English Array was a British fascist group and offshoot of the English Mistery founded and led by Lord Lymington .
87-565: In 1930, the English Mistery was founded by William Sanderson. Sanderson was by all accounts a "difficult" man to deal with, and by 1935 the Mistery was being divided into two factions, one loyal to Sanderson and another to Lymington. The breaking point occurred when Lymington's first marriage ended in divorce in 1936 on the grounds of unfaithfulness on his part and he promptly married his mistress. Sanderson felt that Lymington's behaviour
174-478: A monarchy . It is also known as the divine-right theory of kingship . The doctrine asserts that a monarch is not accountable to any earthly authority (such as a parliament or the Pope ) because their right to rule is derived from divine authority. Thus, the monarch is not subject to the will of the people, of the aristocracy , or of any other estate of the realm . It follows that only divine authority can judge
261-519: A pupillage in 1932, at 5 Essex Court Chambers , and almost simultaneously had an offer to stand for parliament from the Duke of Devonshire , to replace Edward Marjoribanks . He left the Mistery over its anti-Semitism, with the rise of Hitler. His flat at 2, Paper Buildings , Inner Temple , was reportedly used for meetings of the Mistery for a time. He mentions as members John de Rutzen, John Davenport, and John Dennis Fowler Green (1909–2000) who became
348-668: A BBC radio producer. The Mistery's members included the British Nietzschean Anthony Ludovici , a prolific writer for the movement and former of its ideology, and the journalist Collin Brooks , member of both the Grosvenor Kin and St James Kin in London. Others were Rolf Gardiner and Graham Seton Hutchison , founder in 1933 of the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic National Workers' Movement , and
435-484: A dispute between Sanderson and Lord Lymington. The vast majority of the English Mistery led by Lymington left to found a new group, English Array while Sanderson remained the leader of a rump. Divine right of kings Philosophers Works In European Christianity , the divine right of kings , divine right , or God's mandation , is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of
522-567: A few master moneylenders, orientals, clever degenerates and a mass of subhuman beings in control of Europe". In August 1939 at the height of the Danzig crisis , Lymington sent out a message to the English Array reading "should there be a war, it must be treated as an interval in full Array activities". In October 1939 edition of the Array's journal The New Pioneer , Lymington complained about
609-525: A glass book, who told him to ordain Aedan mac Gabrain as King of Dal Riata . Columba initially refused, and the angel answered by whipping him and demanding that he perform the ordination because God had commanded it. The same angel visited Columba on three successive nights. Columba finally agreed, and Aedan came to receive ordination. At the ordination, Columba told Aedan that so long as he obeyed God's laws, then none of his enemies would prevail against him, but
696-406: A hand against God and stood on equal footing as blasphemy. In essence, the king stood in place of God and was never to be challenged "without the challenger being accused of blasphemy" - except by a prophet, which under Christianity was replaced by the church. Outside of Christianity, kings were often seen as ruling with the backing of heavenly powers. Although the later Roman Empire had developed
783-408: A king, which some rabbinical sources have argued is an invocation against a divine right of kings, and a call to elect a leader, in opposition to a notion of a divine right. Other rabbinical arguments have put forward an idea that it is through the collective decision of the people that God's will is made manifest, and that the king does therefore have a divine right - once appointed by the nation, he
870-517: A land without king or royal authority, Vedic rituals are ineffectual and Agni does not convey sacrificial libations to the gods. Khvarenah (also spelled khwarenah or xwarra(h) : Avestan : 𐬓𐬀𐬭𐬆𐬥𐬀𐬵 xᵛarənah ; Persian : فرّ , romanized : far ) is an Iranian and Zoroastrian concept, which literally means glory , about divine right of the kings. This may stem from early Mesopotamian culture, where kings were often regarded as deities after their death. Shulgi of Ur
957-584: A living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate pious respect for traditional Republican deities and mores . Many of the rites, practices and status distinctions that characterized the cult to emperors were perpetuated in the theology and politics of the Christianised Empire. While the earliest references to kingship in Israel proclaim that "14 "When you come to
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#17327723592671044-531: A manual on the powers of a king, was written to edify his four-year-old son Henry Frederick that a king "acknowledgeth himself ordained for his people, having received from God a burden of government, whereof he must be countable". The conception of ordination brought with it largely unspoken parallels with the Anglican and Catholic priesthood , but the overriding metaphor in James VI's ' Basilikon Doron '
