The thrones of the Viceroy and Vicereine of Ireland once sat on a raised dais in St. Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle. After dominion status was granted and the Irish Free State was born, the thrones had their crowns knocked off and the Victorian royal cypher removed. The harp of the Irish state arms was embroidered onto the Viceroy’s throne and it was first used as a presidential chair during the inauguration of Prof. Douglas Hyde as the first President of Ireland in 1938. The Vicereine’s throne, meanwhile, was shorn of its gold and is now employed as the chair of the Cathaoirleach, the presiding officer of Seanad Éireann.

The fabric on the thrones was originally a quite elaborate version of the British royal arms, surrounded by shamrocks. I’ll admit that the hodge-podge, two-tone blues of the throne as it is now is a bit jarring, but surely something similar to the original fabric can be commissioned, with the state arms surrounded by shamrocks, and perhaps the addition of the harp to the blank space where the royal cypher once was. Recycle, don’t replace!

A book recently published in Buenos Aires sheds new light on the difficult transition period between the Spanish Empire on the River Plate and the foundation of the Argentine Republic. The launch party for Bernado Lozier Almazán’s Proyectos monárquicos en el Río de la Plata 1808-1825. Los reyes que no fueron (“Monarchic projects in the River Plate 1808–1825: The kings who weren’t”) was held recently in the Quinta ‘Los Ombúes’, home of the municipal library, museum, and archives of San Isidro, the city in the Provincia de Buenos Aires known as Argentina’s ‘Rugby Capital’.

Proyectos monárquicos highlights the forgotten truth that most of the Argentine ‘patriots’ — San Martín, Belgrano, and Alvear among them — were monarchist, not republican. Proposals involving the courts of Spain, Portugal, France, and even England were proffered, and there was even an interesting proposal to marry a European prince to an Incan princess and offer him the throne of the Río de la Plata.

The author was introduced by Ignacio Bracht, the historian and fellow of the Argentine Institute of Genealogical Sciences, who pointed out the book illuminated Argentines’ roots in a way outside the ‘official’ historiography. “In the early nineteenth century,” Bracht said, “monarchs enjoyed the veneration of their subjects, who saw the king as one who granted them freedom, order, and the unity of peoples — ideals which were seriously violated in the United Provinces.” For this reason, Bracht suggests, monarchists considered the traditional system of government as more appropriate for guiding the “fledgling and hesitant nation” than republicanism. In the author’s own remarks, Lozier Almazán ruminated on what Argentina would be like had any of the projects researched in the book actually succeeded.

Among those present at the book launch were Abp. Edgardo Lisen, president of the Argentine-Urguayan Cultural Institute, Fr. Edgardo Albamonte SSPX, chaplain to the Charles VII Traditionalist Brotherhood (Argentina’s Carlist institute)

Source: Portal Uno

The Queen’s Personal Flag for Canada (above, top), often informally known as the Canadian Royal Standard, was devised in 1962 (the same year similar banners were created for Australia and New Zealand). Until 2011, the Queen was the only member of the Canadian Royal Family to have a personal flag for Canada, but now she is joined by her son and grandson, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge respectively.

The Prince of Wales’s flag features a blue roundel within a wreath of maple leaves (in contrast to the wreath of roses on the Queen’s standard). Upon the blue roundel is the badge of the Prince of Wales: three feathers, a diadem, and the German motto Ich Dien (‘I Serve’). The three-pointed white label is the traditional heraldic mark of an eldest son.

The Duke of Cambridge’s personal flag also features the white label of an eldest son, defaced with an escallop (seashell) to indicate differentiation from his father. The escallop hails from the Spencer arms, indicating Prince William’s matrilineal descent. The wreath is of maple leaves and seashells, and the roundel features a ‘W’ monogram surmounted by a coronet.

