My Lords, I know that my noble and learned friend has a job to do, and that is to get this Bill through intact. I have no doubt that those are the orders he has been given and that the word “Resist” is printed on every page of his brief. The fact remains, however, that he must have heard the almost unanimous voices in this Chamber expressing their support for an expansion of the number from six. My noble friend Lord Northbrook offered an alternative of either four or zero. I would live with zero, but only if the provisions that still require the sovereign to be a member of the Church of England were withdrawn. That would remove the tension that this Bill otherwise builds into the royal succession; that is, between those who are allowed to marry Catholics and those who cannot inherit the Throne unless they are members of the Church of England.
My noble friends Lord Lexden, Lord Lyell, Lord Forsyth and Lord True gave some fine additional historical examples of the sort of problem that can arise in these circumstances. My noble friend Lord Lexden mentioned in particular the history of the gun pellets through the window at Sidmouth and that house in the rainstorm during which Prince Edward contracted an illness from which he died a week later, thus precipitating Princess Victoria up the line. There was another incident, I believe, when a pony and trap bearing the princess panicked and sped off, and she very nearly died. In answer to the question put by my noble friend Lord Lexden, if she had died, my belief is that Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, would have inherited the Throne. He subsequently went on to become the King of Hanover where male primogeniture still predominated, when King George IV, I suppose it would have been, could not have inherited that Throne when it became vacant.
My noble and learned friend said some very kind things about what I have proposed and the arguments I advanced, but then proceeded to reject them without going further than talking about “arbitrary” and “pragmatic”. If I heard him correctly, he said that none of the historical characters I mentioned had reached the Throne. Queen Victoria reached the Throne, and he has not risen to that point.