What, he wondered, was the point of an extravagant show when Victoria\u2019s legitimacy was not in doubt, and when she became queen as soon as her predecessor was dead?<\/p>\n
Monarchs have long worried about what functions such royal rituals actually perform, or why they might need them. A look at the various coronations and other ceremonies staged by and for British rulers through the centuries reveals much about both the motives and personalities of those kings and queens, and the power and impact of such events.<\/p>\n
Ceremonies as displays of \u201ctrue and real power\u201d<\/h3>\n
In the 13th century, Henry III<\/a> pondered the ways in which ceremony elevated him into the sphere of the sacred. Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, had to tell him that while being anointed meant he was \u201cabove his fellows\u201d, he was nowhere near the level of a priest.<\/p>\n Four centuries later, Charles I<\/a> worried about being only ceremony: \u201cWe may have swords and maces carried before us, and please our self with the sight of a crown and sceptre,\u201d he said, but without \u201ctrue and real power, we should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, the fact that royal ceremonies are not displays of \u201ctrue and real\u201d political influence is what has ensured the survival of both monarchy and its rituals. Elizabeth II<\/a> understood that her role was to be an effective national symbol \u2013 \u201ca thing that existed only to be looked at\u201d, said Hilary Mantel<\/a>. British royal ceremonial is no longer about the personal power of the monarch, but \u2013 so the story goes \u2013 about the success of the constitution and, by extension, the stability of the nation.<\/p>\n Through the preservation and display of crowns, sceptres, costumes and coaches, it is the steadying and benign power of tradition that our monarchy wishes to communicate. Ceremony \u201cdoth everything\u201d, Charles II was advised by William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. But the ways in which monarchs and their advisors have exploited ceremonies \u2013 and the reasons why \u2013 have changed according to context, different understandings of the purpose of ceremony, and the kind of power they needed to exert at a particular moment.<\/p>\n For a long time in England, following the shift from Anglo-Saxon elected kings<\/a> to \u201cdivinely appointed\u201d kings, it was the sacred power of a monarch that mattered. The introduction of the tradition of anointing kings with oil \u2013 echoing the Old Testament anointings of David and Solomon \u2013 turned the ruler into the \u201cLord\u2019s anointed\u201d. King Edgar was the first monarch recorded as being anointed, as part of a service conducted by the archbishop of Canterbury in AD 973 in Bath Abbey.<\/p>\n With the establishment of hereditary monarchy and the doctrine of divine right, the already sacred monarch was made more so by the act of anointing. In 1307, Edward II<\/a> began his rule on the day after his father\u2019s death, but his coronation service clearly articulated that being anointed turned him into something semi-divine.<\/p>\n For kings whose claim to the throne was tenuous, this proved useful. Henry IV<\/a>, who had deposed Richard II in 1399, broke with precedent by choosing to remain visible while he lay down before the altar for his anointing. After Henry VII<\/a> had defeated Richard III<\/a> on Bosworth Field<\/a> in 1485, he was swiftly and \u201cwith great pompe\u201d conveyed to Westminster Abbey for his coronation. Being anointed and crowned secured his claim in the eyes of the people and, crucially, demonstrated that God approved of \u2013 even enabled \u2013 his succession.<\/p>\n Today, few believe \u2013 as James VI and I<\/a> did \u2013 that \u201ckings are justly called gods\u201d, but the idea that monarchs are touched by divinity proved hard to shift. Having been anointed with holy oil in 1154, Henry II<\/a> believed he could cure the sick. He wasn\u2019t alone. Monarchs participated in a ceremony in which they touched those suffering from the \u201cking\u2019s evil\u201d (scrofula, a form of tuberculosis) up to the reign of Queen Anne<\/a> in the 18th century.<\/p>\n When Mary<\/a>, the wife of George V<\/a>, was crowned alongside her husband in 1911, a newspaper reported that it was \u201cas if she had undergone some marvellous transformation\u201d. In 1953, television cameras were allowed into Westminster Abbey for the first time \u2013 but the BBC was asked not to film the moment at which Elizabeth II was anointed, thereby preserving its magic.<\/p>\n A medieval and Tudor monarch\u2019s ceremonies at court were bound up with the liturgical calendar, with rituals such as crown wearings emphasising the monarch\u2019s piety and divinity. Modern royal ceremonial is still bound up with the church \u2013 now the Anglican, not the Catholic \u2013 and royal and religious pomp are combined to emphasise the monarch\u2019s faith, as well as their status as Head of the Church of England.<\/p>\n Sometimes there is a coherent message \u2013 a statement about royal power that a ceremony is intended to make. When Elizabeth I<\/a> was crowned in 1559, a series of pageants dotted along the procession route portrayed Elizabeth as a caring, Protestant queen who would love her subjects and heed the advice of her male councillors \u2013 as well as hopefully marry to secure the succession<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the pageant at Cornhill, for example, a child dressed as Elizabeth sat on a throne supported by actors representing \u201cPure Religion\u201d and \u201cLove of Subjects\u201d who trampled on \u201cSuperstition\u201d. At another, a young child addressed Elizabeth, and hoped that she would \u201cbarrenness displace\u201d. And the pageant at Fleet Street reminded the new queen, according to the pageant writer Richard Mulcaster, that \u201cit behoveth\u201d rulers to \u201cuse advice of good counsel\u201d.