Despite breaking its constitutional links with the Crown over fifty years ago (c.f. here), South Africa continues to enjoy close social, economic, and cultural ties with Great Britain, a fact borne out in the recent New Year’s Honours list. Of the numerous individuals awarded for their public service, four from this year’s list show the relationship between these two countries. Most prominent is Fleur Olive Lourens de Villiers (above), who has been named a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George. Ms. de Villiers, a graduate of Pretoria & Harvard, is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. From 1960 onwards, she has been a theatre critic, economics correspondent, leader writer, columnist, political correspondent, newspaper editor, and travelling correspondent around the world, in addition to working with the De Beers Group and Anglo-American. She was one of the four contributors to the Institute of Economic Affairs’ 1986 study Apartheid: Capitalism or Socialism? which examined the role of the state and its race policy in the South African economy.

While Ms. de Villiers has been awarded a CMG, three others have been made Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or MBEs. Tom Hewitt (right) is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Umthombo Street Children in Durban, KZN. Umthombo runs drop-in centres, provides street outreach & healthcare, and runs programmes to get street children reintegrated into society.

Hewitt was first made aware of the plight of street children in Maputo, Mozambique in 1990 and began working with South African street children in 1992 in the Eastern Cape. After relocating to Durban, he founded the Durban Street Team in 1998, and in 2004, alongside his wife, founded Umthombo. Mr. Hewitt played a leading role in ending the forcible removal of street children in Durban in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, and organised the first-ever Street Child World Cup, sponsored by Deloitte, in response. Hewitt has worked alongside the Department for Social Development, and is Chairman of the KwaZulu-Natal Alliance for Street Children.

Inspector Richard John Maurice Hynes (right) of the Metropolitan Police was also honoured with an MBE for services to community safety in South Africa. Inspector Hynes has worked for various initiatives in South Africa on behalf of London’s renowned police force, which is twinned with the South African Police Service in the Transvaal township of Alexandra.

The Met, alongside the British High Commission in S.A., British Airways, and Charlton Athletic F.C., sponsors a football skills development training programme at Alexandra Stadium. Alexandra SAPS have introduced school police officers paralleling a programme first started by the Met in London which has been successful in reducing the offending rate amongst school-age children in the township. Higher-ups in the South African Police Service are hoping to introduce the programme Insp. Hynes has been involved with to other affected districts across South Africa.

The third MBE related to South Africa was awarded to Dr. John Edward Lancaster, a trustee and member of the Board of Directors of Sparrow Ministries, “for services to the victims of HIV/AIDS in South Africa”. Sparrow Ministries is an inter-denominational effort that provides care to children and adults who have been infected or affected by HIV and AIDS. Sparrow currently cares for over 225 children and over 80 adults.

The word conjures up majestic imagery: Windsor — the castle viewed from the Long Walk and the Royal Standard snapping above the Round Tower. At the same time, it has a strange tinge of domesticity to it, an almost middle-class quality. Perhaps a 1950s development of semi-detached suburban houses along a ‘Windsor Drive’. What on earth does the word mean?

Toponymists, those who practice the scientific study of place-names (what a fun bunch they would be on a rail journey), tell us the name comes from the Old English Windles-ore, or ‘winch by the riverside’. This seems appropriate, as the Thames is intimately linked with Windsor, winding through the Home Park and the town itself. The eponymous riverside winch was actually located in Old Windsor, the village three miles south of the town. During the reign of King Henry I, the royal household shifted upstream to ‘New’ Windsor, and most of the town took shape during the twelfth century.

The town met with hard times after the Reformation but rose in prominence from 1804, when George III moved in to the Castle, with two new army barracks being built shortly afterwards. George IV had the place transformed into the Windsor Castle we know today, through the work of the Gothic architect Jeffry Wyattville, a process which unfortunately meant the destruction of some of the baroque interiors from the age of Charles II. A devastating fire in 1992 led to a massive rebuilding and restoration program, and the Castle looks in better shape now than ever before.

