BRITS AT THEIR BEST: Freedom – THE SERVANT KING (or Queen)British History Copyright 2007 David Abbott and Catherine Glass

Brits at their Best Sharing the Inheritance

An exchange of letters with The Queen
leaves me wondering what's to be done

On the 25th of June, I wrote to The Queen that her action in giving Her Royal Assent to the Lisbon Treaty, which destroys Britain's independence, was not the action of a constitutional monarch bound in covenant with her people to defend their laws and customs. A few weeks later, I received a letter from Buckingham Palace:

Letter from Queen July 08

The key sentence is "I should explain to you that there is no question of Her Majesty, as constitutional sovereign, refusing Royal Assent to an Act which has been passed by both Houses of Parliament".

I responded with a letter dated 11 August 2008 -

Your Majesty,

I wrote to Your Majesty recently about the Lisbon treaty. Ms Bonici sent a reply. It didn't have my name on it as she has apparently been very busy dealing with many letters similar to mine. So many of your subjects have written to Your Majesty precisely because Your Majesty is a constitutional monarch. Your Majesty's subjects expected that a constitutional monarch would uphold the constitution. A part of that constitution is the Coronation Oath, which Your Majesty swore before God and to the people.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and of your Possessions and the other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?

Queen: I solemnly promise so to do.

Archbishop: Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?

Queen: I will.

At the time Your Majesty swore the Oath we British were sovereign and made our own laws. Our traditional custom is to freely govern ourselves. With Royal Assent to the Lisbon Treaty Act and Your Majesty's subsequently signing the ratification document, Britain becomes a mere province of the European Union. Your Majesty's subjects will be governed by Brussels, and not by Your Majesty's government. It is Your Majesty's right, nay, it is Your Majesty's duty and obligation, to refuse Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament that threaten the People's laws and customs or Your Majesty's constitutional position. Thus it appears to me that Your Majesty has violated the Coronation Oath.

Yours sincerely,

David Abbott

If both Houses of Parliament had caved in and passed an act allowing Hitler to run Britain in 1940, would George VI have given his
Royal Assent to it?

At first I did not receive a reply to this letter. I know that many people have written to The Queen with the same concerns that Britain's sovereignty and the liberty of the British people are being threatened. The Queen's constitutional duty is to defend them. Are those thousands of letters having an effect?

I wrote again at the end of September:

Your Majesty,

It is the right of the British people to petition their monarch. My first petition to Your Majesty was a letter of the 25th of June. It was answered by Mrs Sonia Bonici, who said, “I should explain to you that there is no question of Her Majesty, as constitutional sovereign, refusing Royal Assent to an Act which has been passed by both Houses of Parliament”. I wrote to Your Majesty again on the 11th of August. I have not received a reply to my second letter although it makes a constitutional point of the gravest importance for Your Majesty and the British people and the continuation of the Monarchy itself.

In Canada, in 1964, Your Majesty made unequivocally clear what the people expect from their constitutional sovereign -

“The role of a Constitutional Monarch is to personify the democratic state, to legitimate authority, to assure the legality of its measures and to guarantee the execution of its popular will.”

Parliament may try to persuade Your Majesty to obey it, but Your Majesty has pledged to defend the laws and customs of the people and Your Majesty’s constitutional writ extends to protecting your people from a tyrannical Parliament and from any unjust statute that Parliament may pass.

What would Your Majesty’s father, our dearly beloved George VI, have done if he had been told by Parliament to give away Britain’s freedom and sovereignty to Hitler? Would he, could he possibly have agreed to do Parliament’s bidding?

The answer, again, was made by Your Majesty -

“I shall work as my father did throughout his reign to uphold Constitutional government and to uphold the happiness and prosperity of my peoples”.

In giving your Royal Assent to the Lisbon Treaty, Your Majesty has ignored the wishes of your people, which were also ignored by Parliament. Tyrannical is a realistic description of Parliament, which promised the people a vote on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and then broke its promise. Negligent is an honest description of many MPs who admitted that they had never read the Lisbon Treaty. Foreign leaders are agreed that the Lisbon Treaty is the same as the EU constitution.

Parliament is forcing the British people to accept this unwanted political settlement, which is sweeping away their long-treasured liberties, laws and customs, which have stood them in such good stead for hundreds of years. Our Declaration of Right and Bill of Rights plainly state:

“That no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm”.

Giving any foreign body authority over the British people is unconstitutional. Britain’s Constitutional government includes a sovereign, a parliament and a judiciary. Are we to believe that Parliament’s overweening domination has reduced the champion of the people, Your Majesty, to a cipher, who cannot speak for us or defend our liberties and whose Royal Assent means nothing because it can never be denied?

Perish the thought.

