Monarchy: From the Middle Ages to Modernity | David Starkey

That act, installing Henry as the head of the Church of England, is the centrepiece of Starkey’s story. The fusion of political and divine authority in one person made the Crown the focus of the ferocious religious disputes that raged across Europe for two centuries. It made it unthinkable that the state could accommodate any form of religion other than that of the monarch. And it gave point to the theory of the divine right of kings, which seduced James I and underpinned the ill-fated attempt of Charles I and Archbishop Laud to erect in England a royal absolutism on the French model. There was, however, another model that came into prominence in the 17th century: the Netherlands was a republic that enjoyed religious toleration, economic prosperity and stable parliamentary government. In 1688 the Dutch leader, William of Orange, who was the husband of James II’s daughter, Mary, succeeded with her to the English throne. Or, rather, he was made king by Parliament and by a series of statutes was made subservient to Parliament. England became, in Starkey’s nice phrase, a ‘royal republic’. Thereafter the power and influence of the English monarchy waned. By the time of Victoria, its function had become purely symbolic. It survives as the fount of class pride and snobbery. In a country where republicanism hardly dares breathe its name, the title alone of Starkey’s book will undoubtedly make him and his publishers a tidy profit.