The badge of the House of Windsor

Of course, while there’s the town of Windsor and Windsor Castle, one can’t think of ‘Windsor’ without considering the most famous aspect of the word: the House of Windsor. The name dates to 1917, at the height of the First World War when anti-German mass hysteria gripped Britain. The Royal Family decided to drop all its German titles, names, and styles, and other close relatives on the British side were urged to do the same.

While little is known about the decision-making process, the name of the castle by the Thames was chosen to replace the terribly German ‘Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’. On July 17, 1917, George V issued a Royal Proclamation declaring “Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all the descendants in the male line of Our said Grandmother Queen Victoria who are subjects of these Realms, other than female descendants who may marry or may have married, shall bear the said Name of Windsor”.

The Royal Family weren’t the only ones to “rebrand”: the head of the Royal Navy, the First Sea Lord Admiral Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, changed his name from ‘Battenberg’ to ‘Mountbatten’ and was forced to give up his princely status. In recompense George V made him Marquess of Milford Haven, Earl of Medina, and Viscount Alderney. Visiting his son George, he wrote in the guestbook ‘Arrived Prince Hyde, Departed Lord Jekyll’. Prince Louis’ eldest daughter had Alice married into the Greek royal family in 1903, and her son, Prince Philip of Greece & Denmark, married Princess Elizabeth who know reigns as Queen Elizabeth II.

What if the House of Windsor had not suffered from teutonophobia and had instead followed normal naming conventions? They would have kept the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, of course. The Mountbattens would have remained the Battenbergs and brought their name into the Greek royal family (who were, of course, Danish royalty, who were, of course, German), combining Battenberg with Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (themselves a branch of the House of Oldenburg). Since Prince Philip married into the British branch of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, this would have created a royal house with the rather charming (if inconvenient) name of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg-Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The SHSGBSCG would have been a cadet branch of the larger house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, of which the current head is Andreas, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony (b. 1943).

The Windsors, as they are today, are the reigning family of sixteen independent countries, all of whom share Elizabeth II as their monarch. While Elizabeth II is the most famous member of the House of Windsor, she is (arguably) not its head. As the most senior agnatic descendant of Victoria & Albert, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, would be the head of the House of Windsor, but despite this I suspect convention would concede Elizabeth is the head-honcho.

When she ascended the throne, the Queen re-iterated the use of Windsor as the name of the house and family. This was much to the irritation of Lord Louis Mountbatten, but at a later date the Queen stipulated that any of her descendants who did not enjoy the title of prince or princess, or the style of Royal Highness, would have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

All that fuss over windles-ore, a riverside winch.

THE NEW WORLD has such a republican reputation these days. Even though there remain thirteen monarchies in the Americas, concentrated in the Caribbean, there are only three monarchs between them (all, curiously, women: Elizabeth II, Beatrix, and Margrethe II). But it’s usually forgotten that the Americas have had two great empires of their own: the Empire of Brazil in South America and the Empire of Mexico in North America.

Napoleon’s Peninsular War in Spain had caused quite a ruckus in the Spanish Americas, where liberals had seized the opportunity to wage long, rebellious wars of independence with fluctuating levels of popular support. In Mexico, two of the rebel generals, Agustín de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero composed a plan to change the balance of power in the Spanish empire as a whole while simultaneously securing Mexican independence. The three main aims of the ‘Plan of Iguala’ were: 1) Catholicism as the established religion, 2) The independence of Mexico, and 3) The end of legal distinctions between the races; summed up as “Religión, Independencia, y Unión”.

But the larger scheme of the Plan was to convince King Ferdinand VII to move to Mexico and become Emperor of Mexico, shifting the center of power in the Spanish empire from Madrid to Mexico City. If Ferdinand would not accept, then the crown would be offered to his brother and the rest of his family down the line until someone accepted, or if even that failed then to a member of another European dynasty.

