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sweeping it under the carpet. As sovereign, however, the Queen was well aware of the
difficult situation which she would face as monarch, head of the family and Supreme
Governor of a Church which did not recognize divorce. She would necessarily have to
become officially involved because, under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which
applies to all descendants of George II (other than princesses marrying into a foreign
family), as sovereign her permission would be essential before they could marry.
Otherwise Princess Margaret could wait until she was twenty-five and then could marry
within twelve months without the sovereign’s consent provided Parliament had received
written notice of her intention and that both Houses agreed. The Queen’s reaction was
to be sympathetic and play for time. ‘Under the circumstances’, she said, ‘it isn’t
unreasonable for me to ask you to wait a year.’
Lascelles’s reaction when he was informed by Townsend was absolutely lacking in
charity. ‘You must be either mad or bad or both,’ he exclaimed. The extent of
Townsend’s naïveté was demonstrated by his surprise at Lascelles’s hostility. ‘He was a
friend and I was asking for his help,’ he later wrote disingenuously. Lascelles,
intellectually and socially super-snobbish as he was, would certainly never have
admitted Townsend to the narrow category of his friends. Having been through the
trauma of the Abdication over a similar issue, he was appalled at the prospect of
another public controversy involving the monarchy. It is hard to see what kind of help
Townsend expected Lascelles, whose first duty was to the monarchy, to give. Townsend
offered to resign, but Lascelles, rightly foreseeing that such a move would inevitably
arouse speculation, told him to stay put. Lascelles then went to the Queen with the
advice that Townsend should immediately be removed from his position at Clarence
House and given an overseas appointment. Elizabeth, intensely human at heart, loving
and protective of her sister and fond of Townsend, refused to take a tough line. She
adopted the compromise solution of making him her equerry and transferring him from
Clarence House back to Buckingham Palace. Lascelles then took it upon himself,
according to one source, to tell people to cold-shoulder the couple. Elizabeth and Philip,
however, remained friendly towards them. On the evening of the day on which
Margaret had told her about their love affair, Elizabeth invited the couple to dine alone
with herself and Philip. Philip got on perfectly well with Townsend, although the two
men were completely dissimilar in character and could never have been described as
soul-mates. He had known Townsend’s elder brother, Michael, as captain of the
destroyer Chequers, on which they had travelled to Greece; he occasionally played
squash with Peter at Buckingham Palace or badminton and golf at Windsor. He treated
Margaret as a somewhat tiresome younger sister; ‘he has always been quite sharp with
her,’ a courtier said. On this occasion he behaved, according to Margaret, ‘like a chum’,
although some of the bright remarks with which he attempted to lighten the atmosphere
were distinctly unwelcome to the loving couple. The romance had come as a complete
surprise to him, as it had to Elizabeth, and he was particularly annoyed when, later on,
the newspapers fantasized about his ill will towards Townsend. ‘What have I done? I
haven’t done anything,’ he would exclaim angrily after reading some such report. He