On Saturday, May 6th, King Charles III. crowned alongside Camilla at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony largely unchanged for more than 1,000 years. Meticulous planning, codenamed Operation Golden Orb, means nothing is left to chance.
And yet history tells us that sometimes things went wrong on Coronation Day.
For example, the coronation of the late Queen in 1953 was supposed to be a great show to boost morale in a country still suffering from rationing. Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill wanted it to usher in a new era with a beautiful young queen and her dashing husband as symbolic figureheads in the heart of the nation.
However, there was a tiny glitch during the lavish ceremony, which was watched on TV by 27 million Brits. The Queen forgot to curtsy with her maids of honor on the north pillar of Westminster Abbey.
And many other coronations contained elements of pure farce…
On Saturday, May 6th, King Charles III. crowned alongside Camilla at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony largely unchanged for more than 1,000 years
The late Queen’s coronation in 1953 was to be a great show to boost morale in a country still suffering from rationing. However, there was a tiny glitch during the lavish ceremony, which was watched on TV by 27 million Brits. The Queen forgot to curtsy with her maids of honor on the north pillar of Westminster Abbey
Sick monarchs fighting for the throne
Before her coronation in April 1702, Queen Anne was so severely gouty that she had to be carried to the coronation chair, murmuring, “My legs may be weak, but my head is strong.”
George IV was so hot on a July day in 1821 that he was sweating under his robes and wiping his forehead with a series of handkerchiefs. This he gave to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“Several times he was on his last breath,” remarked the court’s patroness, Lady Cowper. “He looked more like the victim than the hero of the festival.”
The 58-year-old king resorted to smelling salts, and as he retreated to an aisle, he shrugged off his clothes and refused to put them back on until he had cooled.
Before her coronation in April 1702, Queen Anne was so severely gouty that she had to be carried to the coronation chair, murmuring, “My legs may be weak, but my head is strong.”
Hoop a daisy! How the mighty have fallen
In the service of Queen Victoria in 1838, 87-year-old Lord Rolle lived up to his name when he fell and rolled down the steps. The queen stepped forward and offered him her hand.
Towards the end of the service, the Bishop of Bath and Wells turned two pages of the order of service.
The young Queen found it all so confusing that she looked at the Dean of Westminster and said: ‘Please tell me what to do, because you don’t know.’
The coronation of George III. in 1761 has been described as “an affair of confusion, magnificence, and strange buffoons”. The sermon was drowned out by the sound of knives and forks as the congregation helped themselves to food.
Then, on the way out of the abbey, the great diamond fell off the crown and clattered to the ground.
During his coronation at Westminster Abbey in August 1902, Edward VII had to save the crown before it fell by wresting it from the hands of a weak Archbishop Temple.
The Archbishop of Canterbury campaigned to have Edward VII crowned in 1902
After the homage, the archbishop could not get up and again the king helped him.
Eventually, the struggling 80-year-old archbishop collapsed completely — and died four months later.
The day the earth moved for James I
In July 1603, during the coronation of James I, there was a small earthquake which fainted some peers and startled the choirboys.
Was the crown put on immediately after the abdication?
The Coronation of George VI in 1937 took place on the date originally set for that of his brother Edward VIII. Arrangements were well advanced when the king abdicated and very few details were changed apart from the identity of the monarch.
That day, Cosmo Gordon Lang, the great Thespian Archbishop, turned the crown this way and that, looking for a piece of red ribbon that had been removed. It was never clear if he put it on the king’s head the right way round.
Sometimes Lang could be heard saying, “Dukes, please stop talking… Ladies, please attend” and “Garter, where are you?”.
The Coronation of George VI in 1937 took place on the date originally set for that of his brother Edward VIII
Society photographer Cecil Beaton’s account of George VI’s performance was admirable.
“Since the king has been so universally loved and his royal duties performed with such devotion, he has acquired an added beauty and distinction,” he said. “It’s the same metamorphosis that happens to a movie star.”
queen elizabeth [later the Queen Mother] arrived looking very serious. Her small smooth brown head, unadorned, contrasted with all the tiaras she wore. Finally a bright smile appeared on her serious face as she saw the two eager little faces of her daughters (Elizabeth and Margaret) looking at her from the Royal Box.
During the service, six-year-old Princess Margaret squirmed back in her chair and was tempted to swing her legs, but Princess Elizabeth, 11, glared at her sternly.
The 10th Duke of Argyll had a front row seat at the negotiations and described the king as “a most splendid spectacle, like an ancient hierophant”. [Greek priest]. He also noted, “We only have a couple of sandwiches and cookies 10/6 a head. Had to pay £1 for a glass of sherry. No, it was definitely not a sip.”
