“Lead us not into temptation.” As titular head of the Church of England, Charles III should be familiar with these final lines from the Lord’s Prayer. Or instead, like Adam and Eve’s first transgression in the Garden of Eden — tempted by Satan’s offer, “ye shall be like gods” — will the King succumb and, like our Original Parents, face eviction?

Or, in the case of the Windsor dynasty and in the caustic word of Edmund Burke on Bourbon monarchs, be “cashiered”? Will King Charles overstep his bounds, led by the false cheers and promises of false friends, forget and fall foul of his coronation oaths and, in the process, end a thousand years of British monarchy and usher in a “United Republic”?

The “tempting apple” in question appears courtesy of the Daily Express, where apparently sensible Britons are themselves overcome with coronation contagion. “The King is backed by a surprising number of Britons to speak out on political issues, new polling shows,” according to the Express. “The survey by BMG found some 38 percent — nearly four in 10 — said Charles should make his opinions known despite being monarch.”

Fortunately, not everyone has lost his head (so to speak). For the Express also reports that in a similar poll conducted for the i newspaper, “48 percent said the new King should remain politically neutral,” thereby “showing Brits are split on the question.”

Interviewed in 2018 by the BBC, Charles himself acknowledged acceptance of political realities once he became king. “Clearly, I won’t be able to do the same things I’ve done” as Prince of Wales, “so of course you operate within the constitutional parameters;” adding, “I’m not that stupid. I do realize that it is a separate exercise being sovereign.”

Five years on, freed from the maternal reproaches of Elizabeth II and eager to make his mark on an ostensibly shorter reign, will King Charles forget himself? Especially when the world — or at least the World Economic Forum — would welcome his interventions?

For what are promises of political neutrality when Charles’s pet projects of environmentalism and sustainability are au courant? Before crossing the Rubicon of no return, the King would do well to consider the ramifications.

First, there is the affirmation of his coronation oath to “solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland according to their respective laws and customs.” Custom dictates demur reserve from the crown. No less important, custom implies an adherence to country and not the global applause for which Charles seems to clamor.

Second, whence comes this insidious incentive to activism? Who encourages the King to test the parameters of his reign? His advocacy for environmentalism in the form of climate change activism and sustainability found no friends within these ranks. All the usual suspects — Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Animal Rising — were chief among those Saturday protesting the coronation and the crown.

Not least of whom, full-throated anti-monarchists feeling their oats. On that latter point, advocates for replacing the monarchy with a republic certainly see no merit in an activist king, other than as a catalyst toward realizing their goal of an elected head of state. “Give him enough rope . . .” is their refrain. King Charles would do rather better by following the advice of Lord Bolingbroke. 

“To espouse no party, but to govern like the common father of his people,” was Bolingbroke’s ideal of the Patriot King. “Instead of abetting the divisions of his people,” this Patriot King “will endeavor to unite them, and to be himself the center of their union.” On this incentive, Robert Shaffern, however much in vain, wistfully considers the “case for an American monarchy.”

“The most powerful attraction of monarchy today is leadership above politics, which is something that a critical mass of the body politic can rally around,” he writes. “Tory, Labor, and Liberal Democrat can all support the British monarchy because it has largely been above politics.” 

In the end, Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary may give the best modern rationale for monarchy. When asked what was his most important responsibility, Mr. Shaffern quotes the Emperor’s reply: “To protect my people from their government.”

Charles III could choose no better rallying cry. If for no other purpose, he needs to become Bolingbroke’s “unifying” king, if only to save the United Kingdom from the consequences of the fall of the House of Windsor: the full politicization of society that republicanism threatens. 

To “deliver us from this evil,” the King’s constitutional course is to renounce his polarizing proclivities and remain steadfast to the commonweal. He will then, in Bolingbroke’s words, “deem the union of his subjects his greatest advantage, and will think himself happy to find that established, which he would have employed the whole labor of his life to bring about.”

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