LONDON (CU)_One of the noteworthy comments made by Meghan Markel during her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey was that she and Prince Harry had been privately and secretly married by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, just three days before their royal wedding in 2018.
She said it was done because the pair wanted their marriage to be personal and intimate, not the form of spectacle attached with a royal wedding.
“We called the archbishop and we just said, look, this thing, this spectacle is for the world, but we want our union between us. So, the vows that we have framed in our room are just the two of us in our backyard with the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Meghan told Oprah.
However, the senior clergyman claims he was not in fact aware that he had officiated a private marriage between the couple, and at the age of 65-years, it is highly unlikely that he would have forgotten such an event.
Fortunately, unlike the accusations of racism made against the Royal Family, this claim made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex can be easily proven or disproven.
Rejecting the couple’s on-screen insistence, Welby said that had the claim been true, he would have violated the law by signing fraudulent documents at the wedding on Saturday, May 19, 2018 at St George’s Chapel.
“The legal wedding was on the Saturday. I signed the wedding certificate, which is a legal document, and I would have committed a serious criminal offence if I signed it knowing it was false,” Welby said.
“So you can make what you like about it. But the legal wedding was on the Saturday,” he added.
Subsequently, British media personality Piers Morgan, who left BBC’s “Good Morning Britain” show after refusing to believe parts of Meghan’s interview, joked on Twitter that the Archbishop of Canterbury should lose his job for disbelieving Meghan’s claims.
Nevertheless, the couple has now admitted that there was no such wedding in their backyard, but it was a mere sharing of personal vows with each other. This does seem somewhat ridiculous, given the fact that even royals should know that holding hands and saying “I love you” does not amount to a wedding, or a lot of folks would be bigamists.
On the other hand, don’t legal weddings require witnesses, instead of just the couple sharing vows? Meghan did say it was just the two of them in the backyard, however this was immediately corrected by Harry who reminded his wife that there were three people involved in the so called secret wedding. This only suggests that this was a premeditated lie by both individuals, and makes one assume that they did not expect the Archbishop to dare speak truth to power.
Nevertheless, the senior clergyman is no longer in fear of criminal prosecution while Morgan is expected to make his TV appearance on Monday since his dramatic GMB exit. “Time for America to hear MY truth,” Morgan said on Twitter, announcing his plans for an hour-long interview to Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