George I was so bored that he winked at Peeress
George I did not understand English, and the then archbishop’s German was so poor that part of the 1714 service was eventually translated into “hound (mongrel) Latin”. Bored by this, George was seen winking at a peeress.
Elizabeth’s 31 gold carpets and a red mall
The 16th Duke of Norfolk was just 29 when he arranged the coronation of the late Queen’s father and suffered severely from “uncomfortable” gout while performing the same duties in 1953.
After issuing invitations, he surprised a colleague who feared his divorce might mean he wouldn’t receive a subpoena. “Of course,” he said. “This is a coronation, not Royal Ascot.”
The Duke of Windsor – who was not invited – was amused that the Marquess of Bath wanted to arrive at Westminster Abbey by carriage, while the Metropolitan Police were equally determined not to.
Peers were supposed to wear a uniform under their robes, the problem was that none had been issued since 1938 when the armed forces were on a war base. They were allowed to wear any robes that had been used at previous coronations.
The Duchess of Devonshire (Deborah Mitford) looked stunning in her predecessor Duchess Georgiana’s unusual gowns, which she found in a tin chest in Chatsworth.
The Queen’s dress was made by Norman Hartnell, who made eight different sketches, the eighth of which he believed contained the heraldic emblems of Britain: the Tudor rose, the thistle, the shamrock and a daffodil, which Hartnell mistook for the emblem of Wales .
He ran into Garter King of Arms, who told him firmly, “No, Hartnell. You must have the leek.”
Hartnell went home and pulled a leek from his vegetable garden. He was suitably discouraged by his looks.
Fortunately, he recalled that the leek was the emblem of the Welsh Guards and “in the end, using beautiful silk and sprinkling it with a rope of diamonds, we were able to transform the earthy leek into a vision of Cinderella charm”.
When the young queen saw the finished dress, her comment was, “Magnificent”.
Between 14 and 29 May 1953, 12 coronation rehearsals were held at Westminster Abbey, with the Duke of Norfolk’s wife Lavinia representing the Queen.
Five Glasgow girls, five working side by side on one of the widest looms in the world, were part of a team that weaved 31 gold and blue carpets for Westminster Abbey. They were made of Chenille Axminster with a very short pile so as not to impede the passage of peers and peeresses’ robes and trains.
David Eccles, Minister of Works, deserves much credit for the visual impact of the coronation inside and outside the abbey.
The Cabinet awarded him £150,000 for decorations, floodlights and fireworks. He had the delicate political balancing act of combining his coronation duties and spending with overseeing housing programs in areas being rebuilt from war damage.
Eccles was responsible for red tarping The Mall.
Young Charles’ anger at his frizzy hair
During his mother’s anointing, the present King Charles (then called the Duke of Cornwall), who was not yet five years old, was taken to the Abbey by his nanny, Helen Lightbody, to sit between his grandmother, the Queen Mother, and his aunt, Princess Margaret.
He was dressed in white and wore his coronation medal, which he still wears in uniform today.
King Charles was dressed in white during his mother’s anointing and wore his coronation medal, which he still wears in uniform today. Years later, he told his biographer that he was annoyed that the palace barber cut his hair too short and stuck it to his head “with the most appalling dirt”.
Years later, he told his biographer that he was annoyed that the castle’s barber cut his hair too short and glued it to his head “with the most appalling goo”.
Adapted to the fully revised edition of Coronation by Hugo Vickers, available from Dovecote Press on Wednesday, priced at £12.
Stolen scone stone
Before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953, there was a potentially disastrous hiccup over the Stone of Scone, an ancient symbol of Scottish sovereignty.
According to legend, the sandstone slab was used as a pillow by the biblical character Jacob when he dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven, and then brought to Scotland via Egypt, Spain and Ireland.
Also known as the Stone of Destiny, the stone was used in the coronation ceremonies of Scottish monarchs for centuries.
After his victory at the Battle of Dunbar in 1296, England’s King Edward I seized the stone and had it fitted into the base of a specially crafted wooden coronation chair, on which English – and later British – monarchs have been crowned ever since.
On Christmas Day 1950, the stone was stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scottish students (one of whom, Ian Hamilton, later became a Scottish Nationalist MP) and smuggled into Scotland, repaired and left on the altar of Arbroath Abbey, from where it was rescued and brought back to Westminster.
The theft had been widely condemned, but Scots were keen to have it returned to its rightful place.
After much debate in the House of Lords, it was placed back under the chair of King Edward in February 1953, ahead of the coronation.
The stone was returned to Scotland in 1996 and took its place in Edinburgh Castle’s Crown Room. It is temporarily returned to Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles.