Charterhouse Chronicle

Throne and Church
If, as is rumoured, Prince Charles has matrimony in mind at the moment, the fact that his latest girl friend, an American admiral's daughter, Laura Jo . Watkins, is a Catholic might well present some serious, although not unsuperable, difficulties for the young couple.
The Royal Marriages Act, passed in 1772, prohibits marriage to any descendant of George II who has not first obtained the formal consent of the reigning monarch in Council. Should such a descendant go through a form of marriage without the necessary consent the purported marriage would be null and void.
However, if the Queen refused her consent to a projected marriage. Prince Charles, being now over 25, should he "persist to contract a marriage without her consent", as the Act has it, gets another sporting chance, After having given 12 months' notice to the Privy Council, he may contract a valid marriage provided both Houses of Parliament approve.
Any person who "knowingly or wilfully presumes to solemnise or to assist or be present" at the celebration of a marriage annulled under the terms of the Act is liable to severe penalties. But this is 1974. after all, and the Queen might well be delighted to approve her son's marriage to an attractive young, woman of his own choice, whatever her faith.
But, under the terms of an even earlier Act the Act of Settlement, 1 700 any successor to the Throne who "is or shall be reconciled to or shall hold communion with the See or Church of Rome or shall profess the popish religion or shall rnurry ti papist" is thereby incapacitated from taking the Coronation Oath, and thus effectively debarred from the succession.
Intimidating as all this may sound, one imagines that. were the Prince set on marrying a Catholic and the Queen agreeable, a further enactment repealing the Act of Settlement for his benefit might well he a fairly simple matter.
Wedding at Ely Place
Unique among London .churches is the 12th century St Etheldreda's in Holborn's Ely Place. It fairly groans with history and was once a virtually "extra-territorial" part of Cambridgeshire through its association with the Ely diocese.
Its uniqueness arises from its being the only pre-Reformation 'London church to have been restored to Roman usage. It naturally attracts many tourist visitors.
Such visitors, had they happened by last Saturday at about three in the afternoon, would have witnessed some Catholic Heraldry in action. For at a Nuptial Mass with a feast of music, a director of our paper, Mr Gregory Lomax married the beautiful secretary of two of the I lerald's former editors.
The bride. secretary to Desmond Albrow and Gerard Noel, was Patricia McCausland. The reception was very much a Fleet Street affair. And nearly opposite our old offices, many old friends toasted the proud bridegroom and the girl who unfrayed many a raw editorial nerve on press day week after \veek at 67 Fleet Street.