Culture is often a bearer of such practical wisdom. Indeed, the reason we listen to the experienced and wise, despite their lack of formal education, is that their experience has imparted practical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom is implicit in this down to earth practicality. Although the village elder might not be able to say why a certain behaviour is virtuous, her account, being correct, could be elaborated to reveal a true and natural principle. Extending this to an entire culture, we have one basis for social conservatism. The accumulated experience of ages has a sort of implicit wisdom to it, which can be potentially made into a theory, even though nobody may have yet done so. However, this isn’t enough, lest we be agnostic pragmatists like David Hume. For the one clinging to classical ideas, all practical wisdom has a theory behind it whose objective springs we can discover through reason.
One such cultural heirloom that is greatly misunderstood these days is aristocracy. Most cultures in human history have had aristocracies of some type. A noble class existed in ancient Mesopotamia, Persia, Mesoamerica, the Andes, Egypt, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, among the Celts, as well as mediaeval and early modern Europe. Indeed, aristocracy of some type has been one of the most common institutions of humanity across history. Yet in the last three hundred years, aristocracies have shrunk, from the predominant ruling elites of the world to disempowered and mocked cliques, clinging to privileges regarded as archaic.
Britain is one of the few countries that still has an institutional aristocracy. But its influence is ever diminishing, its numbers ever depleting, and its ideals waned to nothing. I doubt many would contradict me if I said its public image is far from positive. I believe the cause of this decline is that it is a remnant of a previous ethical outlook, one rooted in ancient Greek and Roman thought, and Christianised in the Middle Ages. This outlook collapsed in Britain during the eighteenth century (before it did in most of Europe). Whig liberal philosophers like John Locke chipped at its foundations. The aristocracy as a result became an institution without a purpose, embedded in a new society totally hostile to it.
So, what are these foundations? I think three: human goodness as function, a communitarian spirit, and a family-centred life. Really, it’s only the first, functional goodness, the latter two being elaborations of it.
Goodness as a function is simple. To be good is to function properly according to a species’ ideal. In the same way a good hammer is good at banging nails, and a good oven at baking bread, so a good human being is good at “human-ing” to coin a verb. The question ‘what is goodness?’ for ancient and mediaeval thinkers is almost invariably ‘what’s the function of humans?’ Yet because humans have reason, unlike animals who merely follow their instincts, our function involves more than survival and reproduction. We make art and science, and can appreciate the value of things through understanding. We are the animal that is happy with a garden and a library, as Cicero says.
This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.
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Slavophilism: The Russian Model for Anglo Conservatives
‘The idea is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
We are all Blairites now. It is a horrible thought, especially to those of us who despise the Blairite constitutional project: from gutting the Lords to the creation of the devolved assemblies, and the paradoxical tension between the move towards localism and the edictal erasure of British ways of life. The sad reality is that we live in Blairite Britain, more than we live in Thatcherite Britain.
Such a thought, as uncomfortable as it is, must be the starting point of all conservative discussions, whether they are concerned with strategy, identity, or even over what we aim to ‘conserve’, because we can only begin to know where to go by knowing where we are. David Foster Wallace once gave a talk to a graduating class in which he told the following story:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “morning boys, how’s the water?” and the two young fish swim on for a bit and eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “what the hell is water?”
The story is intended to remind us of a simple truth: that the most obvious realities are the hardest to talk about, because they are so essential and taken for granted in our daily lives. Blairism is the cultural water we swim in, and the current that drives us inexorably towards the next crisis we cannot resolve, because Blairism holds the conflictual beliefs that government should be in every part of our lives, but that it should be so completely and utterly impotent. Think about how difficult it is to do anything in modern Britain, but that you absolutely must do it whilst holding the hand of the government.
Regardless of Blairism’s inherent contradictions, we must not ignore the tide, even if only to swim against it. How do we do this? In Modern Culture, Sir Roger Scruton wrote that we cannot
return to a pre-Enlightenment world because the Enlightenment is so inherent to how we think about society, Man, government, culture and so on. Even those of us who are believers in faith must accept that the draperies were torn down; but only by realising they were torn down can you put them back up. So, rather than deny the legacies of the Enlightenment, Sir Roger says, we must accept that they are with us, and instead ‘live as if it matters eternally what we do: to obey the rites, the ceremonies and the customs that lend dignity to our actions and which lift them above the natural sphere’.
