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Nonetheless, Kirkland's words were known to reflect the views of 68-year-old Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, and, next to Queen Elizabeth herself, the highest official in the Anglican hierarchy. Like the Queen, the Archbishop avoided speaking his mind in public. But he is a close, old friend of the young Princess, and he was her greatest comforter at the time of her father's death.
Within the royal family itself, Margaret's brother-in-law, Prince Philip—himself a newcomer to the ruling family—threw his influence against the marriage and urged his wife, the Queen, to oppose it.
"Devotion to Duty." As the pressures bore in upon her last week, Margaret kept her own counsel and performed with cool dignity the duties of her rank. But her face told a story of strain, suspense and indecision. Crowds of photographers, dogging her steps, glimpsed sometimes a young face, suffused with girlish happiness, sometimes a woman's face taut with worry. For nine out of ten successive days, the Princess managed to spend some well-chaperoned hours with Peter Townsend, usually at small, informal parties in the homes of friends. One such evening spun out until 1 a.m.
Next morning Airman Townsend galloped off alone into the morning mists for his daily ride, while his Princess went down to Limehouse to dedicate a new church community center. At one time, Margaret had to face and make polite conversation with 50 bishops of the church, her reluctant antagonists, at a formal dinner in Lambeth Palace, Canterbury's official residence. Another day she journeyed to Wiltshire to present a new set of colors to the 1st Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry. "History," she told the kilted soldiers, "is not made by a few outstanding actions. It is made remorselessly . . . by devotion to duty, by steadiness in times of anxiety, by discipline in waiting."
Her own time of anxiety and disciplined waiting was fast drawing to a close. Princess Margaret went off to Windsor to spend a weekend with her sister the Queen. There the decision might well be made. Though many were involved in its making, it was, in the end, Princess Margaret's decision to make. With the House of Commons returning and the public clamoring for news one way or the other, it could hardly be delayed much longer. "There really seems no reason," snapped the arch-Conservative Daily Telegraph in a moment of impatience last week, "why the facts should not be stated."