<\/p>\n Like her father, Henry VIII<\/a>, Elizabeth understood the value of being on show, and of using dress and her appearance to symbolise her material worth and, hence, her power, inspiring loyalty and affection. But the pageantry of Elizabeth\u2019s reign is also notable for the opportunities it gave her subjects to communicate what they wanted from their monarch, and to warn her. Even when monarchs believed in their absolute power, ceremonies became spaces in which their power could be commented on by those choreographing or participating in the ceremony, such as heralds, court advisors, churchmen and city leaders.<\/p>\n When Charles II<\/a> was crowned in Scotland in 1651, he was reminded that crowns can \u201ctotter\u201d, and that he must keep the promises he had sworn under the covenant to uphold the Church of Scotland. In 1661, the classicist John Ogilby and the chief herald Edward Walker looked back to the elaborate state ceremonies of Tudor England for inspiration as they designed the ceremonies to accompany the restoration of the monarchy<\/a> after 11 years of republican and protectorate rule.<\/p>\n They wanted to portray Charles \u201cwith the greatest magnificence immaginable\u201d, and to dazzle subjects with the \u201cglorious light\u201d of monarchy. In this ceremony, royal power needed to be seen as natural, healing and permanent, and to obliterate the \u201cdismal night of usurpation\u201d. As Samuel Pepys<\/a>, who had served Oliver Cromwell\u2019s protectorate<\/a>, wrote: \u201cIt is impossible to relate the glory of this day.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet any consensus about royal magnificence was certainly not shared by all at the time. It was a \u201cpompous shew\u201d, the clergyman Ralph Josselin noted, full of \u201cstately vanity\u201d. When Charles\u2019s brother James II & VII<\/a> was crowned in 1685, fireworks were considered more economical and appropriate.<\/p>\n A number of decisions taken by Britain\u2019s longest-reigning Queen<\/a> \u2013 not least about her own funeral \u2013 reveal intriguing nods to the 17th century, a period that was hardly a golden age for the crown.<\/p>\n Even her choice of name for her first born son, Charles, could be seen as surprising \u2013 ill-advised, even. The public execution of Charles I<\/a> in January 1649 remains the most shattering event for the monarchy. And the reign of Charles II \u2013 a king whose reputation for merriness<\/a> and laziness has stuck \u2013 didn\u2019t wipe the slate clean. In the words of the diarist John Evelyn, he was a man of many virtues, but also of \u201cmany great imperfections\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet the Queen reclaimed the name Charles \u2013 rather like royalists making the parliamentarian insult \u201ccavalier\u201d their badge of honour during the Civil War<\/a>.<\/p>\n Charles II was a king who understood the value of ceremony. He had absorbed the advice that it was symbolically powerful, even if \u201cit is nothing in itself\u201d, and knew deep down that the body of the king could no longer claim to be sacred. For his coronation, the items of the regalia (including St Edward\u2019s Crown) that had been destroyed in 1649 as parliamentary forces closed in on victory, were lovingly remade \u2013 and the same ones will be used for Charles III\u2019s coronation on 6 May 2023.<\/p>\n Many modern royal ceremonies echo their 17th-century counterparts. Charles II restored and imposed the Anglican church through the 1662 Act of Uniformity and a new Book of Common Prayer. Elizabeth II was a committed Anglican, devoted to the form and the words of the ceremonies in the 1662 Prayer Book. Her funeral service, for example, followed that book\u2019s order for the burial of the dead.<\/p>\n In fact, various elements of the Queen\u2019s funeral harked back to the 17th century. Hubert Parry\u2019s music for the song \u201cMy Soul, There Is a Country\u201d was composed during the First World War, but the words are by Welsh royalist poet Henry Vaughan, written in the 1650s when there was no king. The text used for Psalm 23 was from the Scottish psalter of 1650, compiled by the Puritan Francis Rous. And the poet John Donne (1572\u20131631) provided the words for the prayer \u201cBring us, O Lord God, at Our Last Awakening\u201d.<\/p>\n But why? When imparting instructions for her funeral, what led the Queen to draw so heavily on that turbulent era? It\u2019s worth remembering that it was a century in which Britain \u2013 instead of just England \u2013 was imagined, and in which the British monarchy was redefined through the period of the republic, the exclusion crisis, and the succession of William and Mary.<\/p>\n Recalling the 17th century draws attention to the survival and, some might say, the success of the British monarchy. But it also, perhaps more humbly, evokes the fragility of the crown.