There will, this time, be fewer coronets and less ermine than in the “last imperial hurrah”, as Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation has been described.
Charles III’s coronation will differ in many ways, fulfilling the king’s stated wish to “reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future”, yet with a ceremony still “rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry”.
Gone is the extravagance of the five-mile processional route of 70 years ago, replaced by a truncated 1.3-mile carriage ride for the newly crowned and consecrated king and queen from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace.
Gone, too, is the graceful choreography of a sea of peers, cloaked in crimson and ermine, placing their coronets upon their heads at the monarch’s moment of crowning in a balletic spectacle that was an undoubted theatrical highlight of bygone days. For this is a dress-down ceremony.
Yes, there will be dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons, though far, far fewer. The Duke of Sussex, however, will be present; another errant duke in exile, the Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, was pointedly not invited to the late queen’s ceremony.
But with the 1999 abolition of the automatic right of most hereditary peerages, and space in the abbey at a premium, there will be but a handful of peers, chosen by ballot and without spouses and partners, and vastly outnumbered by the 850 charity workers, volunteers and British empire medal recipients on Saturday’s official guest list. There isn’t even an invite for the late queen’s bridesmaid Pamela Hicks, 94, whose father was Lord Mountbatten, and whose name has graced most royal guest lists for decades.
The royal historian Hugo Vickers, author of Coronation: The Crowning of Elizabeth II, said: “The aristocracy is completely out. In 1953, the whole of the north and south transept was filled with peers and peeresses, in red velvet robes and ermine. Today? Maybe 25-40 representatives only.
“When you had a lone queen, all the peers and peeresses put on their coronets the moment she was crowned with a cry of ‘God save the queen’. It was the most fantastic sight; the arms of the peeresses in their long white gloves were like swans as they raised them above their heads, all of them putting their coronets on. We have lost that, and we’ll never get it back again.”
In his seminal biography of Queen Elizabeth II, the late historian Prof Ben Pimlott described her coronation in the dying days of the British empire and birth of the Commonwealth as being seen as “celebrating the continuity of Britain as a great power”. But it was also, he argued, “the last great imperial display: a magnificent funeral tribute to a world order than was ending”.
It was an incredible spectacle for a postwar, bomb-scarred Britain, where some food rationing and conscription still existed.
Back then, reflecting Britain’s high ranking as a world power, 8,251 guests crammed into Westminster Abbey, with some stands 11 tiers high. Outside, stands were erected for 96,000 paying guests, while hundreds of thousands more lined the route. The grand procession from Westminster Abbey stretched for two and a half miles and was formed of 12,000 military personnel, taking more than 45 minutes to pass each stationary spot. Troops marched 12 abreast to a beat provided by 24 marching military bands. Ten Commonwealth prime ministers, led by Sir Winston Churchill, were carried in open-top carriages.
The late queen’s coronation could, in retrospect, be described as “the last imperial hurrah”, Dr Bob Morris, a senior research associate at UCL’s Constitution Unit and the author of a research paper titled “The coronation of Charles III”, has said.
On Saturday, about 5,000 troops will be involved, with a far shorter carriage procession. The appetite for a three-hour Christian service – and the coronation is a religious service, with the anointing with holy oil and the taking of communion – may be diminished in a country that is far more diverse and secular.
The 2021 census showed that for the first time less than half of the population of England and Wales (46.2%) identified as Christian, with more than one-third of people in England and Wales (37.2%) asserting they had no religion at all. In 1953, not only was churchgoing much more routine, one-third of people believed the queen had been chosen by God.
Shortening the service while retaining all the elements hitherto deemed as essential will have been no mean feat. Certain rituals should be incorporated according to the Liber Regalis, the 14th-century manuscript that has been the instruction manual for all coronations since.
The recognition, where Charles is presented as the “undoubted” king; the oath; the anointing with chrism; the investiture with regalia symbolising kingly and knightly values and virtues; the crowning, the enthronement and then the homage – all are constituents at the centre of the ceremony. “It’s not just frippery and fun. It’s very important. And you can be sure the king takes it very seriously indeed,” said Vickers.
Aside from these rituals, the creed can be read, the communion service shortened, and the homages cut to a minimum. The Prince of Wales will pay homage. The tradition of peers paying individual homages, which is really a feudal relic, was curtailed in 1902, when a system of only the senior peer in each gradation performing homage was introduced. Morris has speculated that homage could be further reduced.
Though there may be many disappointed peers and parliamentarians – there were 8,251 people in Westminster Abbey in 1953, compared with about 2,000 this time – “the one omnipresent guest, lurking in every nook and cranny of the abbey will be the camera”, said Vickers.
The late queen only reluctantly agreed to the BBC filming, which led to a broadcasting revolution. About 2.5 million sets were bought in the two months leading up to her coronation, which were watched by about 27 million in Britain alone. It was, in Pimlott’s words, “a baptism for a new kind of mass participation in national events, which changed for ever the way in which royalty would be perceived”.
Even then, strict rules were imposed, with limited fixed cameras and closeups prohibited. An on-the-spot censor ensured no camera zoomed in too close on the young queen. The sacred moment of anointing, which took place beneath a silk canopy held by four garter knights, was not permitted to be shown at all. Neither was the queen seen taking communion.
Westminster Abbey closed its doors to the public on 25 April this year for preparations to be made for 6 May. But in 1953 it was closed from 1 January ahead of the 2 June ceremony and remained closed for about four months afterwards for the dismantling of the spectator stands and of the theatre platform.
About 450 tonnes of structural steel, 132,000 cubic feet of timber and 1,350,000 feet of tubular scaffolding was used, with a tramline set along the central aisle to carry off the equipment.
Stands of several tiers were also erected along part of the procession route, for which spectators could buy tickets. The whole operation cost the equivalent of £20.5m in today’s money.
Coronations constantly evolve. The king has made clear his will be one for the modern era. “He really sees his coronation as once again United Kingdom’s showcase to the world,” said Vickers, “because we do do it really well, and did it extremely well at the queen’s funeral.”