Agustín I of the House of Iturbide, Emperor of Mexico

With the royalist forces in Mexico in retreat, the Viceroy of New Spain, Juan O’Donojú y O’Rian, considered the compromise the best offer on hand for preserving Spain’s monarchic dominion in the New World. O’Donojú met with Iturbide and Guerrero and worked out the Treaty of Córdoba, establishing Mexico as an independent empire, on August 24, 1821. Until Ferdinand could be persuaded to Mexico, a regency council was established including O’Donojú, Iturbide, and Guerrero.

Ferdinand, however, had other ideas. The Cortes Generales resolved that the Treaty was illegal, null, and void, and made plans to reconquer Mexico. He forbade any member of his family from accepting the offer of the Mexican throne. Since his restoration to the throne after the Bonapartist interlude, the King’s star was in the ascendant on the European stage, and no other dynasty dared accept the perhaps tempting crown of the Mexican empire.

The Mexican solution was to find an emperor from amongst their own number, and as President of the Regency, Gen. Iturbide was the obvious choice. On May 19, 1822, the Congress proclaimed the general as their emperador. On July 21, amidst great solemnity in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico, he was crowned Agustín I of the House of Iturbide, By Divine Providence and the Congress of the Nation, Emperor of Mexico.

The Emperor Agustín and the Empress Ana María

It didn’t take long for things to turn sour. Later in the year, the republican factions in the Congress began to raise a revolutionary tumult against the Emperor, and in response he dissolved the body. The newspaper of the Masonic lodges, El Sol, joined in the fray against Agustín, and the United States, disturbed by the prospect of an American Catholic empire on their doorstep, supported the rebel republicans. The economic situation turned dire because the European nations allied to Ferdinand VII refused to trade with Mexico, and the Emperor’s own mismanagement began to turn the landowning classes against him.

Faced with the opposition of liberals & republicans, the old royalists still loyal to Ferdinand, the European allies of the Spanish, and the neighbouring (and increasingly powerful) United States, Agustín’s Mexican Empire could not hold. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and Gen. Guadalupe Victoria launched the ‘Plan of Casa Mata’ — the abolition of the monarch and the declaration of a republic — in December 1822. The imperial forces at first put up a good show of defiance against the rebels, but the commander of the Emperor’s army turned traitor to the rebels. The Emperor sued for peace with the two generals and met their conditions. Agustín I of the House of Iturbide called a Congress and his first act after its convening was to offer his abdication. May 11, 1823, the ex-emperor boarded a Livorno-bound ship and eventually settled in England.

Iturbide’s imperial adventure was not to end there, however. The situation in Mexico only continued to deteriorate, and often contradictory reports were sent back to Europe about the possibility of a Spanish reconquest and Mexico’s willingness to receive its former Emperor. Iturbide decided to return, and landed on July 14, 1824, alongside his wife, children, and their chaplain. An enthusiastic crowd greeted his return, but he was soon arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed. The Republic was in the ascendant, for now.

The republican regimes were no more successful at running Mexico than the Emperor; indeed worse. English-speaking settlers began to settle between the Rio Grande and the United States border and won a war that established the Republic of Texas’s independence from Mexico. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and a year later the U.S. declared war on Mexico. By 1847, the U.S. Army had captured Mexico City and the Mexicans finally sued for peace. They agreed to sell their northern territories to the United States, which now reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In 1859, a delegation of Mexican nobility and other prominent citizens (above), led by José Pablo Martinez del Rio, proposed to Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria that he become Emperor of Mexico. But the delegation had neither power nor authority, and so the Archduke demurred, preferring to organise a botanical expedition to Brazil.

