Bizarre feudal remnants
News arrived today of a bizarre feudal remnant – one used by a human bizarre feudal remnant line his own already well-stuffed pockets.
The human bizarre feudal remnant is none other than Mr Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, alleged to be the head of state of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), who generally masquerades under the alias of “King” Charles III.
Today’s Guardian reveals that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is stealing the estates of people who die intestate – i.e. without leaving a will – or with no known relatives in the territory of the Duchy of Lancaster, which consists of consists of 18,433 hectares of land holdings, including rural estates and farmland, urban developments, historic buildings, and commercial properties across England and Wales, particularly in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Savoy Estate in London. Its principal purpose of the estate is to provide a source of independent income for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and his heirs and successors.
This theft of other people’s assets is covered by the legal term ‘bona vacantia‘, meaning unowned property. The same practice of ‘bona vacantia‘ is employed by the Duchy of Cornwall to provide an income for the so-called ‘Prince’ of Wales, one William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor.
The rich and powerful of this backward medieval country have been stealing the assets owned or used by others for centuries. From 1604 onwards the Inclosure Acts created legal property rights for the rich to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km2.
These thefts of common land were commemorated in a popular poem in the early 18th century.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
This practice of appropriating land owned and used by others reached its zenith during Britain’s colonial expansion under the concept of ‘terra nullius‘, literally nobody’s land. How could allegedly primitive people claim ownership of land when nothing concerning property rights was written down, was the flawed logic behind these seizures, which reached their height in Australia, where people now commemorated by street names and public artworks were responsible for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people, who have no public monuments by which to remember the victims. This was documented in all its brutality by the three part 2022 TV series The Australian Wars.
Anyway, back from nobody’s land to nobody’s property in the north of England. The Guardian has found out that the Duchy of Lancaster has been secretly using the bona vacantia funds to renovate properties owned by the alleged king and rented out for profit. The Duchy’s accounts suggest it has collected £61.8m in bona vacantia funds over the last decade. Of those, only £9.3m or 15% of the total has gone to charities, which the Duchy maintains is the main reason for collecting the funds.
Needless to say, this news has not gone down well in areas subject to the Duchy of Lancaster’s writ.
Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester is on record as saying:
I think many people in the north-west will be surprised to learn that the savings and assets of friends and neighbours are being taken in this way. I don’t recall this archaic system ever being explained to anyone here nor public consent for it being given.
Burnham furthermore added that:
This appears to be a bizarre remnant of feudal Britain. While we await the public acts of levelling up that we have been promised, it seems this country still has silent mechanisms of levelling down at work, redistributing wealth in the wrong direction.
Furthermore, friends of some of those whose assets have been stolen have described their use to fix up Duchy properties for future rental as ‘unethical, ‘shocking and ‘a disgrace.
The worst decision this country ever made was to readmit Charles Stuart (son of the late tyrant) in 1660. That would have avoided any future regal robbery of people’s property either in this country or around the world.