His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Lord Harries of Pentregarth Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB) [V]]

What we have heard today has been truly remarkable and deeply moving. I shall briefly mention two aspects of His Royal Highness’s remarkable work that have not so far been emphasised, but before I do so I want to say something of a more general nature about his role.

We are honouring not just an outstanding individual, truly outstanding though he was, but someone who had a very special role within and relationship to the monarchy. I respect republicans—I was once a teenage republican myself, annoying my mother by refusing to stand up for the national anthem, which in those days was played at the end of films—but I underwent a genuine intellectual conversion during my 20s. The difficulty with having a president as Head of State is that because he is elected he can never be totally above politics. Our sovereign can; she can genuinely stand for the nation as a whole, whichever political party a person might belong to. More than that: because she is anointed as Queen by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster Abbey, she also stands for the nation before God in a very special way. That is why the constitution of this country is not just parliamentary democracy per se but the Queen in Parliament under God. That is of course reflected in our daily prayers.

That leads me to the two special ways in which His Royal Highness supported the Queen in this role. One was the international interfaith group, which he founded with Prince Hassan of Jordan and Sir Evelyn Rothschild. The difference between that and other groups was not only that it was international, but that it brought together clergy as well as distinguished lay people, ambassadors and senior businesspeople to meet in different parts of the world. They met over a number of years, with the Duke, as a key founder member, always present.

Prince Philip clearly had a keen interest in religion, and I understand that his personal library was absolutely chock-full of books on religions of one kind or another. However, it is his public role to which we pay tribute here, where we know that he wanted to make a difference. He saw that one way of doing that was by helping religious institutions relate better to one another through their senior lay people.

The other contribution that I want to mention is his key role in the founding and ongoing work of St George’s House, Windsor. As is well known, he had a good relationship with successive deans of Windsor, and a very special friendship with Robin Woods, later the Bishop of Worcester. Robin Woods and the Duke founded the house, first as a place for clergy to meet for a long period of reflection and study, then as a place for senior or rising people in the secular world from all professions to come together for shorter periods to reflect on their fundamental values and beliefs and how these should be reflected in the modern world. We should not believe everything that we see and hear on “The Crown”, but there was a particularly good episode about the Duke and St George’s House.

The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned the Duke’s seriousness about the Christian faith, shown in the sharp questioning which he gave bishops at their weekends in Sandringham, but I remember his willingness to help nervous bishops be at ease. After dinner on the Saturday, when we had all had enough of making conversation of one kind or another, he invited them simply to relax with him, watching a film on a comfy sofa.

Today we honour not only a man who would be distinguished in any walk or life, especially the Royal Navy, his first love, but someone who strengthened the role of the monarchy over a long, rapidly changing period. He was a man who sought to relate that institution to the modern world in a way that made a real difference for good. I remember with particular gratitude his role in relation to religion in general, and the Church of England in particular.