The various Mexican governments had also racked up a large debt from various European powers. In 1861, the governments of Great Britain, France, and Spain concluded a treaty agreeing a united course of action in seeking loan repayments from Mexico. The three powers blockaded Mexican ports and landed small forces. Soon, however, Napoleon III ordered a full-scale invasion of Mexico — Britain and Spain realised the whole enterprise had been a cover for French imperial ambitions and subsequently pulled out of the endeavour. While the French troops suffered an initial defeat at the Battle of Puebla, still celebrated by Mexicans as Cinco de Mayo, more soldiers poured into the country. Over the course of a year, during which the French Foreign Legion arrived and fought their legendary Battle of Camarón, the French made steady success until they finally entered Mexico City on June 7, 1863. A junta of Mexicans was promptly organised to declare an Empire, and the proposal to Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian was made yet again.

The Archduke was an intriguing man. He was the second son of the second son of the Austrian emperor (even though his elder brother Franz-Josef eventually inherited the throne). He was interested in the sciences, especially botany, and was made commander of the Austrian navy at twenty-two. In 1857 he married Princess Charlotte of Belgium, the daughter of King Leopold I, and orchestrated the Novara scientific expedition of 1857–1859 which completed the first Austrian circumnavigation of the globe.

Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico

With the French army in control of most of Mexico, the imperial proposal was deemed acceptible. As the French continued to battle the republican forces of Benito Juárez, the Archduke landed at Veracruz on May 21, 1864 and was proclaimed Maximilian the First, Emperor of Mexico. Unfortunately, the continued political instability meant that plans for a great coronation in the Metropolitan Cathedral had to be shelved. Maximilian and Carlota chose Chapultepec Castle as their imperial residence, and ordered the construction of the Paseo de la Emperatriz from there to the Zócalo at the center of the city. Childless themselves, the imperial couple adopted two grandsons of Agustín I as their own children: Don Agustín de Iturbide y Green, intended to be the heir, and his cousin Don Salvador de Iturbide y Marzán.

The Emperor at first proved to be a disappointment to the conservatives, as he upheld the land reform proposals and the extension of the electorate to non-landowners. Maximilian was concerned not with his own vanity or power but with first securing the peace in Mexico. He offered an amnesty to Juárez if he would swear allegiance to the Crown, and even offered to make him prime minister, but Juárez refused.

Before the Emperor had time to consolidate his rule, a surprisingly disadvantageous event happened to the northeast: the American Civil War ended. Maximilian welcomed thousands of Confederate refugees and offered them grants of land, as he did to other settlers from Austria and the German lands. But now that the Civil War was over, the government of the United States began to set their sights on destabilising the Mexican Empire. They sent arms to Juárez and his ally Porfirio Diaz, who hypocritically condemned the Emperor’s rule as a foreign intervention in Mexican affairs. Despite having just concluded the most bloody war in American history, the government in Washington then ordered a significant buildup of troops along the frontier with Mexico, to give the impression of preparing an invasion.

The cost to Napoleon III of maintaining an army in Mexico grew ever more costly, and the French emperor was distracted by an increasing obsession with his rivals, the Prussians. When Napoleon III decided to withdraw his troops from Mexico, Maximilian sent the Empress Carlota to Europe to try to convince him to change his mind. She sought assistance for Mexico in Paris, Vienna, and Rome, but was unsuccessful everywhere in obtaining anything but sympathy, and suffered a nervous breakdown at her failure.

Napoleon III urged Maximilian to quit Mexico, but he refused to abandon his faithful supporters, who were still numerous. Numerous, but unlucky in battle, and demoralised by the withdrawal of the French. Maximilian was captured by republican forces on May 16, 1867, and subsequently tried and sentenced to death. The sentence caused an outcry all over Europe, and even liberals like Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi sent appeals for the Emperor’s life to be spared, but Juárez refused them all.

June 19, 1867 was the day appointed for the imperial execution. Still thinking not of himself but of others, he uttered his last words aloud: “May my blood be the last to flow for the good of this land. ¡Viva Mexico!”

