How Harry And Meghan Sent The Church Of England Into Panic Mode

A still from Oprah’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

WASHINGTON— Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Duke and Duchess of Sussex and now-former senior members of the royal family, appeared in a bombshell interview with media mogul Oprah Winfrey on Sunday night that captured the attention of viewers worldwide.

The hours-long interview covered a wide range of topics concerning the couple’s falling out with the House of Windsor, their treatment at Buckingham Palace, and their life since moving to the United States.

But one claim in particular caused trouble for the Church of England. In their sit down with Oprah, Markle stated for the first time publicly that the marriage the world witnessed in May 2018 in Windsor Castle was not the couple’s first matrimony.

The duchess said that their real wedding had taken place privately in the days leading up to the public ceremony.

"I was thinking about it, you know our wedding—three days before our wedding, we got married. No one knows that,” Markle said in the interview. 

The comment was made lightly and without any acknowledgement that this assertion might cause an issue. But the claim caused waves.

According to the Church of England’s canon law, a second performance of the marriage cannot be given to a couple already in a valid marriage.

Even more urgently, the duchess tied up the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the highest clergyman in the worldwide Anglican church system, in the supposed double-marriage debacle.

“We called the Archbishop and we just said, ‘Look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world. But we want our union between us.’ So the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury…”

"Yeah, just the three of us," Prince Harry added.

According to the Church of England’s handbook for clergy, “A couple who are already lawfully married cannot choose to re-marry each other, unless there is some doubt as to the validity of the earlier marriage.”

Because the wedding ceremony televised from St. George’s Chapel in 2018 was performed as a valid marriage ceremony with spiritual and legal ramifications, a private wedding with legal validity beforehand would mean that Welby was performing an inappropriate and spiritually offensive act.

Additionally, the Church of England requires the presence of at least two witnesses at a marriage ceremony for it to be considered valid. 

“Two or more witnesses must be present at the marriage. There is no restriction on the number of witnesses, nor is there an age limit but they must be able to understand what is taking place and testify if necessary as to what they have seen and heard,” the same handbook reads.

If what the Duke and Duchess claimed is true, it would mean that the private marriage overseen by the most senior clergyman of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was directly violating multiple aspects of canon law.

Reverend David Green, Vicar of St. Mary’s in West Malling, weighed in via Twitter on the couple’s claims of a secret second marriage after watching the interview.

"I’ve no idea what they mean. Obviously lacking as a parish priest," Green tweeted in a now-unavailable post, according to multiple media reports. "You can’t get married twice. So what was the thing three days before? And if it was a marriage, what on earth are we doing ‘playing’ at prayer/holy matrimony for cameras."

"She clearly thinks something happened with [the Archbishop of Canterbury] 3 days prior,” Green continued. “So it would be helpful to clarify what it was."

“Plus this is something she claimed that can be verified by separate testimony (i.e. Lambeth). If it's BS, that helps assess the rest of the interview too. I'd say we are rehearsing night before. No, it's not legal to have your own vows. What else is there?”

Green concluded by stating the Archbishop needed to clarify the matter and explain the reality of the couple’s claims about marriage.

The Archbishop has refused to comment on the matter.

The House of Windsor has deep and inseparable ties to the Church of England, which holds the monarch of the nation as the “Supreme Governor” of the church.

In the Church’s historic Thirty-Nine Articles it states, “The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other her Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction.”

Because of this relationship to the Church of England, obedience to the canon law of the Church is a major expectation of the royal family. Failure to abide by canon law and desire to break the traditions of the Church has caused major controversy for monarchs and royals in the past, including Edward VIII, who was forced to relinquish the throne in order to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson.

In fact, Markle was already walking a razor-thin edge marrying Prince Harry before the ceremony, or the two alleged ceremonies, ever took place.

The modern Church of England heavily discourages divorce and puts a great deal of consideration into the remarriage of a believer whose former spouse is still alive.

“The Church of England teaches that marriage is for life,” according to the Church’s form for remarriage. “It also recognizes that some marriages sadly do fail and, if this should happen, it seeks to be available for all involved. The Church accepts that, in exceptional circumstances, a divorced person may marry again in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.”

Markle was formerly a member of a separate sect of Protestantism, though she attended Catholic schools as a child. Before her marriage, Markle was baptized into the Church of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to the Telegraph. 

Behind closed doors, negotiations allowed for Markle to wed Prince Harry, presumably meeting the qualifications to be an “exceptional case” that the Church of England finds suitable to remarriage.

The fallout from the interview with Oprah was not necessarily in the Duke and Duchess’s favor in terms of popularity in their own country.

A poll found that the majority of viewers in Great Britain were unsympathetic to the couple, though they fared far better in the United States where two-thirds expressed some amount of sympathy for the former senior royals.

In addition to the controversial claims of a secret marriage, the couple also made allegations of abuse and racism from members of the House of Windsor. The Duke and Duchess brought up a specific instance in which they say that a member of the family expressed concern over the skin tone of their unborn first child.

Prince Harry has refused to reveal the identity of the royal who made the allegedly racist comments, drawing confusion and accusations of inaccuracy from commentators.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer and editor from northeastern Pennsylvania. He covers religious issues with a focus on the Catholic Church and Japanese society and culture.