Alert Butler

That pleasant young man Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England, had something to do last week. As 16th Duke of Norfolk and 27th Earl of Arundel, His Grace is the Premier Duke & Earl of the entire peerage. He is the British aristocrat. Beside the Ducal House of Norfolk, the Royal House of Windsor is an upstart. Last week His Grace the Duke of Norfolk was informed that a cinema theatre at Stirling, Scotland was flying not the Union Jack but the ancient flag of Scotland, boldly flaunting the Lion Rampant.

In this emergency the 24-year-old Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England took counsel with his Roman Catholic advisers and his devout mother, the Baroness Herries. His Grace was advised that he could invoke an Act of Parliament making it illegal to fly the ancient flag of Scotland. Promptly he invoked the said Act last week, then retired into his usual aristocratic silence.

Wags were quick to point out that the cinema owner ought to have been beheaded. For his crime the Act invoked last week provides Death by the axe. It was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth especially to cause the beheading of such troublesome Scottish flag-flyers as Mary Queen of Scots. No fool, the young Duke of Norfolk knew better last week than to order, "Off with his head!"

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