TÜRKENKREUZ
OR
THE TALE OF 20TH-CENTURY JACOBITE BRITAIN
Monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (-1920)
Victoria (Hanover) 1837-1901
Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1901-1910
George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1910-1920
Monarchs of the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland (1920-1934)
Robert IV (Wittelsbach) 1920-1934 [also King of Bavaria]
Monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1934-)
George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1934-
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Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (-1920)
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative) 1895-1902
Arthur Balfour (Conservative) 1902-1905
Edward Grey (Liberal) 1905-1918
Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (Liberal) 1918-1920
Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of England (1920-1934)
Herbert Vivian ("Jacobite" Liberal) 1920-1927
Gilbert Baird Fraser (Tory) 1927-1931
Winston Churchill ("Jacobite" Liberal, then Liberal) 1931-1934
Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of Scotland (1920-1934)
Theodore Napier (Scottish Unionist) 1920-1924
Ruaraidh Erskine ("Jacobite" Liberal) 1924-1927
Reginald Lindesay-Bethune, 12th Earl of Lindsay (Scottish Unionist) 1927-1933
Noel Skelton (Scottish Unionist) 1933-1934
Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of Ireland (1920-1934)
W. B. Yeats (White Rose) 1920-1933 [symbolic: real power was in the "Jacobite Junto"]
William Redmond (Irish Parliamentary) 1933-1934
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1934-)
Herbert Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr (Liberal-Labour) 1934-
When people first heard of the Neo-Jacobites, they laughed. Such an obsolete, archaic ideology. Jacobitism? In the 1890s? Nonsense! The chuckles started to fade as Herbert Vivian and Ruaraidh Erskine unexpectedly won their elections in 1895 as Liberal Members of Parliament and made much concern over their willingness to swear an oath to Queen Victoria but some could swear they muttered
Mary III under their breath afterwards.
By the time of the World War with France against Germany, Neo-Jacobitism was not mainstream yet, not even counterculture. Fringe still, yes. But a considerably
popular fringe for the Establishment which saw it all as very dangerous, especially as Andrew Lang spoke repeatedly of the interests of not alienating ‘friends to the Anglo-Saxon stock’ in his plays. Prime Minister Edward Grey had to assure Edward VII multiple times that the neo-Jacobites were just a silly fringe. A distressingly
electable one, but ‘the vast majority of the people on this sceptred isle are firm Hanoverians’.
The World War went great at first for Britain, but as the battles grew slower and the trenches loomed over it all, matters grew darker. Grey found more criticisms especially from his Navy Secretary Winston Churchill who he elected to fire believing he was undermining the war cause. Churchill retreated back home to lick his wounds, followed by a growing close friend of his, Herbert Vivian. But none of that would dominate as much as when Grey stood up in a busy Commons, began to speak, and the bombs fell. Legend has it that Grey insisted on saving many Members of Parliament and went back into the flames of a crumbling building, never to be seen again. The flames, it is estimated, took the lives of 9 out of 10 people in Parliament that day.
Operation Türkenkreuz was an unmitigated success for Germany. With the Parliament in disarray, the Cabinet decimated and the Navy unsure if to fight still, the Marquess of Crewe tried his best to rally the collapsing morale of the British people, but it was in vain. The disorganised Navy were no match for the German Navy and soon the unimaginable happened. George V was forced to flee to Canada, and a new regime were set up.
Three new regimes.
Three ancien régimes.
A flight of fancy, perhaps a cleverly-worded letter by Herbert Vivian, perhaps playing up the strategic potential of a King of Britain who was inherently owing fealty to the German Emperor. Perhaps just a way to acquire churchills for the inevitably-unpopular rule, but in the end, Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, was informed of the news he would be crowned King Robert I and IV of England, Scotland and Ireland. Most biographies agree that he was deeply appalled at the news.
But he had no choice in the matter. The Neo-Jacobites in the chaos and German occupation, with help from the German Emperor, firmly seized power and declared the restoration of the old Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, declaring every law passed since the ‘Hanoverian coup’ null and void, and everyone involved in ‘upholding the Hanoverian tyranny’ tantamount to treason. Cannily enough, they then passed a law in the restored English, Scottish and Irish parliaments (what mockery of those anyway) declaring that the Parliaments ‘in the interests of public order and stability’ would grant their legal recognition to most laws passed in the ‘accursed Hanoverian era’ via a sum of bundle bills, notably excepting the Bill of Rights and the Parliament Act 1911 along with a surfeit of laws the Neo-Jacobites personally disliked.