1131-544: A monarch, and that any attempt to depose, dethrone, resist or restrict their powers runs contrary to God's will and may constitute a sacrilegious act. It does not imply that their power is absolute. In its full-fledged form, the Divine Right of Kings is associated with Henry VIII of England (and the Acts of Supremacy ), James VI and I of Scotland and England, Louis XIV of France, and their successors. In contrast,
1218-483: A nation of "racially pure" Englishmen who were led by an absolute monarch and supported by strong leaders. It was elitist and consciously chose not to become a mass movement, because, as one of its pamphlets stated, "we do not want millions of ineffective members". It was organised into "kins" with an average of 10–30 or so members. Being firmly anti-democratic, the group regarded the emergence of modern parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage as disasters. In
1305-448: A reward. On the other hand, Aquinas forbade the overthrow of any morally, Christianly and spiritually legitimate king by his subjects. The only human power capable of deposing the king was the pope. The reasoning was that if a subject may overthrow his superior for some bad law, who was to be the judge of whether the law was bad? If the subject could so judge his own superior, then all lawful superior authority could lawfully be overthrown by
1392-581: A tyranny oppressive of the general welfare was answered theologically with the Catholic concept of the spiritual superiority of the Pope (there is no "Catholic concept of extra-legal tyrannicide ", as some falsely suppose, the same being expressly condemned by St Thomas Aquinas in chapter 7 of his De Regno ). Catholic thought justified limited submission to the monarchy by reference to the following: The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship,
1479-637: A war which would mark the end of white civilisation". In the July 1938 edition of the Quarterly Gazette praised the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany as much superior to British democracy. The anonymous article wrote in the United Kingdom "the degenerate and morally deficient are free to propagate their bad stock, which becomes a charge on the rest of the community; the aliens are free to enter
1566-531: Is God's emissary. Jewish law requires one to recite a special blessing upon seeing a monarch: "Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, Who has given from His glory to flesh and blood". With the rise of firearms , nation-states and the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century, the theory of divine right justified the king's absolute authority in both political and spiritual matters. Henry VIII of England declared himself
1653-521: Is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including (in the view of some, especially in Protestant countries) the church. A weaker or more moderate form of this political theory does hold, however, that
1740-533: Is also following Ardashir. Artabanus's religious advisors explain to him that the ram is the manifestation of the khwarrah of the ancient Iranian kings, which is leaving Artabanus to join Ardashir. The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified Roman emperors and some members of their families with the "divinely sanctioned" authority ( auctoritas ) of the Roman State . The official offer of cultus to
1827-476: Is found in many other cultures, including Aryan and Egyptian traditions. The Christian notion of a divine right of kings is traced to a story found in 1 Samuel , where the prophet Samuel anoints Saul and then David as Messiah ("anointed one")—king over Israel. In the Jewish traditions, the lack of a divine leadership represented by an anointed king, beginning shortly after the death of Joshua , left
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#17327723592671914-606: Is only necessary to say that Franco's is not a military rebellion, but a popular uprising against great material odds to save Spain from a foreign planned Communist revolution". In its writings on European affairs, the English Array was very pro-Nazi and consistently portrayed the Third Reich in a positive light. In the Quarterly Gazette of the English Array for April 1938, Lymington praised the Anschluss and wrote "we must do what we can to save our country from being forced into
2001-603: The Carolingian dynasty and the Holy Roman Emperors , whose lasting impact on Western and Central Europe further inspired all subsequent Western ideas of kingship. In the Middle Ages , the idea that God had granted certain earthly powers to the monarch, just as he had given spiritual authority and power to the church, especially to the Pope, was already a well-known concept long before later writers coined
2088-638: The Imperial Fascist League . In his pamphlet An Introduction to the English Mistery , Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about
2175-596: The Kinship in Husbandry led by Rolf Gardiner . The Conservative MP Reginald Dorman-Smith was one of the English Mistery members who left to join the English Array. Dorman-Smith joined the cabinet in January 1939 as minister of agriculture, which gave the English Array hopes that their vision would soon be realised. The English Array was a "back-to-the-land" movement and called for the deurbanisation of Britain. Alongside