It was and is still Your Majesty’s responsibility as our constitutional monarch to refuse Parliament your Royal Assent when Parliament passes unconstitutional statutes.

The second reply from Buckingham Palace shows a slight and perhaps significant change. The Queen may be concerned that a grave threat and a great constitutional question face her:

On November 14, the Ministry of Justice replied:

Letter from Ministry of Justice

The Ministry of Justice responded by making the assertion that The Queen "no longer has a political or executive role." My response to The Queen needs no introduction except to say that most of British history has been a long and successful attempt to check the power of the Sovereign. Today, power resides in Parliament and in the EU, and requires the Sovereign, supported by her people, to curb it.

8 December 2008

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace London

Madam,

The response of the Ministry of Justice to the questions forwarded by Mrs Bonici on Your Majesty's behalf has raised radical concerns about Your Majesty's constitutional role as Sovereign. As Your Majesty will recall, Mrs Bonici replied to my 29 September letter on 24 October 2008 by stating that Your Majesty had "taken careful note of the views you express regarding Her Majesty's action in recently granting her Royal Assent to the Treaty of Lisbon. With regard to your comments on constitutional issues, I have been instructed to send your letter to the Right Honourable Jack Straw, MP, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Justice and Lord Chancellor, so that he may be aware of your approach to The Queen on these matters and may consider the points you raise."

The reply, which I recently received from Ms Emily Oyama, Ministry of Justice, Constitutional Settlement Division, suggests that the Ministry of Justice has a very peculiar and startling view of the British Constitution and Your Majesty's constitutional role.

Flatly contradicting the sovereignty of Your Majesty, the Ministry declares that

"it may be said that Parliament is sovereign as it holds sovereignty on behalf of the people it represents. . . .The Queen no longer has a political or executive role. . ."

This view is false. It is contradicted by last week’s events in Canada where, according to the Wall Street Journal of 5 December, Your Majesty’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, won “the right to suspend the Parliament in a private meeting with a representative of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, the official head of state". It appears that Your Majesty exerts political and constitutional executive power in Canada but not in the United Kingdom.

The Justice Ministry’s assertion that“the Queen no longer has a political or executive role. . ." shocks us.

Pray, may we ask when this new constitutional settlement occurred? Exactly when did Your Majesty lose her Sovereignty in Parliament?

The British people chose to enter into a covenant with Your Majesty on 2 June 1953, when you promised to rule according to our laws and customs.

Pray, may we ask how Your Majesty’s ministers presume to reject or ignore this covenant?

The same people who say that Your Majesty "no longer has a political or executive role" have also said that there is no written British Constitution. This is nonsense.

Your Majesty will recall that John Adams, the second President of the United States, whose ideas contributed to the American Constitution, called the British Constitution "the most stupendous fabric of human invention" in history. It is true that just as a family's Christmas traditions are unwritten, some parts of the British Constitution are also unwritten. However, many crucial parts of our Constitution are written down and have been for centuries. They are:

1) Common Law
2) The Coronation Oath
3) Magna Carta
4) Statute of Westminster, enabling Parliament
5) The Declaration of Right
6) The Act of Settlement of 1701
7) The Act of Union

Your Majesty will be acquainted with the fundamental aspects of these magnificent documents. It may interest Your Majesty that the oak tree, which is the national tree of England, Wales and the United States, presents in its structure a visual sketch of the organizing principles of the British and American Constitutions.

Both these constitutions have three great branches - 1) the Sovereign (in America, the executive branch), 2) the two houses of Parliament (the legislature in America) and 3) the courts. These three branches are meant to balance each other, just as the three main branches of the oak tree balance each other. If one branch becomes too large, it will topple the tree, especially if another branch withers away. The great supporting 'trunk' of our Constitution is rule by just law. The 'roots' of the Constitution are the people. The 'earth' is the people's birthright of freedom, given to them by God. The people and their freedom nourish the Constitution, and are nourished by it.

On the 8th February 1952 when Your Majesty made Your Declaration of Sovereignty, you declared, "By the sudden death of my dear Father, I am called to assume the duties and responsibilities of Sovereignty. . .to uphold constitutional government".

The assumption of sovereignty with its clear charge to uphold constitutional government requires the Sovereign to balance and check the powers of Parliament. If the Sovereign does not provide a check and balance, the legislature, as John Adams warned, will become tyrannical.

One of the Sovereign's checks is the Royal Assent.Those who willfully flout the British Constitution assert that the Royal Assent must be automatically given. This is another effort by Parliament to usurp the constitutional duties of the Sovereign by summoning a fictional automatic Royal Assent like a spirit from the vasty deep.