King Robert I and IV arrived to his unwanted kingdoms and saw the resistance curbed by German troops and flags of England, Scotland and Ireland waving along the German one. Now-Prime Minister Herbert Vivian led the now solely-Jacobite English Parliament into a resounding cry of ‘Long live the King!’. By his side was Winston Churchill, who sniffed opportunity for power and was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Resistance in England would never quite disappear, with some people even electing to hide in the Pennine Mountains to resist the Jacobites.
North of the Border, the Scottish Unionist Party was since the 1900s slowly hollowed out in favour of Jacobitism, and once the Jacobite Restoration happened, the ageing Theodore Napier firmly was in charge as the first Prime Minister of an independent Scotland (the idea of going back to Lord High Commissioner was considered, but quickly dropped apart from being the equivalent of ‘First Lord of the Treasury’). He would spend his last four years of life trying his best to quell Georgian sentiment, tying Scottish nationalistic sentiment with Jacobitism. When he finally perished, the King was pressured to appoint Vivian’s confidante Ruaraidh Erskine, ensuring the Jacobite Liberals would hold power all across Britain from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.
Meanwhile, Ireland was in an upheaval. The forces of Irish nationalism split between the more radical republicans and those (cultivated since the 1890s) who were open to a Jacobite Kingdom. The long-time Neo-Jacobite and popular poet W. B. Yeats was appointed Prime Minister as a symbolic unifying force for a divided island, but unfortunately it proved quite clear he had no interest in active politics. This paved the way for a ‘junto’ to emerge. The Order of the White Rose strengthened its power considerably even as it tied itself to an often-times contradictory platform based on Irish nationalism and ‘avenging the Battle of the Boyne’. This rhetoric would worsen relations with the Ulster Protestants, leading to tragedy eventually.
Meanwhile, a young conscientious objector and socialist grew dismayed at his country’s sudden fall to the ancient tyranny, and made his way, taking as much of his family’s fortune as he could, to the mountains where he submitted himself to join the resistance. As his memoirs record it, he was overwhelmed with dread and fear of Britain’s future and knew eventually that his conscience demanded he would do something about it. The haunting of his father’s sudden death in the war loomed over him as well, and he felt a need to justify his family’s name.
By the mid-1920s, it was clear that the people would never love Robert IV, bombings by the Georgian/vaguely-leftist/anti-Jacobite ‘New Model Army’ began in earnest against military outposts, and there were coded writings about (ironically) the ‘King over the Water’ residing in Canada and determined to return eventually. The failure of the Jacobite Liberals to end the resistance and ‘truly’ bring around a state where the King could ‘enjoy his own again’ led to both England and Scotland falling to the right-wing in 1927. The artist and lately politician Gilbert Baird Fraser, of a long and lustrous line of artistic individuals, would find himself the unlikely head of a Tory government determined to resurrect the ‘ancient England’ by any means necessary.
Scotland was now under the firm hand of the Earl of Lindsay and the returning Scottish Unionists, who was more than Fraser eager to clamp down on any New Model Army activity. The White Rose clique ruling as the Junto on behalf of the ageing Prime Minister in Ireland too turned harsh. What was once an artistic inclination to criticise the monarchy and glorify a lost past was now an angry establishment seeing to secure its existence no matter how brutal the actions it demanded were.
After an assassination attempt on Robert IV in 1928, he elected to retire to Bavaria for a while, ‘entrusting the stewardship of his English, Scottish and Irish realms to their capable governments’, motivated by a deepening dislike of Britain and of the Neo-Jacobites and a strong wish to return to the land he truly cherished – Bavaria. The King leaving Britain created questions within more nationalistic circles about if the Wittelsbachs truly stood for the three kingdoms’ interest. This was of course treated as ‘Georgianism’ and thus cracked down mercilessly.
Meanwhile, after Herbert Vivian fell to influenza his second-in-command Winston Churchill naturally stepped in charge of the Jacobite Liberals and aimed to ‘out-bid’ the Tories on law and order, criticising Fraser for being weak at the helm, an ‘artistic’ individual unlike the stout and belligerent Churchill.
