In The Importance of Being Earnest, Canon Chasuble tells Lady Bracknell that both Jack and Algernon wish to be baptised that very afternoon. “At their age?” she replies. “The idea is grotesque and irreligious! Algernon, I forbid you to be baptised. I will not hear of such excesses. Lord Bracknell would be highly displeased if he learned that that was the way in which you wasted your time and money.”

Meghan Markle is bravely following where these characters led, in embracing baptism before her wedding in four months’ time to Prince Harry. The prince was baptised, aged three months, in 1984 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where he is to marry.