The philosophical movement that took this lesson to heart the most, in my opinion, was the Romantics. They did not pretend that the legacies of the Enlightenment were so easily eradicable nor so easily deniable; instead, they accepted that they lived in a changed world, but sought to use that change to re-suture man’s relationship with himself, to correct the deficiencies of the Enlightenment and the empty rationalism that it loved so irrationally.
The Romantic movement, by virtue of its own logic, was not universalist. The Enlightenment sought to be universal, to find laws and rules that governed Man in every circumstance and every place; but Romanticism, in reaction, favoured particularism, rootedness, and the cultural significance of place and people. In fact, so many of the nationalist movements of the nineteenth century owed more to the Romantics than they did to the Enlightenment (but again, only in the sense that the Enlightenment showed us that all humans are deserving of dignity and respect, they just choose to express that dignity in varied ways).
One such example of Romanticism that has always fascinated me emerged in Russia in the 1830s, more than anything because I believe that Russia then holds a multitude of lessons for Britain now. Early-nineteenth century Russia experienced what could only be described as an existential crisis: the Napoleonic Wars had damaged Russia’s understanding of herself as the great military power of Eastern Europe, and brought many ideas of universal brotherhood into contact with a society that did not even have the intellectual framework to accommodate such thoughts. But the crisis went deeper: as much as one hundred and fifty years before, Russian society was shaken by external ideas, more than any invasion could have hoped for, under the Reforms of Tsar Peter the Great. The Petrine Era of Russia saw cultural changes from the top – governmental reforms, military reforms, and technological innovation, much of which modernised Russia and made her into a Great Power; but these changes did not go unquestioned. In fact, many of the influential groups in Russia rebelled, sometimes violently, as in the Moscow Rising of the Streltsy in 1698.
The legacy of Peter’s reforms, however, were not felt until much later. Of course, all major cultural and social changes take time to really be felt at all, but the ‘short eighteenth century’ was a time of such rapid and dislocating change – across all of Europe, but especially in Russia – that many generations found themselves intellectually and culturally cut adrift from those who came immediately before them. Peter, pursuing a programme of Westernisation insisted, for instance, that the Russian court speak French, a language thought of as ‘intellectual’ (with good reason); dress like the Prussian court; rationalised the military along the Western European lines; built an entirely new town on a North Italian design (St. Petersburg – of course); and, in one of my favourite little quirks of history, outlawed beards in that city’s borders.
Cultural issues grow like pearls grow – a single grain of sand works its way into a mollusk, and irritates the mollusk in such a way that bacteria and calcium grows around it. Cultural changes irritate the social fabric of the community it works into; but we don’t have bacteria to grow around it, we only have each other. Yet we can understand cultural issues in the same way as a pearl – an irritant works its way in, and we grow that irritant into a recognisable tangible entity, by coalescing around it and growing it in such a way that it becomes instantly recognisable.
This is what led to the Slavophiles. Petrine Russia thought it was undefeatable – and from the Great Northern War onwards, it very much was – until Napoleon came roaring in. But the Napeolonic Wars did two things for Russia, both with the same outcome; the first was importing many ideas into Russia that challenged the existing understanding of Russian political and social structures; the second was, in the same way Soviet soldiers pushed Nazi Germany back into Europe, Petrine soldiers followed Napoleon back into Europe. In both instances, educated Russian men saw the way Europeans lived, and realised that their society was not the improved form that their reforming leaders dreamt of.
And just as with a grain of sand in a pearl, the cultural dislocation of Peter’s reforms that had long irritated the reactionary elements of eighteenth-century Russia, was seized on by many of the early-nineteenth century intelligentsia as a means of explaining the situation in which they had found themselves. This fermented a series of backlashes, intellectual and cultural, that led to an explosion of political movements, such as the terrorists, the socialists, the populists (narodniki), and – most importantly – the Slavophiles. The Slavophiles looked at the state of Russia in the 1830s and considered the Petrine reforms to be an unmitigated failure: they had not kept Russia at pace with the rest of Europe; they had dislocated the cultural and social elites from the people over whom they ruled; and worst of all, they had severed the Russian people from their own past. Peter the Great had made the mistake of proto-enlightenment liberalism, that there were universal standards of humanity against which peoples’ behaviours, cultures and laws could be judged, and in doing so, he had not attempted to “reform” Russia’s venerable history, but deny its very existence, and begin from scratch.
