I enjoy fish, smoked fish and other marine delicacies. I did so at the weekend to celebrate the birthday of herself. A good time was had by all!
I then started to watch 5 nights with Brenda, the troubled times of a small monarch! All good clean fun and, as an aficionado of the haddock, I marveled at the arrogance of it all, long since forgotten.
I was pulled up short by a reference to the Declaration of Arbroath, again long since forgotten.
Open Democracy had this from an article by Canon Kenyon Wright in the Our Kingdom section.
...Lord President Cooper, arguably the greatest Scots lawyer of the last century stated “the principle of the unlimited sovereignty of parliament is a distinctively English principle, which has no counterpart in Scots constitutional law”That golden thread which runs through our history goes back even further – to the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. Its stirring call to freedom is often quoted, but for me the most important part of it, which puts it so far ahead of its time, is the clear declaration that even the great Robert the Bruce is “King, not only by right of succession according to our laws and customs, but also with the due consent of us all” and goes on to warn him that should he betray that trust “we would instantly strive to expel him as our enemy and the betrayer of his own rights and ours, and we would choose another king to rule over us who would be equal to the task of our defence”
A Commissioner at the Kirk’s General Assembly in 1989 summed it up more succinctly – “They said to Robert, you might be the King, but ye dae as ye’re telt, or ye’re on the burroo”
I love that bit .... "dae as ye’re telt, or ye’re on the burroo"...
So in that bit of 'England' north of the border Brenda's writ runs only in so far as she daes as she is telt. Otherwise it's the burroo; or possibly a slap in the face with an Arbroath Smokie!
