On Tiny Isles of Scilly Off Southwest England, British Monarchy Works

HUGH TOWN, Isles of Scilly —  To find out what makes Britain’s monarchy work, spend a day on the Isles of Scilly.

The landlord is Prince Charles, and in theory he wields absolute power on this archipelago off southwest England.

But in practice, Britain’s monarchy being as constitutional as they come, the elected municipal council runs the show.

The islands are part of the Duchy of Cornwall, which for 650 years has been the birthright of the royal heir. Charles, as Duke of Cornwall, also owns 125,000 acres in that mainland county and elsewhere in England.

This necklace of 140 islands, islets and rocks, totaling 4,042 acres, include some of the choicest flower-growing farmland in Britain, blessed by a subtropical warmth that has given them the nickname “the fortunate islands.”

The royal presence is readily felt. The duchy office sits on a hill overlooking the capital, Hugh Town, surrounded by medieval cannons. The mayoral chair is handsome oak, fashioned for Charles II in the 17th Century. When the prince comes on his annual inspection tour, he is greeted with cheers and fanfare.

But Mayor Roy Duncan, the real power on the islands, doesn’t even have a car. His bicycle gets him to official functions. And with fewer problems to deal with than the average mainland mayor, he spends summer mornings shuttling tourists around the islands on a pleasure boat.

“It’s a paradox, really,” said Col. Ian Robertson, Prince Charles’ administrator on the Isles of Scilly. “I think it’s one of these British institutions that happens to work,”

In 1345 the islands rented for a paltry 40 shillings, or 300 puffins, a year. Today, tourism and the early flower crop have made the 1,800 inhabitants better off than at any time in their history.

Legends link the islands to the Lost Continent of Atlantis and the mythical land of Lyonesse, where King Arthur supposedly ended his days. Burial chambers dating back to 2000 BC suggest the presence of ancient civilizations, perhaps the Phoenicians. And the Viking Olaf Tryggvesson is said to have encountered Christianity here and exported it to Scandinavia.

But for centuries life was a bleak diet of limpets and potatoes, leavened only by smuggling and the occasional looting of a shipwreck. Robert Heath, an officer in the island garrison in 1750, wrote with wintry humor:

“Here is no prison for the confinement of offenders, which shows that the people live upright enough not to require any, or that the place is a confinement of itself. No venomous insects or reptiles or attorneys or sheriff’s officers are ever harbored in these islands.”

But however bad times were, Scillonians kept their pride. “There is an affected degree of independence among the islanders, which even the pressure of poverty and affliction is unable to subdue,” wrote their vicar, Rev. George Woodley, in 1822.

No injury, however ancient, is forgotten. The Dutch ambassador to Britain was invited here recently to sign a treaty ending a war declared by Holland on the Scilly Isles in 1651.

In 1879 the Scillonians sent a batch of flowers to London in a hatbox and spawned an industry that today exports 60 million blooms a year. Since 1949, when the duchy relaxed its tenancy laws to allow the renting out of rooms, tourism has grown to 100,000 visitors a year.

Scillonians don’t mind jokes about the islands’ name, pronounced “silly.” But they bristle at being called Cornish. “There is a fear that if we get involved with Cornwall, we’d be just a small section of it,” Clive Mumford, a Scillonian writer, said.

To preserve the islands’ character, 38-year-old Prince Charles has set up an environmental trust to which he has transferred all the beaches and unfarmed land of the islands.

Today the rocks teem with birds. The puffins that once were used to pay rent are a protected species, and seals gambol in the placid waters.

The human population is so small that the same two soccer teams play one another every weekend. One island, Gugh, is only big enough to sustain a single farm. Another, St. Martin’s, has a school with four pupils.

Until passenger helicopters took over the 28-mile journey from the Cornish mainland, the only landing strip was on a golf course on St. Mary’s, the main island. Golfers had to run for cover when planes landed.

The mayor says he gets on well with the duchy, although he jokes that the terms of the duchy’s leases are often “so tied up that you almost need permission to go to the toilet.”

Scillonian-born Duncan, 39, says it’s the peace and quiet that keeps him here.

He recalls visiting Falmouth on the mainland when training to be the islands’ magistrate. “The Falmouth court heard 88 cases in one day,” he said. “And back home the only case before our court was a farmer’s complaint about a dog chasing his turkey.”

Prince Charles’ businesslike approach has boosted the duchy’s profits to $2.8 million a year, 5% of it from the Isles of Scilly, where an acre of his best land rents at about $90 a year.

Because of this princely income, Charles goes without an annual grant from the government, removing a burden from taxpayers. He also gives a quarter of the duchy’s income to the state as a self-imposed income tax.

Mumford believes the duchy’s popularity stems from its work as “a bulwark against exploitation.”

“There are people who look at Crown landlordism as an outdated privilege that should go,” the writer said. “But the duchy is a very responsible landlord. I’d prefer the duchy to a million other landlords, because the duchy cannot be seen to behave in a devious fashion. It has to play everything straight down the line.”