Instead, the Slavophiles urged a return to pre-Petrine, Muscovite-style Russianism, an embracing of folk styles, food, clothing, language, and so on – not to petrify them into a living museum of nostalgia, but to rectify the mistakes of the previous century, and offer an alternative direction into the future. This precipitated many of the following century’s movements: for instance, the emphasis on the folk of Russia encouraged the nascent populism into radicalism; the embracing of the Russian commune form of land management gave Russian socialism a concrete model from which to work; and the idea of Russia taking an entirely unique path of development to Europe created the intellectual condition for Lenin and the communists to believe Russia could “leapfrog” past the bourgeois liberalism of the continent and move straight to socialism. This is not to say the Slavophiles were socialists – to even say so is to misunderstand the subtle relativism that denies such universalist theories in itself. Indeed, many Slavophiles were ardent absolute monarchists, with the famous Memorandum to the Tsar by Alexei Aksakov in 1831 claiming that Russia’s unique place in history stems from its Orthodox Christianity, the invitation by the Kievan Rus to the Varangians to rule them, and the steppes shaping the Russian mindset to one of boundless opportunism (something that Berdayev later used as a comparison to the American prairies and Manifest Destiny).
The consequences of the Slavophile movement might not be palatable, but their inspiration is something that Anglo conservatives need to pay attention to. Their movement began by an important moment of clarity: the political reforming project of the previous age had failed. It is no secret that the emerging conservatism in Britain despises the Blairite consensus, and in many ways that means we are already doing as the Slavophiles did: only by recognising that we are in Blairite Britain can we undo its disastrous effects. But we need to go further; we cannot simply throw our hands up and accept Blairism as the present condition of Britain, but we need to see it for what it truly is. It is a complete and utter separation of Britain from our past, a denial of that past’s validity, and an attempt to create a new political identity on entirely alien lines.
Moving into the future requires acceptance of the present circumstance; one of the silliest phrases is that the clock cannot be wound back, when the truth is, if the clock is showing the wrong time, it is imperative that you wind it back. And just as taking the wrong turn and continuing down the wrong path will only get you further from where you want to go, so too must you turn back. We are all Blairites now; and just as alcoholics have to admit they’ll never recover from their alcoholism, we have to admit we will likely never recover from Blairism, but will always “be” recovering.
But I do not want to be defeatist; the first step of recovery is acceptance. We need to accept that we live in Blairite Britain, and only then can we begin tearing it apart. We need to start ripping out its core parts: the communications act (2003); the equality act (2010); the Supreme Court; the devolved assemblies; the abolition of the hereditary aristocracy; the fox hunting ban; the smoking ban; in short, all of the components of a foreign way of life that have been foisted upon the British people by our own misguided maniacal reformers. It is time to go to war; but you can only do that if you accept the war is already going on.
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His Royal Mistress
We may think of our ancestors as prudes when it comes to sex, but that’s not the case. A decent percentage of women were pregnant on their wedding day. People like Benjamin Franklin wrote guides on the best ways to have sex. Lewd ballads and jokes spread around the court.
The most prominent example of this is the royal mistress. Often young and beautiful, these women would service the king in ways he may not get from his wife. They would provide wit, charm and companionship. In France, a mistress could become Maîtresse-en-titre, an official appointment that would bring her her own apartments. It’s less official in other countries but these women were the most prominent ladies of the court after the official royals.
Let’s dive into the world of royal mistresses.
Why a mistress?
Royal marriages were alliances. As a rule, love would come after the wedding, if it all. Factors of a match included wealth, geography, religion, security and chances of children. Compatibility rarely factored into it. The brides were often in their early teens, sometimes younger, with their husbands sometimes a lot older. You met at the aisle or just before. It didn’t matter if they weren’t attractive or the right age- you married them.