We fear that Your Majesty's ministers have grossly misstated Your Majesty's constitutional role. To assert that intervening in a political matter "would not be consistent with Your Majesty's status as a constitutional monarch" is an oxymoron and suggests that the Justice Ministry holds an absurd and treasonous view of Your Majesty as an extra-constitutional ceremonial appendage.

Many friends and colleagues fear that Your Majesty shares the views of your ministers. Your Majesty, will you please tell us that you do not share your ministers' views and that you will act as the constitutional monarch with whom your people entered into covenant?

Yours sincerely, David F. Abbott

Copies HRH The Prince of Wales, HRH The Princess Royal, HRH Prince William, HRH Prince Henry

In January 2009 I received a reply.

Elizabeth II at her coronation in Westminster Abbey

Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation in 1953.
She swore to rule the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland according to their respective laws and customs, to cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all her judgements, and to maintain to the utmost of her power the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel.

Image: Cecil Beaton

I await Jack Straw's response. Am I to believe that The Queen is a constitutional nullity?

In January 2009 the Ministry of Justice responded with a letter from Ms Eirian Walsh Atkins, Head of Constitutional Policy, which corrected the previous letter, acknowledged that the British Constitution included the Bill of Rights 1689 (but as regards the EU has decided to ignore it), and made an astonishing constitutional declaration -

Letter from Head of Constituional Policy - 1 Letter from Head of Constitutional Policy - 2

In February 2009, I replied to The Queen, whom Ms Atkins serves. For readers here, I have inserted subheads. The letter appears below -

The Queen at Buckingham Palace, shortly after being crowned.
Image: Old UK Photos

DAVID F. ABBOTT MD MRCP
Kingsmere Meadow
Shawford
Winchester S021 2BL
01962 714413

16 February 2009

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

Madam,

I wrote to Your Majesty on 8 December about serious Constitutional issues. At Your Majesty's request, Mrs Bonici forwarded my letter to the Ministry of Justice. The response of the Ministry of Justice concerns me greatly. It appears that the Ministry of Justice neither comprehends the British Constitution nor Your Majesty's Constitutional role.

Head of Constitutional Policy admits that parts of British Constitution are written

On 27 January 2009, I received a reply from Ms Eirian Walsh Atkins who is the Head of Constitutional Policy. She stated: "You are right to point out that parts of the British Constitution are written and we can confirm that statutes that you mention such as the Bill of Rights 1688/9 and Act of Settlement 1701 are some of the many statutes that make up our uncodified constitution".

Ms Atkins failed to mention either the Coronation Oath or Magna Carta as written parts of our Constitution. Some people have forgotten the significance of the Coronation Oath and Magna Carta, but we should not like to think that the Head of Constitutional Policy is one of them. Your Majesty will understand that the Coronation Oath and Magna Carta were not originally parliamentary statutes, so Parliament may be inclined to overlook them. However, their Constitutional significance has been recognised for centuries.

Constitutional significance of the Coronation according to 2nd Baron Wakehurst

Your Majesty's Coronation was a momentous occasion for all your people. I can still vividly remember watching Your Majesty on television. Recently I was reminded of that day by the film Long to Reign Over Us, which is currently available on the Royal Channel. There John de Vere Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst, KG, GCMG, describes the constitutional importance of the Coronation:

"When She is anointed with the consecrated oil, when She takes into her hands the orb, the sceptre, and all the other symbols of royalty, such as the sword, the bracelets, the spurs, and when homage is paid in the form prescribed by the traditions of a thousand years, Her people are pledging themselves on their part to honour the Sovereignty of the nation in Her person and to work with Her in maintaining the Constitution that She has taken her oath to support".

Indispensable Magna Carta

The Constitution that Your Majesty swore to support before God in covenant with your people includes Magna Carta. Winston Churchill wrote about our Great Charter: "In subsequent ages when the state swollen with its own authority has attempted to ride roughshod over the rights and liberties of the people it is to this doctrine that appeal has again and again been made and never as yet without success".

The Americans, who borrowed much from our own dear Constitution, call Magna Carta the foundation of the US Constitution and of their liberty. There are many reasons for this, but one reason in particular: The right to trial by jury and the jury's right to return a not guilty verdict even if it runs counter to statute law is a bulwark against tyranny. The people have the power to decide that a law is unjust, as they did in the famous case of William Penn in 1670. Consequently the power of the state is limited and statute law cannot become despotic. This is one of the Constitutional mechanisms that have defended our liberty for nearly one thousand years.

