Court of Claims

The darling of British dowagers last week, because he had set an example to King Edward and become engaged to the right sort of girl, was England's Most Eligible Bachelor No. 2, the Duke of Norfolk. As Burke's Peerage says, "The Ducal and illustrious Howards stand, next to the Blood Royal, at the head of the Peerage of England." Last week 28-year old Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, Premier Duke, Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England, momentarily put out of mind his beauteous and horsy fiancee, the Hon. Lavinia Mary Strutt, 20 (TIME, Nov. 30), was eased by his valet into the regalia of Earl Marshal (see cut), and took his place with the Lord Chief Justice of England for the adjudication of claims made by personages of the nobility & gentry to be of service to No. 1 Eligible Bachelor Edward VIII during his Coronation, May 12, 1937.

The right to carry the King's golden spurs was refused to Lord Hastings' father by the Court of Claims of the Duke of Norfolk's father at the time of the Coronation of George V. The Hastings family have chafed at this ever since (25 years), and last week they were out in full force to press their claim with two hours of judicial argument backed up by a diagram three feet square. To the visibly great satisfaction of the House of Hastings, the Court of Claims finally decided that Lord Hastings is one of three peers and four peeresses each indubitably entitled by hereditary right to carry the two spurs of His Majesty. It is not the business of the Court of Claims to decide how seven persons can carry a single pair of spurs, and, as this feat is impossible by any dignified means, King Edward will have the privilege and bother of deciding by whom and how his spurs shall be carried.

Humor was not absent from the Court of Claims last week. When a particularly preposterous family tree had been reeled off in its entirety, the eminent King's counsel, Gavin Turnbull Simonds, observed with a discreet cough--quite as in Gilbert & Sullivan-- "I fancy we have run into a bar sinister somewhere here."

The hereditary duties of the King's Champion are to "gird himself in complete armor," ride out upon a noble charger, fling down his gauntlet, offer to fight all "liars and traitors" who asperse King Edward. With becoming English modesty and shyness, Frank Seaman Dymoke, presenting once more the 14th Century claim of his family to serve as the King's Champion, offered and requested merely to be allowed to carry the Royal Standard of England, because for the last 115 years the Dymokes have not as King's Champions girt themselves in complete armor or challenged any "liars and traitors" to fight.

In the entire history of England no one ever picked up the gauntlet of the King's Champion and offered to fight.

Sonorously the Barons of the Cinque Ports claimed last week their right to bear the Canopy over the King. There will not be any canopy.

When the Court of Claims rose, to sit again soon, it still had before it a piquant list of claims, including that of the man who says his family have always made "a mess of dilligrout" for the Coronation Banquet and wants to make another mess of dilligrout (pottage). Ultimate responsibility for the Coronation rests with the Duke of Norfolk, who was also responsible for holding the funeral of King George (TIME, Feb. 3), but His Grace is himself obliged to establish that at the Coronation Banquet he is the Chief Butler of England, privileged to "carve the first slice." There will not be any banquet.

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