With love out of the question, a king would turn to a mistress in order to have companionship. They’d be able to enjoy the sex they had with them as well as just being around someone they’re on good terms with.
A lot of the time, it was expected that a king would have a mistress and would be regarded as odd as he didn’t. A king could love and care for his wife but take a mistress either out of lust or obligation. For most of their marriage, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were pretty happy, yet he had mistresses. George II cared for his wife Caroline of Ansbach but still took lovers. On her deathbed Caroline asked him to remarry, but George replied that he’d only have mistresses. To love one’s wife was seen as unfashionable and having a mistress was seen as a sign of masculinity. George III being a loving, faithful husband to Queen Charlotte and spending time with his children was seen as rather odd.
Who were the mistresses?
Mistresses could come from all walks of life, from working-class girls to the highest nobility, though the latter was much more common. It tended to be easier to meet women of their own social standing. They were sometimes already known to the king or perhaps caught his eye at court. A particularly ambitious family might introduce their daughter in hopes of reaping the awards.
Beauty was almost always universal, but looks aren’t always the key factor. It was said that James II’s mistresses Arabella Churchill and the Countess of Dorchester were not beautiful. Instead these women were lively, intelligent, witty and charming. They were there not just to sleep with the king but to be companions. They’d attend parties together and have a drink after dinners. These women tended to be well educated and from political families which meant that they could hold their own. The most powerful mistresses would have political influences.
Marital status and virginity would not matter. Kings chose virgins, unmarried women, married women and widows. The husband of a mistress may well have been paid off and given handsome positions, sometimes they were sent away from court. Some were happy, others ambivalent or even angry. Either way, there wasn’t much they could do. They were the husband, but the king was the king.
Despite the strict sexual norms of the era, families of mistresses were often delighted that their daughters and sisters were chosen. The families of mistresses received new titles, positions and land. Thomas Boleyn, already a competent courtier, was showered with responsibilities as Henry VIII fell for Anne. Arabella Churchill’s family was thrilled for her, as she was considered extremely plain and even ugly.
What were the benefits of being a mistress?
In France, the Maîtresse-en-titre was an official title and position. The mistress would have her own apartments. She would often substitute for the queen if she was pregnant or ill.
Mistresses who weren’t Maîtresse-en-titre or even French would also be kept in luxury. They would receive money along with jewels, clothes and other luxurious gifts. Their families would also not be the only ones to receive titles and responsibilities. The mistresses themselves would receive new titles. Barbara Villiers, one of Charles II’s many, many mistresses, was made Duchess of Cleveland in her own right. Another was made Duchess of Portsmouth. Both also had other titles along with pensions and allowances.
Unmarried mistresses would often be given advantageous marriages, either as a gift or a parting present. Bessie Blount, Henry VIII’s mistress and the mother of his illegitimate son, was married to an Earl after her service. Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, mistress of Francis I of France, was married to a man whom the king created a Duke.
The politically-minded mistress might seek to influence. A close mistress who had the ear and the bed of the king would be their most powerful counsel. Those seeking to speak to the king often went to the mistress in order to get their foot in the door. A mistress could close or open the door to anyone, a gatekeeper in a way only a queen could match. Madame de Pompadour, famous mistress of Louis XV, was extraordinarily powerful. She would appoint and fire ministers along with other responsibilities. Barbara Villiers, lover of Charles II, and Diana de Poitiers, lover of Henry II of France, both used their influence politically.
If a mistress had a child that was acknowledged by the king as his, then there was a chance that child would be given titles and good marriages. Some illegitimate children even married royalty. They would be given prominent positions in the military and clergy.
What were the drawbacks of being a mistress?
Being a mistress wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. A mistress was dependent upon the whims of the king. On tiring of her, he could cast her aside without giving her a husband or monetary assets. Plenty of mistresses, even the popular ones, would be cast aside at a moment’s notice.
You also had the reputation of being either a fornicating or adulterous woman. Many noblemen and royals had mistresses, but it was the women who were blamed. There were also reasons for the mistress to be concerned. They would become unpopular if they were seen as taking advantage of the king or supporting the wrong causes. Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III, was a young woman accused of manipulating an older king still mourning his beloved wife. Jane Shore, lover of Edward IV, was forced to do public penance.