2262-576: The Supreme Head of the Church of England and exerted the power of the throne more than any of his predecessors. As a political theory, it was further developed by James VI of Scotland (1567–1625) and came to the fore in England under his reign as James I of England (1603–1625). Louis XIV of France (1643–1715) strongly promoted the theory as well. Historian J.P. Sommerville stresses the theory
2349-695: The United Kingdom of the 1930s. A " Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system , its views have been characterised as " reactionary ultra- royalist , anti-democratic". The organisation was opposed to social welfare , the London School of Economics , and the United States . The London barrister William John Sanderson (1883–1941) was the son of W. J. Sanderson of Gosforth , educated at Marlborough College , and graduating LL.B. at Jesus College, Cambridge ; he
2436-539: The ius regium , or the law of kingship, and from this passage that Maimonides finally concludes that Judaism supports the institution of monarchy, stating that the Israelites had been given three commandments upon entering the land of Israel - to designate a king for themselves, to wipe out the memory of Amalek, and to build the Temple. The debate has primarily centered around the problem of being told to "designate"
2523-522: The "English Array was Gothic in style and frankly reactionary in inspiration". Like the English Mistery, the English Array did not accept women as members. The English Array saw the end of the feudal system in England as the greatest disaster that ever befell the English people, and longed to restore a highly idealised vision of the Middle Ages with the English people united in deference to the king and
2610-477: The "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests". He knew of Italian Fascism through the work of Harold Goad . In a letter of 1937 he wrote of his personal contacts with Camillo Pellizzi ( it:Camillo Pellizzi ), Luigi Villari and Dino Grandi . He joined
2697-666: The "fratricide" in Europe which only served the Soviet Union. The marked similarity of ideas of the English Array to the National Socialists in Germany was much noted at the time, and led Lymington to dissolve the English Array in 1940 as he feared he would be interned as a fascist.. English Mistery The English Mistery ("Mistery" being an old word for a guild ) was a political and esoteric group active in
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2784-568: The English Mistery's leaders, Rolf Gardiner , wrote about the group in the April 1936 edition of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst journal where he declared: The members of this organisation, which brings together employers and workers in organic groups and constellations, call themselves 'Royalists'. They want to make the king once again the leader of the English people. The king should no longer simply be
2871-736: The English Mistery, who seek the ideal of aristocratic rule" in a "semi-masonic order". Wallop eventually split the group in 1936, forming his successor organisation, the English Array . John Platts-Mills belonged to the group; he was recruited in 1931 via the Apollo University Lodge in Oxford and Godman Irvine, being driven to Lincoln's Inn to meet Sanderson. His autobiography records that at this time Sanderson held weekly soirées , largely social, and more intense Thursday meetings at which short papers were read. He gained
2958-478: The Englishman's excess energy, has been long a mainstay of British imperial thinking." The Mistery was quite sexist and did not accept women as members. The British historian Daniel Stone noted that antifeminism was one of the strongest motivations for the Mistery as the group's publications, especially those by Anthony Ludovici brim with resentment and fury over women making demands for equality. One of
3045-640: The European concept of a divine regent in Late Antiquity, Adomnan of Iona provides one of the earliest written examples of a Western medieval concept of kings ruling with divine right. He wrote of the Irish King Diarmait mac Cerbaill 's assassination and claimed that divine punishment fell on his assassin for the act of violating the monarch. Adomnan also recorded a story about Saint Columba supposedly being visited by an angel carrying
3132-521: The German people. In September 1938, the English Array held its annual rally at Lymington's estate at Farleigh Wallop where Dorman-Smith and Gardiner both spoke. In his speech, Gardiner praised the Nazi regime for having "showed how hope can be given to a defeated and degenerate nation by sacrifice and singleness of mind working outside the ordinary bureaucratic standards; how the regeneration of Hitler's Germany
3219-408: The Mistery inactive in practical terms. Beaumont in 1930 introduced Gerard Wallop (courtesy title Viscount Lymington to 1943) to Sanderson; Wallop found him to be "a very short physically myopic Northumbrian". Wallop accepted Sanderson's offer to become the "executive leader" of the Mistery. By 1933 it was said that Wallop had "attracted around him a band of devoted young men, known collectively as
3306-451: The academic Arthur Gray . Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes;