The Emperor’s final thoughts, however, were of his poor wife who was never to return from Europe. Before the executioners opened fire, Maximilian was heard to utter “Poor Carlota”. The Empress survived, living until 1927, but the last Empire of Mexico was gone. The Emperor’s body was taken back to Austria aboard SMS Novara, the same ship whose circumnavigation of the globe he had organised.

The last Emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II (usually anglicised as ‘Montezuma’) suffered an ignominious end: defeated by the Spanish, some accounts have him being stoned by his former subjects, while others claim he died of starvation, refusing to eat food not worthy of an emperor, still more claim Cortés had him killed. Many of his descendants embraced Christianity and found favour from Mexico’s new overlord, the King of Spain.

The fallen leader’s daughter, Doña Isabel Moctezuma Techichpotzin Ixcaxochitzin (Her two latter Nahuatl names meaning “Lord’s Daughter” and “cotton-flower”), was known for her excessive generosity to the Augustinian friars, to the extent that she was actually asked to stop donating.

Moctezuma II’s son, Don Pedro de Moctezuma Tlacahuepan Ihualicahuaca also embraced Christianity and his son (M2′s grandson) Don Diego Luis de Moctezuma Ihuitl Temoc moved to Spain. Don Diego Luis’s son Don Pedro Tesifón de Moctezuma y de la Cueva was created Count of Moctezuma by Philip IV of Spain in 1627. In 1766, the holder of this title was named a Grandee of Spain.

In 1865 this line of descent was further honoured by being elevated to Duke of Moctezuma by Isabella II of Spain. The current head of this branch of the House of Moctezuma is Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Jiménez, 5th Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo, 15th Marquis of Tenebrón and Viscount of Ilucán.

Another daughter of Moctezuma II, Princess Xipaguacin Moctezuma, married Juan de Grau, Baron of Toleriu and died in Toleriu in 1537. Her descendants compose the noble house of Grau-Moctezuma de Toleriu which continues today.

Among the other Spanish nobles who count the blood of Moctezuma II in their veins are the Dukes of Ahumada, the Dukes of Abrantes, the Counts de la Enjarada, and the Counts of Miravalle. The last family were granted life pensions by the Kingdom of Spain in 1550, which continued to be paid by the government of Mexico until 1934 when the administration under President Abelardo L. Rodríguez suspended the payments.

Charles was born the son of the second son of the Emperor’s brother and so the possibility of him ever ascending to the Austro-Hungarian throne seemed distant, perhaps even remote. When the great Pope St. Pius X received the young Charles, however, he said:

I bless Archduke Charles, who will be the future Emperor of Austria and will help lead his countries and peoples to great honor and many blessings–but this will not become obvious until after his death.

One saint prophesying the future of another.

A particularly appropriate way of praying for the holy emperor’s intercession would be to say the novena composed by the Emperor Charles Prayer League for Peace Among the Nations (or Kaiser Karl Gebetsliga für den Völkerfrieden), which can be found here.

Pilgrims can also venerate his relics or pray at shrines dedicated to Charles in Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Belgium, Bohemia, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Lebanon, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Chile, and of course on the Portuguese island of Madeira where he died and is entombed.

Index: Charles of Austria

In accordance with tradition, knights are appointed to the Order of the Thistle on the feast of Scotland’s patron saint, the Apostle Andrew, but they are not formally installed until the following summer when the Queen is in residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. And so this past July, the ‘Thistle Service’ took place at St. Giles’, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, and two new knights were inducted into Scotland’s highest honour and most exalted order of chivalry.

The knights, dames, and officers, dressed in their flowing velvet mantles of green along with their hats and collars, gather across Parliament Square in the Library of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet (Scotland’s professional body of solicitors), part of the Parliament House complex that long ago housed the kingdom’s legislature, and is now home to her courts. In Parliament Square itself, the Royal Company of Archers (the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland) forms a guard of honour and is accompanied by the band of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

When the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive, the Chancellor of the Thistle and the Dean of the Thistle accompany them to the Signet Library to join the other knights. They then process to St. Giles’ where the Thistle Service takes place. A short reception usually follows back in the Signet Library before the members of the Order retire to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and enjoy a proper luncheon as guests of the Sovereign.