There was also little choice. Some mistresses tried to attract kings from the very beginning whilst others were pursued. Louis XV’s lover Louise de La Vallière was an extremely pious Catholic who felt awful for having unmarried sex with a married king. She felt so terrible that she entered a convent after she’d had their fifth child. Louise was reportedly an extremely kind and naive woman who never asked for special treatment.
If you had a child with the king and he did not recognise the baby, then you had a bastard child on your hands. If you were married then the husband would automatically assume fatherhood, whether he was the actual father or not. If you were unwed then there was a chance you were seen as damaged goods, ruining marital prospects.
What did the queen think?
Unfortunately for the king’s wife, she had basically no choice. He would have mistresses whether she liked it or not. She would likely have been raised with the understanding of mistresses and if she didn’t then she would soon learn. The queen, of course, would not be allowed to take a lover of her own. Queens who did or were accused of having lovers were exiled, or even executed in the cases of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.
Kings were expected not to flaunt their mistresses too openly around their wives, but they would definitely be aware of their existence. Queens would often have them as ladies-in-waiting, either by choice or by the command of their husband. Catherine of Braganza, the tragic and unfortunate wife of Charles II, was forced to accept Barbara Villiers in her court. Catherine tried to protest but Charles put his foot down. She was so angry that she threatened to return to Portugal, to which Charles responded by sending her courtiers home. He did eventually soften and treated Catherine with much more respect in their marriage, mistresses aside. Charles would side with her over mistresses.
Madame de Pompadour was always friendly and respectful of Queen Marie, who in turn liked her. This was a sharp contrast from previous mistresses who had been openly hostile to their queen. George II’s wife, Caroline of Ansbach, cleared his mistresses before he took up with them. Interestingly, George was close to Caroline and likely only took mistresses because it was expected of him.
At the end of the day, queens tended to have one security- they were the legitimate wives under law. Their sons-or daughters- would be the monarch one day. Even the most libertine of kings knew they had to spend time with their wives.
That is not to say all queens were so tolerant. Eleanor of Aquitaine got so sick of her husband’s adultery that it was part of the reason she tried to remove him from the throne. Anne Boleyn flew into a rage when she saw Henry VIII and Jane Seymour together, despite the fact that it was how she’d managed to become Queen.
Probably the most notable rebellious Queen was Isabella of France, wife to Edward II. Isabella was only a child of twelve when she landed on English shores to marry the twenty-four year old Edward. At their wedding feast, Edward sat with his likely lover Piers Gaveston. He also gave Gaveston jewellery that was meant to be Isabella’s. Isabella was furious and complained to her father, who interceded on her behalf.
While Isabella would come to accept Gaveston, Edward’s next favourite would become her enemy. Hugh le Despenser was initially exiled after becoming too powerful, but soon returned. He effectively ruled England with Edward and was a tyrannical man. Isabella returned to France and raised an army with her lover Roger Mortimer. They were supported by the barons, who despised the Despenser family. Hugh le Despenser the Younger and his father were executed. Edward was forced to abdicate and locked in a castle; he soon died under mysterious circumstances. His and Isabella’s son Edward took over, with the Queen as his regent. Three years later, Edward III had Mortimer executed and Isabella was imprisoned for two years.
The history of the royal mistress is a fascinating one. These women (and men) have attained glory and privilege as well as despair and derision. Some would provide their king with more children than the queen did. Others were fleeting. Some would become Queen themselves. All in all, there were more to royal mistresses than sex and lust.
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Against Republicanism | Aidan Scott
Many Conservatives have noticed a worrying trend in polling recently. YouGov suggests that support for the Monarchy is falling, especially among younger people. For the first time in British history 19-24 year olds apparently support having an elected head of state instead of a hereditary one. When combined with His Highness the Prince of Wales’s constantly mediocre approval ratings, a grim future seems to loom ahead of us. Many of my colleagues have dismissed these signs as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps they are right, but I cannot help but be worried, and my worry has driven me to write this article in defence of Monarchy against the evil that haunts modern Britain: Republicanism.