3393-408: The arbitrary judgement of an inferior, and thus all law was under constant threat. According to John of Paris , kings had their jurisdictions and bishops (and the pope) had theirs, but kings derived their supreme, non-absolute temporal jurisdiction from popular consent. The Church was the final guarantor that Christian kings would follow the laws and constitutional traditions of their ancestors and
3480-666: The aristocracy. The British historian Richard Griffiths wrote that the leaders of the English Array took "...fanciful and faintly medieval titles. Lymington was Marshal of the Array. The Hon. Richard de Grey, brother of Lord Walsingham, was Lieutenant of the King Alfred Muster in Dorset. Sir Geoffrey Congreve, who owned about 3, 000 acres in Staffordshire was Area Marshal for that county. A certain Richard Marker
3567-556: The basic concept of the English Array was that the United Kingdom was heading towards a catastrophic collapse which would see the end of democracy with the king staging a self-coup to take power, and at which point the English Mistery/English Array would step forward to assist the royal dictatorship. A major theme of both the English Mistery and the English Array was that the Great Depression was only
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3654-576: The bearer of the Crown, but the living embodiment of the State's power and of the deepest will of the people. From criticism of the Conservative Party, liberal through and through, they have moved towards a contemplation of the forms of English government before Cromwell. They want to revive long lost Germanic traditions in the English social order. In 1936, the English Mistery fell apart owing to
3741-427: The beauty of English countryside along with attacks on the "scum" and "aliens" in England and "international finance". Gardiner who like most of the other members of the English Mistery left in 1936 to join the English Array was very active in settling up "National Service Camps" designed to train the future elite of the English Array who would take over Britain once democracy collapsed. Like the English Mistery before it,
3828-569: The best for the worst in Europe. The Czechs are in fact the inferiority-complex whites of Europe. Their fellow Slavs, the Serbians, have called them the white Jews of Europe...They have been a centre for Communist intrigue and promise after promise made by Benes, a prominent member of the Grand Orient, has been broken. It is symbolical that Prague is a moneylenders' centre...It was the perfect way to overthrow everything decent in Europe and leave
3915-400: The calls for a rural society to led both politically and economically by the aristocracy was an ecologist message about preserving the environment and promoting organic farming. The clearest expression of the ideology of the English Array was the 1938 book Famine in England by Lymington, which contained praise for the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the "white northern races of Europe" and
4002-678: The center of the British economy via state subsidies and land banks. Lymington believed that the "international finance" (i.e. a codename for Jews) was intentionally starving British farms of capital, and that Britain could achieve agricultural self-sufficiency by settling up land banks that would provide the necessary capital to modernise farming. Like the English Mistery, the English Array was anti-Semitic and depicted Jews as "eternal foreigners" who could never be English under any conditions. The English Array did not accept Jews as members and likewise banned all non-white people from its ranks as Englishness
4089-612: The conception of human rights started being developed during the Middle Ages by scholars such as St. Thomas Aquinas (see Natural Law ) and were systematised by the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment , e.g. John Locke . Liberty , dignity , freedom and equality are examples of important human rights. Divine right has been a key element of the self-legitimisation of many absolute monarchies , connected with their authority and right to rule. Related but distinct notions include Caesaropapism (the complete subordination of bishops etc. to
4176-438: The country at the rate of one hundred and fifty per month and take many jobs which might go to British men and women while they are also free to destroy our culture and lower our health by miscegenation...in those countries [Italy and Germany] duty to the whole body politic comes before the selfish interests of any particular individual or group". The article ended by praising the Nazi regime for "constructive racial regeneration" of
4263-488: The crops and animals is one that does not need any explanation for the men of the English Array...If we serve our soil, we can bring back the fertility of the strong breeds that will people the Empire with the desired men and women who will hold it against tides of yellow men and brown". Lymington called for a protectionist policy designed to keep foreign agricultural products out of British markets while agriculture would be made
4350-533: The first stage of the expected catastrophe while the widespread perception that both Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin were ineffectual prime ministers was the second stage of the expected disaster. The ideology of the English Array was very strongly influenced by the "blood-and-soil" ideas of the Völkisch movement in Germany. Like the völkisch activists in the Reich , the English Array linked race to
