Requiescat In Pace

Today, we have lost a sovereign. We have witnessed the very embodiment of our nation drift away to heavenly peace. Queen Elizabeth II served this United Kingdom of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as her Commonwealth Realms, with a diligence and steadfastness which is, and likely will continue to be, unparalleled. Turmoil

and change did not waver her, and through the convulsions of the last seventy years The Queen was a rock—a standing stone with an inscription of all those things that we

stand for, that have shaped us, and ultimately, what makes Britons British.

“The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.”

Her reign began with a promise to God. A commitment to govern the peoples of these isles and those who resided in her dominions abroad with dignity, grace, and devotion.

To have broken from that would have been to break from her christian faith—something which guided her very being as a sister, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,

and monarch. We, therefore, had that assurance. We never doubted her sincerity, nor her credibility. We lived with certainty that regardless of the calibre of our political

establishment, our Queen would be the guardian of our civil liberties and our way of life. Where other nations have descended into disunity and unrest characterised by the

repudiation of nation and hatred of neighbour, The Queen, both as a person and an idea, was always a figure to which the nation could fall behind.