The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle has a long and varied history, though precisely how long is a matter of some dispute. The oldest tradition is that Achaius King of Scots was engaging the Saxon king Aethelstan in battle at Aethelstaneford when the Cross of Saint Andrew appeared in the sky in A.D. 786. After achieving a victory, Achaius founded the Order of the Thistle under the patronage of the saint. Another story posits Achaius as founding the order in 809 in commemoration of an alliance with the Emperor Charlemagne, while another battle-related story has Robert the Bruce re-instituting the order after Bannockburn. James III (1451–1458) certainly adopted the thistle as his personal emblem and may have established the order. Perhaps more likely is that James V, who was a member of the Order of Golden Fleece and France’s Order of St. Michael, created it since Scotland had no order of chivalry along the lines of other kingdoms of the day.

What is certain is that James VII on May 29, 1687 issued letters patent “reviving and restoring the Order of the Thistle to its full glory, lustre and magnificency”. (King James, you will recall, was the man after whom New York is named). The King of Scotland was the Sovereign of the Order, and twelve knights were to be appointed, later expanded to sixteen. Queens were originally excluded unless it was a queen regnant, but George VI made his queen a member in 1937, and in 1987 Elizabeth II allowed women to become regular members of the Order of the Thistle (doing the same for England’s Order of the Garter at the same time). Outside the sixteen-member limit are a small number of extra knights from the ranks of the Royal Family.

Aside from the Sovereign and the knights, there are a number of officers appointed. The Dean of the Thistle is given the style of “The Very Reverend” and from 1886 until 1969 the Dean of the Chapel Royal was given this role, now wisely separate. The Chancellor is usually appointed from among the knights and tends to be one of the more senior members. The Gentleman Usher of the Green Rod is the order’s usher and the office is usually granted to a retired military man with a long record of service. Lord Lyon King of Arms, Scotland’s senior herald, is the King of Arms of the Order of the Thistle. There is also a Secretary of the Order, although Lord Lyon is almost always appointed to this office as well.

When the Order of the Thistle was created (or re-created) in 1687, the King directed that the Abbey Church at Holyrood be converted into a chapel for the order. The classical design of the chapel’s fittings (above) reflected the vogue of the day, but fit poorly with the gothic design of the former Benedictine abbey. James VII was deposed by the Whig coup a year later, however, and rioters sacked the church and destroyed its interior.

In 1911, a new Thistle Chapel (above) was inaugurated at St. Giles’ to the design of the noted Scots architect Robert Lorimer (father to the sculptor Hew and brother to the painter John Henry Lorimer). Each knight has a stall in the chapel, but the armorial banners are hung in the body of the cathedral itself rather than in the chapel. In each stall is a metal plate depicting the arms and name of the knight who occupied the particular stall from the construction of the chapel onwards. (Just outside the chapel are inscribed all the names of the members of the Order up to 1911). The current members vary widely in their origins. The knight with the highest seniority is Andrew Douglas Alexander Thomas Bruce, 11th Earl of Elgin and 15th Earl of Kincardine and a Scottish nobleman of long lineage. The most recent knight appointed is Narendra Babubhai Patel, Baron Patel who, since he was born in Tanganyika to Indian parents, is both the first African Scot and the first Asian Scot to be raised to the Order of the Thistle.

“We have been waiting for this decision for a long time,” Khosi Fhumulani Kutama, the Chairman of the National House of Traditional Leaders told the media. “It is important that people accept it not only for the institution of traditional leadership but for the whole country.”

But the indications so far are that the six monarchies will take the government to court in an attempt to forestall the demotion.

Up to this point, the most significant spate of mediatisation was during the Napoleonic era, when Talleyrand arranged the demotion and reorganisation of conquered German lands.