Tea at Trianon: Defending Hereditary Titles

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Defending Hereditary Titles

From Tatler:

Charles Courtenay, the 19th Earl of Devon, is the latest member of his family to sit in the House of Lords, a tradition that has passed through the generations from father to son for 900 years. He will also be the last.
The passing of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill this March finalised the abolishment of peers who inherit their titles through their family, a process that began in 1999, under the last Labour Government. As he prepares to step away from the role, the Earl of Devon has lamented the loss of ‘collective memory’ in British politics.

‘A country that forgets its history forgets its responsibilities,’ Courtenay told Channel 4 News. The Earl, who argued that he provides Parliament with a valuable connection to the past because his ancestors fought in the Crusades, added: ‘Having members in one chamber of your Parliament who have that collective memory that goes back centuries allows you as a government, as a Parliament as it were to retain that memory.’ (Read more.)