A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Royal Wedding - obeying commands

The Royal Wedding is only a day away now. It's the best show in town and has put paid to the alternative show next week! Even if some may not be bothered, there's always something for everyone in a royal event like a marriage. This time it includes the guest list, the ancestors (not on the guest list!) and the campers-out.  Oh, and that little word "obey".

As Syria is exploding in bloodshed and acrimony, it was a bit much for the royal couple to have to smile sweetly at the Syrian Ambassador as they leave the Abbey. The Buckingham Palace courtiers say they were obeying protocol by inviting him. Others thought differently and politics trumped protocol. The courtiers obeyed and the ambassador had his invitation withdrawn. No withdrawal of invitations to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They were not invited in the first place. Can't think why anyone would imagine they should have been. Jack Straw puffed himself up with indignation. The protocol here was that they weren't Knights of the Garter so that was the rule being obeyed.

The Royal Wedding has its very own website, under the domain name of Official Royal Wedding 2011. Interesting FAQs. The tabloid press should read up on them. Already they are suggesting Princess Catherine but she does not become a princess purely by marriage. This title is in the gift of the Queen. Officially she will be Princess William of Wales, but that won't wear well on the front page of The Sun. Probably a royal dukedom will be dusted off for immediate use. Then she will be a Duchess commonly known as Princess Kate.

A genealogist has unearthed a link between Prince William and the Middletons. But William's Middletons are not apparently Kate's Middletons. The Middleton in question was John Middleton, who, one night in 1674, "befuddled with drink", fell downstairs and he died from his injuries. Middleton is described as a "hard-drinking ruffian" and "notorious". Catherine Middleton has a few choice ancestors too, including Edward Thomas Glassborow, an ancestor of Miss Middleton's father, Michael, who was listed as an inmate at Holloway Prison in London in the 1881 census.

In every marriage of significant public interest that is officiated within the Church of England much is said of the word obey. This wedding is no exception. In modern parlance the word is taken to mean complying with instructions of a person in authority, such as an army officer or policeman. So it is little wonder that Miss Middleton has declined to "obey" her husband. Yet that was never the intention in the first place. In a religious context it simply means to listen because the Latin is oboedire. It could hardly be a Christian marriage based on mutual understandings if "Wilt thou obey him" gave carte blanche to the husband to insist on twenty things being done before breakfast!

Anyway, she won't be obeying him, but she looks every inch the listener so all's well in that department I suggest. And tomorrow will be here very soon.

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