COUNCIL OF UNITED COMMONWEALTH SOCIETIES OF TASMANIA
QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY LUNCHEON ADDRESS BY HER EXCELLENCY
PROFESSOR THE HONOURABLE KATE WARNER AM
GOVERNOR OF TASMANIA
LENAH VALLEY RSLA CLUB, TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2015
May I begin by thanking you for your invitation to Dick and me to this luncheon
to mark the birthday of Her Majesty The Queen. I am honoured and delighted,
as Patron of the Council of United Commonwealth Societies of Tasmania, to
have this opportunity to reflect upon the extraordinary reign of Queen
Elizabeth the Second, since 1952 the Head of State of the United Kingdom, of
the Commonwealth of Australia and 14 other Commonwealth realms. And at
the same time, I will take the opportunity to recount two pieces of historical
research relating to the monarchy that I had occasion to explore in my first six
months as Governor.
As we know The Queen celebrates two birthdays each year, her actual birthday
on 21 April – she was born in 1926 and this year turned 89 – and her official
birthday on a Saturday in June, which this year was marked on Saturday 13
June, with the traditional and fabulous Trooping the Colour parade.
Of course, what makes this year so different is that on Thursday 10 September
Queen Elizabeth the Second is scheduled to surpass the length of reign of her
great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, the current longest reigning British
monarch who from 1837 to 1901, reigned for a total of 63 years, 7 months and
2 days.
As of today, Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne for 63 years, 4 months
and 15 days. I think we can put this exceptional degree of longevity into its
proper perspective by considering it in the context of all of her predecessors,
not merely Victoria.
Officially it was King Offa, King of Mercia who became the first ruler to be
called “king of the English”.i That was in the year 757, making him the first of
64 English and UK Monarchs dating back nearly one thousand two hundred
and sixty years.
And of those 64 Monarchs just five have reigned for fifty or more years: King
Henry III between 1216 and 1272; King Edward III 1327 and 1377; King George
III between 1760 and 1820; Victoria; and Elizabeth.
King Henry III was the son of King John. And King John of course was the King
who very reluctantly sealed the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215. It is of course
the 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta this year and on Monday 15 June I
launched the Magna Carta Anniversary Prize on behalf of the Rotary club of
Hobart. So a little bit of research was required. My only memory of King John
was AA Milne’s poem about him in a book I had as a child, Now We Are Six. It
starts:
‘King John was a not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days …
King John, I discovered from my research, had been feuding with his barons
who were unhappy about their lands been taken by the king and being heavily
taxed to pay for wars against the French. So the Archbishop of Canterbury
drafted the Magna Carta in an effort to end the dispute. Within nine weeks
Magna Carta was annulled by the Pope and civil war broke out. A couple of
years later King John died. Putting aside the importance of the Magna Carta, it
is regarded as the foundational document of English constitutional law
because it embodies the principle that the sovereign is subject to the law and
that there could be no taxation without consent of the people.
What more did I discover about King John? It is often said, and as Gillian
Triggs claimed in a recent lecture, that King John did not sign the Magna Carta
because he was probably illiterate.1 Instead it was sealed. Others assert this is
unlikely. His father, King Henry II spoke about six languages; his French mother,
Eleanor of Aquitaine was well educated and had attended lectures at what was
to become the University of Paris. Moreover, King John had a large library. It
is unlikely he was illiterate. Some claim he was one best read and educated
kings England had had. It is also claimed that he died from a surfeit of
peaches. Again this is unlikely. He probably died for dysentery contracted as
he moved from place to place in the civil war, and unable to stay in one place
long enough to recover. I have also heard that he was so annoyed by being
coerced into agreeing to the Magna Carta, that he chewed a bush in fury!
1
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/15/australia-and-the-magna-cartahow-the-coalition-and-labor-agree-on-laws-that-violate-our-freedoms
So much for the unpopular King John. Last Friday I was invited to the Library
at Parliament House to launch the digitisation of the early years of Hansard
(1979-1991). There is a problem with the Governor entering Parliament House
because convention dictates that the Sovereign and the Sovereign’s Vice Regal
representative must not step on the green carpet of the House of Assembly.
Only the red carpet of the Legislative Council can be walked upon! And the
only entrance to Parliament House is now through the front door on to green
carpet. Why can’t the Governor walk on the green carpet? Intrigued, I have
done a little bit of research. It all dates back to the time of Charles I who was
having problems with Parliament and with the House of Commons in
particular. It was rumoured that some members of Parliament had colluded
against him and King Charles directed that five members of the Commons and
one peer be given up to him on the grounds of high treason. When Parliament
refused Charles entered the Commons on 4 January 1642 with an armed guard
to arrest the men, who, in the meantime, had fled. He displaced the Speaker
from his chair and asked the Speaker where the MPs had fled. But the Speaker
refused to tell him. This attempted arrest was politically disastrous. No English
sovereign had ever entered the House of Commons and to do so was regarded
as a grave breach of Parliamentary privilege. Storming into the House of
Commons increased his unpopularity. Again this custom – keeping off the
green carpet of the Commons or House of Assembly seems to be symbol of the
rule of law – the rule that the sovereign is subject to the law. And so our
Speaker rightly guards this convention.2
King Charles 1 of course had a nasty end. There was civil war, the Royalists
lost, he was arrested for treason, tried and executed in 1649.
In contrast to King John and King Charles I, Queen Elizabeth II is extremely
popular. Not only is she the second longest reigning monarch, polls suggest
that in England today she is regarded as the most popular monarch in British
history.3
Let me now briefly reflect on how her reign began. On Wednesday 6 February
1952, Princess Elizabeth was visiting a remote part of Kenya when she was
advised that her father King George the Sixth had died in his sleep. She was
twenty-five years old. Her subsequent Coronation took place in Westminster
Abbey on Tuesday 2 June 1953.
2
Green has long been the colour of the House of Commons, see House of Commons Green,
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/g10.pdf.
3
http://survation.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-most-popular-monarch-in-british-history/
An estimated three million people lined the streets of London to catch a
glimpse of the new monarch as she made her way to and from Buckingham
Palace in the golden state coach. The ceremony was watched by millions more
around the world as the BBC set up their biggest ever outside broadcast to
provide live coverage of the event on radio and [for the first time,] television.ii
Ladies and gentlemen, Queen Elizabeth is an exemplary individual in so many
ways. To be the ultimate custodian and living symbol of a democratic way of
life of 17 nations – many more if we factor in every Commonwealth Nation – is
a daunting job description! Yet The Queen has carried all before her, including
through some very challenging personal and political periods.
So this annual Luncheon to mark The Queen’s Birthday has added significance
in 2015, which is not least why I said at the beginning of these remarks that I
am honoured to be making them.
And on that note, would you please stand:
[toast:]
“Her Majesty The Queen.”
[response]
[Royal Anthem]
i
http://www.royal.gov.uk/HistoryoftheMonarchy/KingsandQueensofEngland/TheAnglo-Saxonkings/Offa.aspx,
accessed 21 June 2015.
ii
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/2/newsid_2654000/2654501.stm, accessed 21 June
2015.