Attending #AccessionCouncil this morning, where a slimmed down Privy Council of 200 meets to proclaim King Charles III. The longest serving PCs now are the mid 70s intake of Roy Hattersley & Bill Rodgers, but they joined more than 20 years after the last Accession Council (1/7)
Thus no one alive has ever attended an Accession Council and Queen Elizabeth was the last survivor of the meeting of 8th February 1952. Today’s agenda doesn’t allow for discussion or questions for the job applicant so we can safely assume that Charles will be so proclaimed (2/7)
However, the meeting is not entirely free from principles of contractual government or monarchy. In Part II of the Council, the new King is required to swear an oath to uphold the separation of church and state in Scotland, in accordance with the Claim of Right (3/7)
The Claim of Right of 1689 is not the bee’s knees in many quarters because of its 17th century anti-Catholicism, and very understandably so. But the idea of a contractual monarchy was first introduced into Scottish thought in the 14th century appeals to the Avignon Papacy (4/7)
And the high principles of equality in the American Declaration of Independence, co-existed with the evil of slavery for the best part of a century - but these principles of equality were still well worth saying (5/7)
The Claim of Right is properly seen as part of a golden thread of Scottish constitutional thought stretching from the Arbroath Declaration to the present day, that government is contractual and the people, or Community of the Realm, are ultimately sovereign (6/7)
In any event, it can hardly be argued that the Claim of Right is merely a historical curiosity, when one of the first acts of the new King is to be required to swear an oath to uphold it! This is the sort of history which can shape the future (7/7).
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