The King’s Heart

(On King George V and King George VI)

By Stephen Green

First published in Christian Voice January 2012

Proverbs 21:1  The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

Daniel 2:21  And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:

December 2011 brought some encouragement to those of us who pray for our nation.  David Cameron vetoed a new European treaty and defended the Christian heritage of the United Kingdom.  Her Majesty the Queen spoke of her faith and prayed in her Christmas broadcast that we might all find room for the Christ child.  On the other hand, Parliament appears intent on changing the rules of succession to the Crown and enacting the abomination of ‘gay marriage’.  World events are hardly encouraging to anyone looking for signs of the advancement of the kingdom of God.

In the Bible, the enemies of the Gospel famously said that God does not intervene in the affairs of men, leading the Lord to respond through the Prophet Zephaniah:

Zeph 1:12  And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.

The writer of Proverbs says quite clearly that the Lord is able to direct the intentions of kings.  Daniel says that God will depose and appoint kings.  He tells us how God sent Nebuchadnezzar into the field to eat grass for 7 years until he repented.  He records the personal testimony of Nebuchadnezzar himself:

Dan 4:37  Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.

The trouble is, Biblical events seem so long ago and far away.  Does God really remove and set up rulers today?  Or does he simply watch our affairs from a distance?  Well we know what Richard Dawkins and the rest of his secularist gang would say.

So it comes as something of a delight to recall that God has done exactly as Daniel claimed he could in this United Kingdom in living memory.  A week or so ago, BBC2 carried a pair of programmes about King George V and King George VI.  The first was a fascinating glimpse into the lives of George V and Queen Mary, described as “The royals who rescued the monarchy”.

George V was not known for his intellect.  Even his official biographer Harold Nicolson described him as possessing the “intellectual capacity of a railway porter”, while the historian Piers Brendon said that George “confused in later life the words highbrow and eyebrow”.  And yet this extraordinary man was given two qualities of far greater importance: probity and wisdom.

In contrast to the ways of his father Edward VII, George was resolutely monogamous. He hated the then fashionable aristocratic goings-on and exemplified a simpler, more bourgeois upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Although a stickler for detail, discipline and codes of dress, he was flexible enough to adapt the monarchy to a new and less extravagant age and astute enough to recognise the signs of the times and the will of the people. It was George V who spotted anti-German feeling during World War I and change the name of the Royal house from Saxe-Coburg toWindsor. At a time when European monarchs were losing their thrones if not their heads, he instituted the Royal walkabout, meeting ordinary people.  He became so loved that 1 million people attended his funeral in January 1936.

Having served in the Royal Navy, entering as a cadet and working his way up as a serving officer to the rank of commander, George was not indifferent to the needs of those serving below him.  During the General Strike of 1926 he took exception to suggestions that the strikers were “revolutionaries” saying, “Try living on their wages before you judge them.”

George V ended the tradition of royal princes only marrying into other European royal families  by allowing his younger son to marry a commoner, albeit an aristocratic one, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.  In 1932, he made the first Christmas broadcast, setting a pattern continued to this day.  (It was particularly encouraging this year to hear Her Majesty the Queen speak of her faith and tell her audience: ‘of how God sent into the world a unique person … a Saviour, with the power to forgive’. She even ended with a prayer ‘that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.’)

Yet George was not born to be king.  He had an elder brother, Albert Victor, and was quite happy with his career in the Navy, his shooting trips and his stamp collection. Scandal was soon attaching itself however to Albert Victor. He gained a reputation as a gambler and a womaniser, moving in circles closely associated with those involved in the homosexual Cleveland Street scandal of 1889.

This was the man who would have been king but for an outbreak of influenza which turned to pneumonia.  He died in 1892 at the age of 28, leaving the way clear for his younger brother eventually to succeed to the throne in 1910.

We do not know much of the spiritual life of George V, but we do know at least that he understood the importance of prayer. At the outbreak of World War I, the British Army was in trouble near Mons.  More than 300,000 French soldiers had been killed and the Germans had their sights on Paris.

King George V called a national day of prayer.  The German advance was halted and the British Army, which had been heavily outnumbered, claimed a victory.  Rumours spread of the intervention of an angel on the battlefield.  In August 1918, another day of prayer was held.  It was formally led by the king, with both Houses of Parliament attending, at St. Margaret’s Westminster.  People prayed throughout the whole of the British Empire and the tide was turned that month leading to victory three months later.

George and Mary were blessed with five sons and a daughter, but their eldest son sadly fell into the ways of his late uncle and grandfather.  His father was particularly aghast at his affairs with married women, of whom the most prominent came to be Mrs Wallis Simpson, already once divorced and still married while the Prince was carrying on his affair with her.

In 1935, only months before his death, George cursed his eldest son in the most penetrating manner.  He said: “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months”.  It turned out exactly as he said.  Edward VIII reigned from 20th January to 11th December 1936.  Rather than give up Mrs Simpson, he abdicated.

A prayer is also recorded concerning King George’s two eldest sons and his granddaughter Elizabeth:  “I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.”

Well, such is the power of a father’s words and prayers that Edward, although he married, died childless in 1972 and Albert did succeed to the throne in December 1936.  In those years leading up to the Second World War, Edward and Wallis, as Duke and Duchess of Windsor, met with Adolf Hitler.  Rhys Howells, who spent so much time praying at the time, was of the opinion that the policy of appeasement did buy Britain some time to fortify the coast and build armaments.  Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that Edward was not the King Britain needed in her hour of need.

In the event, George VI and Queen Elizabeth did inestimable work building morale by visiting areas bombed during the Blitz. Like his father, George had a heart for the people, and he had married a woman of wisdom and courage.  When advised to evacuate her daughters to Canada she said, “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave the King. And the King will never leave.”  So successful were the royal couple’s morale building visits to the East End of London, and so identified did the Queen in particular become with them, that Hitler described her as “the most dangerous woman in Europe”.

King George VI was also a man of prayer, calling the nation to seek the Lord numerous times during the Second World War.  There is a ‘National Day of Prayer Poster’ dating from 1939 in the Imperial War Museum.  It says: ‘Put your trust in God, as I do,’ and is signed by the King.

In his Christmas Day broadcast in 1939, the king helped build an attitude of courage and reliance on Almighty God with these words by Minnie Haskins:

‘And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.

‘And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.  That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”‘

Albert Barnes, in his commentary on Daniel, writes: ‘A history of human affairs, showing the exact purpose of God in regard to each ruler who has occupied a throne, and the exact object which God designed to accomplish by placing “him” on the throne at the time when he did, would be a far more important and valuable history than any which has been written. Of many such rulers, like Cyrus, Sennacherib, Pilate, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and the Elector of Saxony, we can see the reason why they lived and reigned when they did; and doubtless God has had some important end to accomplish in the development of his great plans in the case of every one who has ever occupied a throne.’

We can happily add George V and George VI to that list.  In two succeeding generations Almighty God removed an unsuitable elder son and set a better man in his place.  Each man guided his nation, on the advice of his ministers, successfully through a world war and each man helped encourage his people by his affinity with them.

We are currently writing a briefing paper supporting the historic assumption that male heirs should be preferred before female in the succession to the throne.  I believe it is right to take that position. Equally, the events of the last century encourage us that who ever is in line to the throne can be removed by our God who removeth and setteth up kings.