The Great Depression caused by the collapse in Berlin stock markets in 1930 marked the end of Fraser’s unhappy time in power and led to the Jacobite Liberals returning in a landslide under a Winston Churchill who covered himself extensively in Jacobite rhetoric to win over the harsher and harsher privileged electorate who sought to prevent greater and greater upheaval. Backed up by the growing ‘fascist’ theory of government that argued that a government must seek to assert its authority as much as possible when monopoly of force is unclear, he authorised harsher and harsher crackdowns, including executions of people judged to be supporting the exiled King.
Helping him was Tom Mosley, ex-Tory baronet and now Chancellor of the Exchequer who pledged his ‘Mosley Memorandum’ would deliver a land where the people were happy and content with the system. This was something many of the ‘Old Liberals’ distrusted, seeing it as too like the hated Edward Grey’s ideas and there were mutterings of ‘socialism’. Of course, nothing like the eclectic combination of monarchism and socialism that the New Model Army brewed up where George V was the ‘People’s King’, but still
socialism, they said to themselves. Still, Churchill commanded enough loyalty as the seniormost politician in the Jacobite Parliament, so he could back Mosley when the going got tough, as long as he could count on Mosley’s support in return.
In Scotland, the Depression led to the meteoric rise of the Young Men’s Christian Association faction in the Scottish Unionists, led by charismatic Perthshire barrister Noel Skelton. Pushing radical ideas they maintained were the highest of Toryism and Unionism, unlike the
Whiggish ideas of die-hard individualism, they managed to sway many people in the 1931 election and delivered the seemingly-doomed Earl of Lindsay a catch of breath. However, he was now acutely aware of his new dependency on them for political capital, and found himself having to cede more and more concessions to Skelton and the YMCA, to his quiet horror.
In Ireland, the White Rose junto maintained control, but the Depression grew to further alienate people from the ‘tyranny from Dublin’. Regular raids, censorship and crackdowns lengthened their rule while the Prime Minister grew more and more ill by the day. Then the Belfast Rising happened. The Ulster Protestants were always ill-inclined to Jacobitism, and the harsh rule of the White Rose only worsened it. The Depression only added spark to the fire and in 1932 many radicalised Ulster Protestants rose up and took control of many sectors of Belfast, declaring it to be ‘restored to the true King’. The White Rose responded with unimaginable violence.
After the merciless crushing of the Belfast Rising that led to blood running down the streets of Belfast, the White Rose chose to push the archaic execution method of being hang, drawn and quartered on the ringleaders, including their chief and former pastor James Paisley. There’s a painting of him being portrayed as almost like a saint, praying to God as he stands on the scaffold. After he was hanged to almost an inch of his life, the drawing and quartering were mixed in with shooting of his body. He died halfway, but his executors continued at their superior’s orders.
All this went back to Robert IV’s papers of course, and he grew to dislike the Order of the White Rose immensely. At Yeats’ death in 1933, he appointed the long-suffering Opposition Leader William Redmond as the new Prime Minister of Ireland and authorised him to purge the White Rose clique from power. Helping this shift was the fact that Irish Catholics grew appalled by the reprisal of the Belfast Rising and after ten years of hard-handed rule. The White Rose were deeply unpopular, and once Redmond became PM, you could hear cheers not just in Protestant Ireland, but in Catholic Ireland, at the news.
Meanwhile in the sceptred isle, the legend of “Bucky Delaware” rapidly grew. This heroic figure, this modern-day Robin Hood who fought against the illegitimate regime for the true King and for the common weal of the people of Britain, grew well known through word of mouth. Murmurs had it that he was an earl who backed King George and lost all his land and money once King Robert came to power, becoming an outlaw. The line between Robin Hood and Bucky Delaware grew blurred in the telling. The real individual was remarkable himself, being someone who went from young earl who sought to back the resistance, to grizzled freedom fighter whose ideas of monarchical socialism grew to sink into the entire New Model Army, who hailed him as “Our Bucky” or “the Red Earl”.
By 1933, it was clear that the death rattling of the Jacobite Order was close. Ireland was now under the rule of William Redmond and his IPP who sought to roll back the harshness of the White Rose junto, only to see growing disquiet over the continuing existence of the Bavarian as King of Ireland, empowered by the new freedoms Redmond granted them. The Ulster Protestants grew louder in their demand for a restoration of the true King, George V, and clandestine promises of a “Home Rule Maximised” were sealed in a letter to Redmond from the King over the Water himself.
