City of London asks Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to give up Freedom of the City it cannot revoke
On 16th April, the City of London Corporation said elected members had agreed to write to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and invite him to formally relinquish the Freedom of the City of London, after concluding it cannot revoke the honour.
The move follows internal consideration within the Corporation over whether the Freedom could be removed. That option has now been ruled out. Mountbatten-Windsor received the Freedom in 2012 through patrimony, meaning it was inherited as the child of a Freeman rather than granted through a modern civic process.
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The move comes after years of scrutiny over Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s public position following his links to the late Jeffrey Epstein, which led to the loss of a number of royal roles and patronages.
Under the City’s rules, that route is treated differently. It is not subject to approval by elected members and cannot be withdrawn through the same mechanisms used in other cases.
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation set out the position directly: “Applications via patrimony are not considered or endorsed by our elected Members, and there is no effective legal mechanism to remove this type of Freedom.”
With that confirmed, members have turned to the only step available. “Elected Members have today agreed to write to Mountbatten-Windsor, inviting him to formally relinquish the Freedom,” the spokesperson said. Any response will be considered at a future meeting.
The Freedom of the City of London is now largely ceremonial, but it remains one of the City’s oldest civic institutions. While many recipients today are nominated or recognised through contemporary processes, patrimony operates outside that system. It passes the Freedom on through family, rather than through a nomination or civic approval process.
That difference has shaped the outcome here. The Corporation has set out its position, but it cannot act on it in the usual way.
What happens next now rests with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. If he chooses not to give up the Freedom, the Corporation will have to consider whether any further action is possible within the limits it has already acknowledged.
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