Meaning and usage of "Child of State"?

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I believe it was a manner of speech to refer to children, born to royalty, with pre-destined roles.

As your Penguin Monarchs series on Wiliam III and Mary II (2015) has it -- this quote is from Chapter 1, aptly titled "Children of State". The quote provided (in question) is from mid-paragraph. Here's the full paragraph (for viewers here who might not have the book and to flesh out the full context):

In their different ways, William, Prince of Orange, and, Mary, Princess of York, were victims of their birth, hostages, like every other prince and princess in an age of dynastic calculations, to the fate prescribed to them by their parents or by other manipulative politicians. "Each (William and Mary ) was what was then known as ‘a child of state’, whose family life and domestic contentment depended exclusively on plans made by others as to whom they should marry. Such decisions were based on national advantage rather than on anything so trifling as personal inclination or prospective happiness.

Where did this manner of speech come from? It is very likely from everyone's favourite playwright, Shakespeare.

Sonnet 124 in the 1609 Quarto:

If my dear love were but the child of state,

It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,

As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.

No, it was builded far from accident;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the blow of thralled discontent,

Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic,

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.

To this I witness call the fools of time,

Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime

From Oxquarry Books Ltd, their site has this analysis of Sonnet 124, emphasis mine:

This sonnet continues with the theme of the superiority of a love which is independent of all normal human conventions, and does not seek the favour or approval of kings, princes, states, politicians, times or fashions. It stands above them all and is secure in the knowledge that it is out of reach of any of them, however malicious, erratic, irrational or unpredictable they might be. The contrast is drawn between this love and the love which is perjured, partial, and dependent on court favours, or on the politics of the time. Such debased loves, or those who indulge in them, are time's fools and are the sport of every wind that blows and every rain that falls. But not so for this true love, which remains constant and steadfast, and will outlive the pyramids and time itself.

In case we need another confirmation that we are not imagining a link between Shakespeare's child of state and the political maneuvering of his time, Wikipedia's entry on this sonnet has this (2nd paragraph):

References to the political world of Shakespeare's time are littered throughout this Sonnet. As literary scholar Murray Krieger states "Shakespeare is not likely to overlook the possibilities of metaphorical extension" ...

Upvote:1

I believe that this is a legal fiction for the deposing of King James II. Because he was deposed, his children Mary and Anne (and son in law William) could no longer inherit the throne from him. So if they were to inherit, how would they inherit? This was, of course, determined by the result of the Glorious Revolution (civil war, actually), of Protestant Dutch aiding Protestant Englishmen against English Catholics. Making them "children of state" was to created a "straw parent" from which they could inherit.

The proximate cause of using this formula appears to have been the fact that James II was Catholic, and that Mary, Anne, and William were all raised as Protestants by "stipulation" among the nobles controlling their upbringing, which made them "children of state," instead of their natural parents. (William's mother, the sister of England's Charles II, was deceased.) An anti-Catholic faction would not have accepted the "legitimacy" of James' parentage of his Protestant children (never mind his Catholic son as an heir), so they needed to make the state the "parent" of the three Protestants. Which would basically have been an "act of war" (against James II).

As pointed out by sempaiscuba, this "anti-Catholic faction" that set up the arrangement was actually the Parliament of the Netherlands, not of England. That may account for the syntax.

Upvote:7

This actually had to do with their lives in Holland before they returned to England during the Glorious Revolution. The idea is explained in detail by Wouter Troost in his book William III the Stadholder-king: A Political Biography (pp47 - 52). As a "Child of State", it meant that they

"... came under the guardianship of the States of Holland"

and this in turn meant that

"a new educational committee chaired by De Witt took on the job of educating the Prince as a Hollander".

In context, rather than "Wards of Court", it might be better to think of them as being "Wards of the States of Holland".

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