In Britain, and I do not intend to comment on any other nation in this article, we have been ruled by Kings, Queens, and occasionally Emperors and Empresses, since written records began. Because of this it seems fair to regard Monarchy, in one form or another, as the native political system of the British peoples. Whilst our Monarchs have often been foriegn, the Throne has always been a native institution, never forced on us. The same cannot be said of Parliament, a Norman-French perversion of the Anglo-Saxon Witan. The only period where every part of Britain was not ruled by a Monarch was during Oliver Cromwell’s brief stint as Lord Protector during the interregnum, where he established himself as a hereditary Absolutist ruler, a King in all but name and legitimacy. As we all know, this unprecedented period was so terrible that after Cromwell’s death Charles Stuart, son of the previous King who Parliament murdered, was asked to come home from France and be Crowned King Charles II. The only time in history where Monarchy was abolished lasted a few short decades, and ended with Monarchy’s restoration.
I believe one of the most important reasons to defend Monarchy in Britain is because it is one of the few fully domestic institutions left. Indeed, it is the domestic institution, it acts as an immaterial liferope stretching back thousands of years, on one end it is held by our ancestors, and on the other end it is held by us today. Whilst in the past we may have had more ropes strung between us, none were as important as the Throne, and all others have been cut in the name of reform and progress. If we choose to let go we lose our last real connection to our forefathers, forcing us to drift aimlessly into the future like a raft untethered from a larger ship. Some would argue, of course, that just because a system is native does not necessarily lead to its being good and worth protecting. I admit that this is true in some cases; to the Aztecs human sacrifice was native, and so too was widow-burning native to the Indians. However, a system being native almost always acts as a reason in favour of its preservation, as it is these unique elements that make each nation recognisable against one another, or connects lands far apart which share common heritage. The Throne simultaneously differentiates us from our neighbours, whilst also ties us together with our friends in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and many other nations who share the Queen as their Head of State. Until Monarchy is proven completely rotten it must stay, for our ancestors sake as much as ours.
Many have already written on the economic benefits the Monarchy brings for Britain. I find these arguments boring and unconvincing. For example, they often imply that we should support abolition if the Monarchy cost more than it brought in, an idea I find abhorrent. Instead an argument I find far more convincing, and one I hope Republicans will struggle to argue against, is the fact that the Monarchy acts as a foundation for every law in the country. Britain is well known for our unwritten “constitution”. Instead of writing a single document to clarify everything from rights to how Parliament is to sit we simply use the laws that our fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers and so on wrote to settle these issues. If we find these laws no longer suit us, we pass new ones that supersede and replace them. I love this system. It grants us both flexibility and structure. Even if at times it can be confusing, it is uniquely ours. However, unlike in America where their constitution essentially derives its authority from itself, our beautiful tangled mess of a constitution is built on the firm foundation of the Monarchy. It is the only institution that was not founded by some law, rather each law gains its force and legitimacy from the Monarch themself. When one keeps this in mind, it seems impossible for Abolition to occur without also requiring huge constitutional reform. Trying to get rid of the Monarchy without upsetting our delicate Constitutional arrangement, like trying to remove a house’s foundations without causing the whole thing to collapse. It would not be enough to pass an amendment removing any mention of the Monarch from every law ever passed, the powers of the Monarch would have to be given to someone, and who does the general public trust with such immense power; Boris Johnson? Keir Starmer? The House of Commons? None of these people have proven themselves to be as prudent or farsighted as Her Majesty the Queen or any of her predecessors and none are worthy of the powers of State. Do you trust anyone to rewrite the entire British Constitution and not make a mess of it, or worse edit it in a way that benefits their party and their interests? You clearly shouldn’t, and the safest way to ensure they don’t is to fight to protect the Monarchy at all costs.
There are many points that I have failed to make in this article. Whether because I found them overdone or unconvincing, I have not written any argument that cannot in part explain my own personal devotion to our greatest institution, or why I will fight for its continuation until I draw my last breath. Such arguments can be found elsewhere, and perhaps I will write a more general ‘Monarchist Manifesto’ at a later date. I only hope to have contributed a few somewhat unique points in this extremely important debate.
God save the Queen.