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The taste for carefully choreographed ceremony declined after the 17th century, and any show of ostentation began to be considered inappropriate. The Coronation Oath Act of 1688 ensured that William and Mary<\/a>, and their successors, would all swear at their coronations to \u201cmaintain the Statutes, Laws and Customs\u201d of England, as made by parliament, removing any doubt that royal prerogative would not be curtailed.<\/p>\n This was the first step along the road to constitutional monarchy and a new relationship between power and ceremony. William and Mary and their 18th and 19th-century successors remained politically influential, and ceremony might uncomfortably draw attention to this.<\/p>\n Precedent and tradition were yet to be valued as potent assets of a monarchy whose power was becoming increasingly limited and frequently ridiculed. In 1761, the congregation at George III<\/a>\u2019s coronation in 1761 began eating their picnic during the sermon. Royal weddings and royal funerals<\/a> could draw the crowds, but these events were even less revered.<\/p>\n Personalities also contributed to the declining importance of ceremony in royal interactions with the public. William IV<\/a> (reigned 1830\u201337) did not like ceremony, and did not think it a necessary part of the office. He suggested doing away with the coronation completely, as had already happened throughout Europe. Following her coronation, Queen Victoria may have been inclined to agree with her predecessor. The clergy lost their way, and Victoria\u2019s finger was too big for the coronation ring. When the queen withdrew from the public gaze after Prince Albert<\/a>\u2019s death, royal ceremonial went into abeyance until her golden jubilee in 1887.<\/p>\n In fact, it fell to Victoria\u2019s son and successor, Edward VII<\/a> (reigned 1901\u201310), to make ostentation fashionable once more in royal ceremonies. Edward had a real flair for grandeur, uniform and ceremonial innovation, matched by a willing household team under Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher. The slick and polished pageantry that we see today, emphasising the loyalty and efficiency of the military and the service of the royals, was perfected in the Edwardian era<\/a>.<\/p>\n The awareness that regimented but splendid ceremony could be effective coincided with the rise of photography and a press that was well disposed towards the monarchy. Where once magnificence was about the very real personal and political power of the monarch, spectacle now served to celebrate the survival of monarchy, its history and the confidence of its new constitutional role.<\/p>\n By the time Edward VII ascended the throne, the institution that he headed had something else to celebrate: Britain\u2019s imperial power. The late 19th and early 20th century saw the increased use of royal ceremony to promote the British empire<\/a>. When Victoria celebrated her golden jubilee, she re-entered public life with a display of pageantry \u201csuch as this generation never saw\u201d, in which guests and military personnel from the colonies participated.<\/p>\n Victoria had been Empress of India<\/a> since 1877, and for her golden jubilee was escorted to Westminster Abbey by Indian cavalry. For poet laureate Alfred Tennyson, it was a celebration of \u201c50 years of ever-widening empire!\u201d He called on \u201cYou, Canadian, Indian, \/Australasian, African, \/ All your hearts be in harmony, \/All your voices in unison.\u201d<\/p>\n The formal royal tour, begun in the 19th century with the travels of Victoria\u2019s sons throughout the empire, became an integral part of the royal family\u2019s ceremonial duties. But it wasn\u2019t until 1911 that George V became the first British sovereign to visit India on a spectacular coronation tour \u2013 an attempt to foster affection and loyalty for the crown in the face of increasing opposition to British rule. \u201cWe put on our robes and crowns and showed ourselves to thousands of people stood on a balcony,\u201d recalled Queen Mary of a garden party at Delhi\u2019s Red Fort.<\/p>\n Elizabeth II\u2019s role as monarch of nations beyond the UK<\/a> was woven into the fabric of her reign, symbolically and literally: her coronation dress featured embroidered and jewel-encrusted emblems of the seven independent states of which she was then queen.<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/04\/BAL34778-0f97f14.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Through the preservation and display of crowns, sceptres, costumes and coaches, it is the steadying and benign power of tradition that our monarchy wishes to communicate <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The tradition of anointing with oil<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Monarchs: touched by divinity<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>How a ceremony can send a message<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Elizabeth II\u2019s love affair with the 17th century<\/h4>\n
Why, when planning her last great ceremony, did the Queen draw inspiration from the monarchy\u2019s darkest hour?<\/h6>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Criticism of ceremony: ostentatious and personalities<\/h3>\n
At Queen Victoria\u2019s coronation, the clergy lost their way and her finger was too big for the ring. When the queen withdrew from the public gaze after Prince Albert\u2019s death, royal ceremonial went into abeyance until her golden jubilee <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Celebrating the survival of monarchy<\/h3>\n
How ceremony became an emblem of empire<\/h3>\n
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