EU's Corpus Juris eliminates our essential rights and protections

It is a grave concern that the European Union intends that all member states will follow Corpus Juris, a system that eliminates all the protections of Magna Carta. Retired magistrate David Rowlands writes that few people, in particular members of Parliament, have read this code (Corpus Juris, ISBN 27178/33447). He has done his homework and points out: "Your rights, held since Magna Carta, to be judged by your peers have been eliminated. Lay magistracy has been exterminated. The genius of our Common Law, which involves the community in administering criminal justice at first instance through the magistrates and later through the jury, has been deliberately destroyed."

Lisbon Treaty means 'whatever we want it to mean'

Corpus Juris and Magna Carta cannot be reconciled. The Lisbon Treaty is a treaty written to be "self-amending". It can be expanded. It can be changed to mean whatever governments in future would like it to mean.

Lisbon Treaty cannot be reconciled with Bill of Rights

It cannot be reconciled with the Bill of Rights (1689), which Ms Atkins affirmed is a written part of our Constitution. The Bill of Rights declares: "That no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm." In short, giving any foreign body authority over the British people is unconstitutional. Ms Atkins wrote that ". . .rules made by external bodies, for example under international law, cannot override Acts of Parliament". But the European Union is an external body, and in future the Lisbon Treaty will allow the EU to override acts of Parliament.

How could this happen?

Your Majesty may well wonder how this is possible. How could such a conflict with our Constitution have been overlooked? One answer is suggested by the present financial crisis: Many critical things have been overlooked by Your Majesty's Ministers. How was it that Royal Assent was given to an act that ought to have been rejected as incompatible with the British Constitution? Because ministers erroneously claimed that the Lisbon Treaty does not do what it says it will do; and falsely asserted that the Sovereign is obligated to give Royal Assent to everything that Parliament demands. Parliament claims that the Sovereign's solemnly sworn duty to defend the laws and customs of Her people does not require Her to defend the people from unconstitutional acts of Parliament. But that is to hold the Sovereign’s sworn oath in contempt.

Refusing Royal Assent is a constitutional responsibility, as history shows

An assent implies the possibility of a refusal. Some monarchs have been fortunate because their Parliaments have not presented them with unconstitutional Acts. However, historians tell us that Edward VII threatened to withhold Royal Assent from what became after his death the 1911 Parliament Act and that in Canada Royal Assent was withheld in 1936 and in 1937 from bills of doubtful constitutionality. The Crown in Parliament is sovereign. The necessity of an executive to balance the power of the legislature is clear in the British Constitution. Indeed, according to the BBC, "The Act of Settlement, 1701, was introduced in the reign of William III, to provide for a stable executive branch to the British government". The executive to whom the BBC refers is the Sovereign.

The Act of Settlement is part of the British Constitution - The Sovereign must administer the Government according to the laws that are the birthright of the people

Ms Atkins agrees that the Act of Settlement is a written part of our Constitution. The Act specifically states: "And whereas the Laws of England are the Birthright of the People thereof and all the Kings and Queens who shall ascend the Throne of this Realm ought to administer the Government of the same according to the said Laws and all their Officers and Ministers ought to serve them respectively according to the same, The said Lords Spirituall and Temporall and Commons do therefore further humbly pray That all the Laws and Statutes of this Realm for securing the established Religion and the Rights and Liberties of the People thereof and all other Laws and Statutes of the same now in Force may be ratified and confirmed."

The Sovereign's responsibility for the Constitutions of the Dominions

Under our Constitution the Sovereign has important administrative responsibilities to ensure that the Constitution is defended. Indeed Your Majesty has an important role in defending the Constitutions of the Dominions, as was evidenced in 1975 when Your Majesty’s Governor-General resolved what has been called the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. Yet Ms Atkins wrote that Your Majesty's "executive role has inevitably diminished".

Who reduced the Sovereign's executive role?

I am astonished. On what date did Your Majesty's executive role diminish? Under what Constitutional articles? These are the very questions that I asked in my letter of December 8th. I have yet to receive an answer from Your Majesty or from Your Majesty's Government.

Your Majesty is bound by oath sworn before God and people to defend British laws and liberties

I respectfully submit that the British Constitution is under threat and that Your Majesty is bound by oath sworn before God and people to defend it. Will Your Majesty publicly advise Your Majesty's ministers that Parliament should repeal the Lisbon Treaty? Such an action on your part would enjoy the strongest support of the great majority of your people.

Yours sincerely, David F. Abbott

Copies: HRH The Prince of Wales
HRH The Princess Royal
HRH Prince William
HRH Prince Henry
The Most Rev. and the Rt Hon. The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

As of May 2009, I have received no reply from The Queen to my questions - On what date did Your Majesty's executive role diminish? Under what Constitutional articles? And will Your Majesty publicly advise Your Majesty's ministers that Parliament should repeal the Lisbon Treaty?

I am faced with a question. If The Queen will not reply and will take no action, what must be done?

English bulldog puppy