4437-410: The following quote from a speech to parliament delivered in 1610 as James I of England: The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself, they are called gods. There be three principal [comparisons] that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God, and the two other out of
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#17327723592674524-416: The future with purpose from binding back. It has two sides, mystical and practical". The English Array was openly opposed to democracy and any man wanting to join the English Array had to take the following oath: "I have faith in the surviving stock of my own people. I have love for them and for the English soil from which I have sprung. I have hope that though the regeneration of that stock and its soil. I hate
4611-532: The grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures, kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the Divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families; for a king is true parens patriae [parent of the country], the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man. James's reference to "God's lieutenants"
4698-430: The group in 1930, to promote his view of leadership . It took its title from his book of that year, That Which Was Lost: A Treatise on Freemasonry and the English Mistery . Close colleagues of Sanderson in the founding group of English Mistery were Bryant Godman Irvine , Ben Shaw and Norman Swan. Conservative MPs Michael Beaumont and Reginald Dorman-Smith joined. Later Beaumont left: both he and Dorman-Smith found
4785-408: The group's view, "submissive" races and peoples could be the victim of brutalities and slaughter, but to them this was a good thing: Surely, therefore, the time has come to recognise the inevitability of violence and sacrifice, and consciously to select the section or elements in the world or the nation that should be sacrificed. Stone comments: "The slaughter of primitive peoples as a way of venting
4872-475: The kind which finds a way into membership of the English Mistery". A private dinner for the English Mistery took place on 29 April 1939, in the Grand Hotel, Hanley, Staffordshire . The 40 to 50 men who attended wore red roses. The officers of the Mistery were Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden (High Steward), with William Sanderson, Roger Gresham Cooke , John Green and Henry Snell. Sanderson
4959-470: The king is subject to the church and the pope, although completely irreproachable in other ways; but according to this doctrine in its strong form, only God can judge an unjust king. The doctrine implies that any attempt to depose the king or to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God and may constitute a sacrilegious act. The Scots textbooks of the divine right of kings were written in 1597–1598 by James VI of Scotland. His Basilikon Doron ,
5046-549: The king was a "prisoner" of Parliament and the English Array attempted to infiltrate the court with the aim of freeing the king in order to restore his rightful powers. The English Array supported the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and accepted at face value the claim that the botched military coup d'état of 18 July 1936 was necessary to forestall a planned Communist coup. Lymington wrote: "About Spain it
5133-454: The land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,' 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother." (Deut 17:14-15), significant debate on
5220-503: The landscape with healthy landscapes equating healthy bodies and healthy races.. Lymington believed that the Industrial Revolution along with the accompanying urbanisation were disasters for Britain as it caused a "racial degeneration", which only be stopped by a return of the population to the rural areas. Lymington wrote: "The conviction that the healthy state of the soil is the foundation of human health as well of that of
5307-399: The laws of God and of justice. Radical English theologian John Wycliffe 's theory of Dominium meant that injuries inflicted on someone personally by a king should be born by them submissively, a conventional idea, but that injuries by a king against God should be patiently resisted even to death; gravely sinful kings and popes forfeited their (divine) right to obedience and ownership, though
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#17327723592675394-540: The legitimacy of kingship has persisted in Rabbinical Judaism until Maimonides , though many mainstream currents continue to reject the notion. The controversy is highlighted by the instructions to the Israelites in the above-quoted passage, as well as the passages in 1 Samuel 8 and 12, concerning the dispute over kingship; and Perashat Shoftim. It is from 1 Samuel 8 that the Jews receive mishpat ha-melech,
5481-510: The lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him confined to a wheelchair did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick. Dan Stone has stated that the importance of the English Mistery lay "in the fact that it had links, both personal and ideological, with much wider strands of thought in interwar Britain." Sanderson founded
