In 1836 it was specifically stated that the provisions of the Act did not apply to royal marriages. The 1949 Act was less specific, but in the post-war period, three royals—Princess Margaret, the Earl of Harewood and Prince Michael of Kent—have been told they could not marry divorced people and the Act did not permit them to marry in a civil ceremony. No member of the royal family has ever contracted a civil marriage in Britain.
On this occasion, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, overturned all precedent and declared that it was legal for Charles to marry in a civil ceremony under the 1949 Marriage Act. When this was challenged by leading constitutional lawyers, family law experts and former Attorney General Sir Nicholas Lyell, Falconer appealed to the recently enacted Human Rights Act which guarantees all British citizens the right to a family life.
Ironically, it is a law that Charles, in a letter to the previous Lord Chancellor, denounced as “a threat to sane, civilised and ordered existence,” and which the government itself has set aside when the rights of asylum seekers and terror suspects were concerned.