GREAT BRITAIN: Honor System

Two and a half centuries ago an ugly rumor swept Britain. It damned the royal son just born to Queen Mary and arrogant, Roman Catholic King James II as a changeling, slipped into the royal childbed in a warming pan. The rumor was later proved false, but for a while it served to bolster the claim of James’s Protestant daughter Mary to a throne which she and her husband William of Orange soon conquered anyway. Spirited off to France, the traduced infant became “the Old Pretender.”

Ever since then, the reigning family of Britain has been careful to have a government official present in the royal bedchamber to witness the births of royal heirs. During Victoria’s confinements Prince Albert succeeded in banishing the government man into an antechamber, but the official (usually His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Home Affairs) was always called in to view the newcomer at its first gasp.

Last week, as the birth of Princess Elizabeth’s baby drew near, the old custom was smacked down before it even had a chance to raise its head. “The attendance of a minister of the crown at a birth in the royal family,” said Buckingham Palace in a succinct announcement, “is not a statutory requirement … It is merely the survival of an archaic custom, and the King feels it is unnecessary to continue [the] practice.”

Home Secretary Chuter Ede was making plans to stay at home and get the news by telephone.