WHILE “TRYING to roast a chicken” Prince Harry “went down on one knee” and began his proposal of marriage. Meghan Markle said “Yes” even before he had finished. Of the chicken we learn no more.

Anyone who saw this young couple talking sincerely on camera to Mishal Husain, yet trying to say the right thing to avoid all the pits dug by the media, must have felt for them.

I say “young couple”, but Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 18 years by the time she was Ms Markle’s age, and given birth to seven children. For her part, the actress (familiar to those who enjoy settling down to a box-set of Suits), has notched up a marriage that lasted less than two years.

It is not long since Prince Harry’s father, the Prince of Wales, met trouble when he wanted to marry a divorced woman, Camilla Parker Bowles. The Church of England would not let him. He had to settle for a civil ceremony at Windsor town hall in 2005, which the Queen did not attend.

This was despite the General Synod of the Church of England having in 2002 recognised “exceptional circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of a former spouse”.