves. This will be difficult as the Crown of Canada, before or after Trudeau’s controversial redesign, does not exist in real life as a physical object. Nor, for that matter, does the snowflake diadem. A separate set of Canadian royal robes does not exist either. To make matters worse, this won’t even be taking place in the real Parliament building, as that has been closed for major renovation works over the past few years. Currently the Senate meets in a repurposed railway station and the House of Commons in the West Block. These two buildings are a ten-minute walk apart, which could make the summoning of MPs a rather tedious ordeal. In 2021 shuttle buses were used for the 700m journey.
If maximum splendour is the goal then I suspect that Charles will wear a ceremonial military uniform (with corresponding hat) and Camilla either her coronation gown or a generic white dress with a tiara, both with all their Canadian medals as well as the sash of the Royal Victorian Order (since that is not realm-specific).
Finally, a point about Palace press releases – whereas the public sees these announcements on Royal.UK as text on a webpage, they seem to be sent to journalists as PDFs (which I only know because of how often I see journalists Tweeting them). Even now the old red outline illustration of Elizabeth II’s British arms (with St Edward’s Crown) is still used, despite this announcement relating to Canada. It’s also typed in Calibri, which irks me even more.
This story by Sky News includes a screenshot of an earlier version of the Tweet, in which the bullet points are punctuated with the French and British flags instead of the flag of Canada. Was this a clumsy attempt at representing Canada’s dual heritage, or had the template been mixed up with something intended for Macron’s state visit due this month?
Robin Stanley Taylor 
