A. N. WILSON: The degradation is utter. Total. But it had to be done because Andrew’s greed and sleaze threatened to bring down OUR monarchy

For Andrew, the humiliation is total. His royal life is, in effect, over. Until now, the removal of his titles was entirely voluntary. The HRH, the ability to style himself a prince, the dukedom of York – these he volunteered not to use.

Now, the King has instructed the Lord Chancellor, the highest law officer in the land, to remove them. The children, Eugenie and Beatrice, will continue to be allowed to style themselves princesses but there has been no mercy for their father.

The official statement from the Palace says: ‘These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.

‘Their Majesties [ie Charles and Camilla] wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.’

This is in itself an absolutely crushing statement, since, while emphasising that Andrew continues to deny any wrongdoing, the King and Queen clearly don’t believe him. He arrived at Royal Lodge – the grand 30-room mansion he moved into in 2004, which had been inhabited by his grandmother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother – as the favourite son of Queen Elizabeth II.

He leaves for a modest house on the Sandringham estate as merely Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. No title, not a prince, not a Knight of the Garter.

The King is a fundamentally decent man who has been dithering about this matter for months, even years. His son William – if all the rumours are to be believed – is the one who wielded the iron fist.

He is the one who is said to have insisted that it was not enough for Andrew to say simply that he would no longer style himself as a prince or a Knight ofthe Garter.

These privileges had to be forcibly removed. Not because his family feel vindictive towards him, but because they are the custodians of something much more important than some prime properties in Windsor Great Park. Much more important than the huge fortunes which they have accumulated ever since the days of Queen Victoria.

They are the caretakers of the nation’s monarchy.

It is our monarchy, not just theirs. It is our history, our heritage. And Prince Andrew, by smearing the image of the Crown with his outrageous greed and sleazy behaviour, was threatening to bring down the institution itself.

When things are going well, the public are prepared to overlook the fact that many of the Royal Family are less than impressive.

They do so because, in the persons of the transparently noble members of the family – such as Princess Anne, Princess Catherine, the Duchess of Edinburgh, the King himself – they can see how a constitutional monarchy works. When there is a scandal or a crisis among the royals, it is not just personal reputations that are at stake. It is the reputation of the institution.

Andrew, and his ludicrous ex-wife – with her massive debts and vulgar extravagances – were dragging down not just the good name of the family, but that of the monarchy and the nation.

We do not yet know whether Fergie will be moving to Sandringham. She has recently sold a house in London’s Belgravia for more than £3 million and she has never shown any shyness about approaching the rich for loans to pay off her debts. That is partly how we got into this mess in the first place, since it would seem that Andrew approached Jeffrey Epstein for financial help on Fergie’s behalf.

When Andrew sets off for a more modest life in Sandringham (and presumably time on the links at the Royal West Norfolk Golf Course or the golf club at nearby Sheringham – if they have the stomach to accept him), he might reflect on the lives of some of the people who have chosen to live there in the past.

King George V, the greatest constitutional monarch in history in my view, lived most of his grown-up life in York Cottage on the Sandringham estate. His aesthete wife, Queen Mary hated it, because it was poky and he furnished it with very ordinary furniture which he had bought himself at London’s famous furniture store Maples.

He liked shooting and collecting stamps. He was straight as a die, honest, decent, hard-working and – while some found him boring and bad-tempered – most reported that, in his company, respect for him melted into love.

He gave his life for the nation, even though he had not been meant to be king – only the death of an elder brother brought this about. Likewise, his son

George VI was a modest man who enjoyed the shooting at Sandringham but never gave himself airs or indulged in extravagance.

All through the war, for instance, he and his wife abstained from alcohol – quite an achievement

for her! When the Duke of Edinburgh retired from public life, he went to live in Wood Farm, a very modest house at Sandringham. The crucial thing about this is that the estate is privately owned by the family. He was not costing the taxpayer a penny, even indirectly, as those who live in properties owned by the Crown Estates do.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor will be taking with him the rather ridiculous surname imposed by his father. It was Prince Philip’s one monumental mistake.

Politicians from Churchill downwards and all courtiers, heralds and experts on family lore told the Queen that they should stick to the name Windsor.

This was a name they had invented for themselves during the First World War because of the strong anti-German feeling which made it embarrassing to be called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. (When they changed the name to Windsor, the German Kaiser joked: ‘Now, I suppose we’ll have the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg.’)

It would be a good idea in future if the family quietly dropped the ‘Mountbatten’ bit of their invented name.

Louis Mountbatten was a vain popinjay, who had a bad influence on Prince Charles and was a disaster as Viceroy of India. It was his hasty partitioning of the country that caused more than a million deaths. He should be forgotten, as should poor Andrew.

I say ‘Poor Andrew’ not because I condone his appalling lack of judgment, his greed, his choice of friends or his obviously disgusting way of behaving, but because there has never been anything like this in royal history.

The degradation is utter. Total. This would be hard for anyone to bear. It had to be done, however. We shall see whether this drastic action has been enough to lance the boil and put the monarchy on a course with a plausible future.

My hope, and prediction, is that the monarchy is now much more secure. The Royal Family still needs to learn lessons from this affair. It was not just Andrew’s friendship with Epstein that caused the crisis, it was the fact that the family was not recognising the distinction between property that is theirs – Sandringham and Balmoral – and that which is not.

This includes not just Crown Estate property – although the royals understand this – but also the vast incomes from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. It needs sorting out and William will have to surrender the huge incomes of both if the monarchy is to become totally secure.

But for the time being the future looks much brighter than it did yesterday. William and Charles look like people we can trust as sensible and morally intelligent custodians of the monarchy.

We should congratulate them for their courage and resolve and let’s hope that a new chapter begins in the long and, on the whole, glorious history of the British monarchy.