Scotland, after the untimely death of the Earl of Lindsay, was under the firm hand of Noel Skelton. Skelton was above all a patriot to Scotland, and privately disliked the idea of an absentee King, so when Robert IV finally returned from his long retirement in Bavaria in 1934, Skelton promptly requested a meeting to call matters to order, and in that meeting received an unpleasant shock that he now saw an opportunity in. His utmost loyalty was to Scotland after all, he told himself, as he fingered a dark envelope from someone half a world away.
The King returned to London, much to Churchill’s gladness. The English Army was slowly losing the battle with the New Model Army and some cities were now under dubious control in the North. Ominous letters from the ‘Red Earl’ were a regular annoyance for Churchill, but he now often used them to light his cigars, and by then he was habitually tearing up unfamiliar envelopes to throw them into the fireplace. The King being here would lead to a revival of morale and people could now say they were fighting for a King that were
here, instead of in Canada. That was important.
However, this gladness fled when he realised what the King had in plan. Anxious pleadings to reconsider went nowhere as the King flatly stated he made up his mind years ago, and when Churchill started to reach out to Skelton or Redmond, they merely stated they served at the pleasure of the King and would do what he requested of them. Cornered like a rat, he realised the best way was to re-rat. The King wanted to give it all up, huh? He’ll act a new role, he’ll keep power, he swore. He then immediately signed many declarations to ensure the King’s plans went smoothly.
Now, what was the King planning? Well, the Depression in a way broke Germany’s politics. The increasingly-autocratic rule of Wilhelm II only got worse with age, and as German society grew angry, he decided the best answer was the one Bismarck blithely dismissed but the World War proved right, namely uniting all Germans in a war. France was weak, wasn’t it? A war would be easy there to unite everyone. This logic would prove… quite incorrect. This war was not received warmly by the German people, with Germany now transparently an aggressor. The money flowing to the military and not to helping the people made them grow angry, and King Rupprecht knew Germany’s time was near. To completely focus on his Bavaria, he would need to relinquish his British holdings which he abhorred. And who better than the King he usurped the throne from?
The ‘Great Abdication’ is a major event in British history. George V and Robert IV meeting in Bristol, the declaration that the Jacobite rule in Britain was null and void (although like with the Jacobite Restoration, certain bills quickly were declared similarly legal in the restored United Kingdom), and Robert IV handing over his three crowns to the ageing but returned King, within eyewitness of the three Prime Ministers would make a very memorable painting.
The British Parliament would have a new election, and all the begrudging concessions the King made to return to power would be granted. Irish Home Rule ‘Maximised’, a strong Scottish Office, universal suffrage, generous promises of a welfare state, and above all a Second Bill of Rights. George V was known to comment that he knew exactly how George I now felt, enthroned through parliamentary concessions.
Unsurprisingly, the election returned a strong left-wing majority dominated by the Liberal-Labour Party led by none other but ‘Bucky Delaware’, aka Herbert Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr. The fact he was in the House of Lords instead of the Commons was not something much commented. He was leader not by blood, but by deed, and many of the MPs declared they would much rather follow him as they did in the ‘dark days’ rather than anyone else.
With a scarred but clean face, a sharp suit obviously freshly ironed, and a toothy smile that was not complete, this dashing figure became the first Prime Minister of Britain’s
third Restoration at the young age of 34. The people rejoiced, as the oppressive Jacobites were now driven out of Britain at last.
That is, apart from the collaborators. Both Skelton and Redmond could boast of collaboration with the King over the Water, and hence got off the accusations of treason. Churchill valiantly argued his case, pointing to his working with King Robert to facilitate the Abdication and Restoration, but then Tom Mosley, his former Chancellor and increasingly influenced by his NMA-sympathising wife Nancy Mitford, took a plea bargain and submitted all the damning evidence, including letters Churchill
swore he burnt. Mosley was ruled to five years of house arrest, but curiously was made a Viscount in that sentence by George’s son and heir Edward VIII.
The walls were closing in. Again. The black dog was howling loudly, and Churchill barely heard the verdict – guilty of high treason, and the sentence was death. It was to be held the next day, and he was put in a cell to reflect his fate. The ‘Red Earl’ visited him with a package that same night, wishing for a talk with his rival. The next day, as the cell door opened, a strong smell of whiskey dominated the air, a revolver was on the ground, and the man who sold Britain, was dead.
Thus ends the tale of Britain’s very unlikely, but harrowing, Jacobite Restoration.
