Free & 25

In characteristic British fashion. Fleet Street editors prepared their readers for next Sunday when pretty Princess Margaret will turn five-and-twenty. The old-line newspapers acted as if this were just another milestone for the Court Circular. The lurid tabloids headlined it as the day when, in the words of the Daily Sketch, "she can marry whom she pleases," and went on to relate with simulated disapproval the latest American reports on Group Captain Peter Townsend, 40, the R.A.F. fighter-pilot hero and British air attache in Brussels whom all Fleet Street expects Margaret to marry.

Buckingham Palace would say only that the Princess would celebrate her birthday at a quiet royal family picnic beside Scotland's many-turreted Balmoral Castle. "Ruby" (Robina MacDonald, her personal maid) would tiptoe upstairs and waken the Princess with a cup of tea and the first Happy Birthday. Then there would be prayers, a breakfast of grilled herrings, the usual reading of the Sunday papers with her mother, after which the whole family would gather in the green drawing room for the opening of birthday presents, which were arriving by the dozens in sealed red mailbags.

The special significance of the day is that at 25 the Princess need no longer ask her sister's permission to marry. The Queen, as head of a church that does not recognize divorce, would find that permission all but impossible to grant in the case of divorced Group Captain Townsend. But though now free and 25, Margaret, as an heir to the throne, must still reckon with objections from Parliament, where the bishops in Lords and the powerful Nonconformist backbenchers in Commons could make trouble. To get around this, Margaret would probably have to trade her right of succession to the throne for marriage with the man of her choice.

Over the Border. Palace lawyers, drawing on the useful precedent in the abdication of Margaret's uncle, Edward VIII, have worked it out that if she renounced her rights of succession to the throne (she is third, after Prince Charles and Princess Anne). Parliament could have no further grounds for objecting to the marriage, since she would then be acting as a private person. They have recommended that if Margaret plans to go through with it, the Queen should send a message to Parliament--after Parliament meets again in October--apprising Lords and Commons of her sister's intention of retiring to private life.

A bill of abdication would then be presented and passed by both Houses (and presumably, under the Statute of Westminster, by all the Dominion Parliaments too). As now planned, the bill would deprive Margaret of all rights of royal succession, her right to become Regent if Elizabeth and Philip should die before Prince Charles comes of age, her annual -L-6,000 income under the Civil List, and her function of Councillor of State, which she exercises whenever the sovereign is incapacitated or absent from the country for a long time.

This course would clear the way for the announcement of Margaret's engagement to Townsend, and the marriage itself would no longer have to wait a year on Parliament. The ceremony could not be performed in the Church of England, nor could the Queen her sister be present. But either a civil marriage in England, or marriage in a church outside England, is possible. There is a useful precedent for the second course. Five years ago, having got a divorce from Viscount Anson, the former Anne Bowes-Lyon (a niece of the Queen Mother) married Prince Georg of Denmark in the private chapel of Scotland's Glamis Castle. The castle is not royal property, but the family home of the Queen Mother (Margaret's mother).

Family Council. Some of those close to the royal family still hope that perhaps a last-minute change of heart may spare the monarchy a painful and perhaps dangerous test. In family circles, the widowed Duchess of Kent is reportedly most tolerant of the romance. Margaret's sister the Queen and her mother have been torn between affection for Margaret and fear of the effects of a second royal marriage crisis within 20 years. The Duke of Edinburgh is regarded as the most critical of the marriage.

If and when the announcement is made this fall, the first British popular reaction is apt to be a sentimental surge for Margaret's happiness before all else; she is immensely popular. But the discreet men in the palace who gauge public opinion fear a backwash of conservative feeling which would condemn Margaret and do nothing to strengthen the royal institution. For this reason, every effort would be made to get the abdication and wedding over as unspectacularly as possible.

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