5568-510: The moment he broke them, this protection would end, and the same whip with which Columba had been struck would be turned against the king. Adomnan's writings most likely influenced other Irish writers, who in turn influenced continental ideas as well. Pepin the Short 's coronation may have also come from the same influence. The Byzantine Empire can be seen as the progenitor of this concept (which began with Constantine I ). This in turn inspired
5655-438: The people of Israel vulnerable, and the promise of the "promised land" was not fully fulfilled until a king was anointed by a prophet on behalf of God. The effect of anointing was seen to be that the monarch became inviolable, so that even when Saul sought to kill David, David would not raise his hand against him because "he was the Lord's anointed". Raising a hand to a king was therefore considered to be as sacrilegious as raising
5742-468: The period before men had kings, and there was chaos all around - It has been heard by us that men, in days of old, in consequence of anarchy, met with destruction, devouring one another like stronger fishes devouring the weaker ones in the water. It has been heard by us that a few amongst them then, assembling together, made certain compacts, saying, 'He who becomes harsh in speech, or violent in temper, he who seduces or abducts other people’s wives or robs
5829-503: The political order should be maintained. More aggressive versions of this were taken up by Lollards and Hussites . For Erasmus of Rotterdam it was the consent of the people which gives and takes away "the purple", not an unchangeable divine mandate. Catholic jurisprudence holds that the monarch is always subject to natural and divine law , which are regarded as superior to the monarch. The possibility of monarchy declining morally, overturning natural law, and degenerating into
5916-707: The retired army officer Cecil de Sausmarez . Hutchison worked in the pay of Alfred Rosenberg , the "official philosopher" of the NSDAP who also headed the Außenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Policy Office) of the NSDAP. As for the British Union of Fascists , many of the group's members were "aristocratic revivalists and Diehard peers of the Edwardian period ". Henry William John Edwards wrote in 1938 (referring though to 1935) of "a Nietzschean Tory of
6003-464: The right of a father to receive respect from his son did not indicate a right for the son to receive a return from that respect. Analogously, the divine right of kings, which permitted absolute power over subjects, provided few rights for the subjects themselves. It is sometimes signified by the phrase " by the Grace of God " or its Latin equivalent, Dei Gratia , which has historically been attached to
6090-573: The secular power), Supremacy (the legal sovereignty of the civil laws over the laws of the Church), Absolutism (a form of monarchical or despotic power that is unrestrained by all other institutions, such as churches, legislatures, or social elites) or Tyranny (an absolute ruler who is unrestrained even by moral law ). Historically, many notions of rights have been authoritarian and hierarchical , with different people granted different rights and some having more rights than others. For instance,
6177-523: The system of democracy which is in effect a tyranny that dupes men by allowing them to agitate in Hyde Park while it refuses them the right to be responsible for their own family". The English Array believed in the traditional divine right of kings with the British monarchs as accountable only to God, and the English Array presented the monarchy in mystical terms as a semi-divine institution whose powers had been usurped by parliament. The group believed that
6264-461: The term "divine right of kings" and employed it as a theory in political science. However, the dividing line for the authority and power was a subject of frequent contention: notably in England with the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett (1170). For example, Richard I of England declared at his trial during the diet at Speyer in 1193: " I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions ", and it
6351-505: The titles of certain reigning monarchs. Note, however, that such accountability only to God does not per se make the monarch a sacred king . The Hindu text Mahabharata contains several concepts of kingship, especially underscoring its divine origins. The king is considered an embodiment of Indra , and fealty to him is considered as submitting to divine authority. In the Rajadharmanusasana Parva, Bhishma talks of
6438-495: The wealth that belongs to others, should be cast off by us.' For inspiring confidence among all classes of the people, they made such a compact and lived for some time. Assembling after some time they proceeded in affliction to the Grandsire , saying, 'Without a king, O divine lord, we are going to destruction. Appoint some one as our king. All of us shall worship him and he shall protect us.'. The Mahabharata also mentions that in
6525-637: Was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906. He was before World War I at the centre of a group of " Royalist and Loyalist " young men. Some of those were associated with the chambers of F. E. Smith ; and very many of them died in the war in France. In 1917 he founded the Order of the Red Rose, an anti-Semitic group opposed to finance capitalism , with the zoologist George Percival Mudge, and
