The Order of the White Rose Charles A. Coulombe looks at the life of Catholic convert Bertram Ashburnham

In some ways, British and Continental history are intertwined and reflective of each other. The struggle between two versions of governance and Monarchy that rocked the Three Kingdoms of the British Isles from 1642 to 1746 would be mirrored in 19th century Western Europe. In the later struggles, the roles of Cavaliers and Jacobites would be taken by the French Legitimists, Portuguese Miguelists, and Spanish Carlists. As with their English, Scots, and Irish predecessors, for these latter groups it was not merely a question of which branch of the Royal family would reign, but the very nature of the Monarchy over which the legitimate line would preside. Rather than the sort of Crowned Republic ushered in by William and Mary and secured at Culloden, the European groups mentioned fought for a traditional Kingship of Altar, Throne, Subsidiarity and Solidarity. Subsidiarity would have been called local liberties or provincial rights back then; Solidarity as Class Co-operation rather than Class Conflict – the idea being that all classes are part of a national family, with, in those days, the Monarch as the common Father of all.

These developments were not unnoticed in Great Britain. Despite the aid given the liberal parties in each of these countries by such as Lords Melbourne and Palmerston, their opponents did not lack for British sympathisers – the Carlists in particular. These had emerged when, in 1837, Spain’s King Fernando VII had violated his dynasty’s succession laws by declaring his daughter to be his successor rather than his brother, Don Carlos, who was his legal heir – liberals rallied to the former, Traditionalists (the Carlists) to the latter. There were quite a few Carlist allies among the Catholic families of the United Kingdom: Henry Stapleton, 9th Baron Beaumont (1848–1892), builder of Carlton Towers, served in the Carlist army during the second Carlist War in the 1870s; James Errington, nephew of the Archbishop, also joined, as did the American-born John de Haviland, later York Herald. But few of these Carlist supporters attempted to apply (in a sense) Carlism to Great Britain. One who did was Ber tram Ashburnham, the 5th Earl of Ashburnham.

The Ashburnhams had been at Ashburnham in Sussex since the 12th century, and later acquired properties in Wales. Successively made Barons and Earls, they had been steadfast supporters of the Stuarts until about 1710. John Ashburnham, a loyal courtier to Charles I, was given the shirt, drawers, and garters worn by the King at his judicial murder on 30 January 1649, and the blood-stained sheet that was used to cover his body – as well as a lock of the King’s hair encased in a glass and gold pendent. These relics were kept by the family for generations. The 5th Earl was born in 1840 and educated at Westminster School and in France. As was typical in his family, young Bertram was active in court circles, and was part of the delegation that brought Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph the Order of the Garter in 1867. Without a doubt both this experience and his time in France played a part in his conversion to Catholicism, which took place in 1872. Four years later, he succeeded to his father’s title and lands in England and Wales.

Now a man of means, the newly-minted Earl wanted to benefit both the Church and his fellow man. Having built a chapel at Ashburnham Place, he found himself a parishioner of St Thomas of Canterbury, St Leonard’s-on-Sea. In 1882 he provided funding for a school and chapel for what became the parish of Our Lady Immaculate and Saint Michael in Battle, Sussex.

But the Earl was not content with purely religious matters. As mentioned, many wealthier English Catholics were concerned with the Spanish Carlist cause, and the new convert enthusiastically joined their ranks – rapidly becoming the Carlist heir’s chief agent in Britain. But seeing the many resemblances between the Carlist ideology and that abandoned by his ancestors, he began to wonder if some of Carlism’s tenets might not be applied with great benefit to the problems facing the British Isles. Would not an effective Monarch rule according to the true national interest, and not merely act as a figleaf for the contending political interests? Would not the local liberties being fought for in Spain soothe the centralised United Kingdom’s stresses and strains between English, Irish, Scots, and Welsh? This led him to two different efforts.

The first, inspired by the Three Kingdoms’ own history, was NeoJacobitism. In 1886, the Earl published a pamphlet in which he solicited Jacobite supporters – both for the purpose of commemorating the now extinct-in-the-male-line Stuarts, and for strengthening the existing Monarchy. One of his first respondents was the Anglo-French Melville Henry Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny. Together they and a number of others founded on 10 June of that year the Order of the White Rose. Its rolls soon became a sort of Who’s Who of the aesthetes and Celtic Revivalists of the day: Frederick George Lee, Henry Jenner, Kitty Lee Jenner, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Robert Edward Francillon, Andrew Lang, Lionel Johnson, and Herbert Vivian, to name a few.

Bertram Ashburnham: a cordial relationship with Victoria

Such members were of course attracted to the Romantic side of Jacobitism, and were a very heterogenous group – Irish, Scots, Welsh, and Cornish Nationalists; Anglo-Catholic devotees of King Charles I; anti-materialists; and Catholics of an historical and literary bent. Their vision of a British Isles freed from the horrors of modernity may well have been fanciful, but it was not without insight. Their first attempt at a major demonstration was to be a Requiem Mass for Bonnie Prince Charlie – de Jure King Charles III – on his centennial in 1888. This was to be offered at the Carmelite Church in Kensington on 31 January; unfortunately for the Earl and his associates, the Prior of the Friars was ordered by Cardinal Manning to desist. While that mysterious prelate, Frederick George Lee offered an Evensong Catholics could attend as a substitute, it was obvious that the Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain had no interest in any sort of Jacobite revival, being quite happy to maintain good relations with Queen Victoria.

On that score, however, they need not have worried. The Earl, although aware that de Jure the Stuart claims had gone through the female line to a Bavarian Princess, maintained a very cordial relationship with Victoria. Thus it was that he was able to convince the Queen the following year to lend a number of items to a Jacobite exhibition at the New Gallery. In 1890, the Order began the now-hallowed tradition of laying a wreath in honour of Charles I at his statue at Trafalgar Square. But a fissure began to erupt between two currents within the Order; those who like the Earl wished to infuse the existing government and culture of the Islands with the Jacobite spirit, and those who wished to unseat the Queen and replace her with the Bavarian Princess. These latter left the Order in 1891 to found the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland, although the Earl stayed on good terms with them.

In keeping with Carlism’s and Jacobitism’s commitment to local liberties – or, as we would say, subsidiarity – Bertram became committed to the idea of Irish Home Rule – albeit as Monarchy, as in the days of Charles I and the Confederation of Kilkenny, or James II and the Patriot Parliament. In the same year that he founded the Order of the White Rose, he also started the British Home Rule Association, which began life with a mass meeting. The Earl was a forceful supporter of the cause – although he opposed the establishment of an Irish Republic.

In the aftermath of the Spanish defeat by the United States in 1898, Carlist hopes again soared. In 1899, Lord Ashburnham sent his private yacht – loaded with arms and men – to Spain to spark a new revolt. On 17 June, however, the ship was seized by the authorities in a French port, and while the crew and men were permitted to depart, the 3000 rifles were not.

The Earl had married Emily Chapman, a tradesman’s daughter, in 1888. They had one daughter, Lady Catherine, two years later. With the failure of his Spanish attempt and the death of Lady Ashburnham in 1900, Bertram spent ever more time on his estates, concentrating on his daughter’s upbringing. In 1912, Lady Catherine entered the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, although she would not persevere; her father died the following year, and titles and land went to his Anglican younger brother. The 6th Earl would sell the other properties save Ashburnham Place; dying childless in 1924, he left the old house to Lady Catherine, now once more an unmarried laywoman. She died in 1954, leaving Ashburnham Place and enormous death duties to her Anglican priest-nephew the Rev. John Bickersteth, who after pulling down parts of the building, turned Ashburnham Place into the, “Christian Meeting Place it is now ”. He remained custodian of the Charles I relics until his death in 1994, at which time they were taken custody of by the Ashburnham Heritage Trust, which in turn has placed them on long-term loan with the Carisbrooke Castle Museum on the Isle of Wight, site of one of the doomed King’s periods of imprisonment. In addition to these, one may look to the Catholic Church in Battle, the Wreath Laying ceremony at Trafalgar Square and the organisations that sponsor it – the Royal Stuart Society, Society of King Charles the Martyr, and the Royal Martyr Church Union – as elements of the Earl’s legacy.

It may not seem like much at first glance, but Lord Ashburnham’s life and work – although rarely crowned with success – does give us much to ponder. For him, all his political efforts and belief were sparked by his religious ones. The collective experience of Western Countries – and the Church – since his death in 1913 suggests that the questions he raised in his time have yet to be properly answered. Although the Church continues to champion Subsidiarity and Solidarity, can these really exist without the common organising principle established by State acceptance of Christianity of some form, and more particularly of Catholicism – in a word, the very issues being debated under such names as Integralism and the Common Good. Moreover, in a severely “Democratic” era where the elected representatives of the people have demonstrated in the past few years their ability to do as they please with their subjects, ought we not to re-examine the role of Monarchy? Certainly, the new King ’s taking the name of “Charles III” must remind us of the roles of the first three Kings who bore that name.

It may well be that the efforts and writings of Bertram, 5th Earl of Ashburnham and his colleagues are more relevant now than they have been in decades. The closest heirs to the Stuarts have no interest in the British and Commonwealth thrones; but an understanding of the Stuart heritage can certainly help lead to better arrangements than those now prevailing in the King ’s realms. Indeed, as Fr Aidan Nichols points out in his work, The Realm: “Constitutionally this realm remains a Christian country, and that will remain so until there is intentional constitutional change to the contrary. The bonds of the social covenant are still meant to be under God, in the light of the Gospel.” So it was in Lord Ashburnham’s time: he had the courage to ask if those bones can be made to live.