6612-679: Was Leader of the New Muster at Gittesham, East Devon. Captain R.J.M. Wilson was Stewart of the Fens". The membership of the English Array was almost entirely rural with the Array being very strong in East Anglia . The center of the English Array was Farleigh Wallop , the estate of Lymington in the Hampshire countryside. The English Array maintained contacts with other groups such as the British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosely to
6699-632: Was Lymington. The English Array used as its symbol a red rose set on the Saint George's Cross flag (the flag of England) along with elaborate titles as the English Array was led by "Marshals" whose "Musters" corresponded to the counties of England. As suggested by its name, the English Array identified with England instead of Britain and did not operate in the Celtic lands of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The British historian Martin Pugh wrote that
6786-464: Was Richard who first used the motto " Dieu et mon droit " ("God and my right") which is still the motto of the Monarch of the United Kingdom . Thomas Aquinas condoned extra-legal tyrannicide in the worst of circumstances: When there is no recourse to a superior by whom judgment can be made about an invader, then he who slays a tyrant to liberate his fatherland is [to be] praised and receives
6873-425: Was a Freemason but disaffected, and author of a book Statecraft (1927). Bernhard Dietz has described Statecraft as a "racist, antisemitic and misogynistic fundamental critique of modern industrial society", where Sanderson offered up as an alternative "the mythical fantasy of a masculine, military society". The English Mistery envisioned their ideal England as a country with a strict hierarchy and inhabited by
6960-539: Was among the first Mesopotamian rulers to declare himself to be divine. In the Iranian view, kings would never rule, unless Khvarenah is with them, and they will never fall unless Khvarenah leaves them. For example, according to the Kar-namag of Ardashir , when Ardashir I of Persia and Artabanus V of Parthia fought for the throne of Iran, on the road Artabanus and his contingent are overtaken by an enormous ram, which
7047-641: Was made possible beforehand by a few pioneers". In the October 1938 edition of Quarterly Gazette , Lymington wrote about the Sudetenland crisis: "Few stopped to think that such a war would benefit no one, but the Jews and the international communists...The fault did not lie with those whose standards were so warped that they believed alliance with the Czechs and the Bolsheviks against a regenerate Germany
7134-464: Was not proper for the "chief syndic" of the Mistery and asked him to resign. The majority of the members of the Mistery followed Lymington who founded the English Array in December 1936 while Sanderson remained the leader of a rump Mistery that soon faded into irrelevance. The ideology of the English Array was precisely the same as the English Mistery while the other differences being that the new leader
7221-474: Was polemic: "Absolutists magnified royal power. They did this to protect the state against anarchy and to refute the ideas of resistance theorists", those being in Britain Catholic and Presbyterian theorists. The concept of divine right incorporates, but exaggerates, the ancient Christian concept of "royal God-given rights", which teach that "the right to rule is anointed by God", although this idea
7308-582: Was right, but with us who have so far failed to carry regenerate values through the country". The same issue contained an anonymous article that read: "Ostensibly, we were to fight to save a small nation from German aggression. In our ignorance we did not or could not realise that we were to use force to prevent Germans using force to finish, once and for all, a miserable people using force to oppress and hold within their boundaries better people than themselves. Never once did we enquire, who are these Czechs? If we had, we would have realised that we proposed to sacrifice
7395-532: Was stopping the sale of pasteurised milk, which seen as a deadly health threat to the English. Lymington favored an absolute monarchy for Britain as he stated that for the English Array: "We speak of our Sovereign Lord the King. The phrase enshrines the deepest political instinct we have. It is not a sentiment of wishfulness; it is the strength which binds us back to our ancestors and drives us forward to build
7482-519: Was that of a father's relation to his children. "Just as no misconduct on the part of a father can free his children from obedience to the fifth commandment ." James, after becoming James I of England, also had printed his Defense of the Right of Kings in the face of English theories of inalienable popular and clerical rights. He based his theories in part on his understanding of the Bible, as noted by
7569-414: Was understood by the English Array to be Christian and white. The English Array believed that the English people were a race whose bloodlines needed to be protected from foreigners, which led for the group to be strongly anti-immigrant. As part of "back-to-the-land" ideology, members of the English Array were encouraged to move to rural areas and engage in organic farming. A major concern for the English Array
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