Coronation reflections: what a weekend Pt. 3
Some reflections on different aspects of the coronation of Charles III
Yesterday I wrote about the anointing of the sovereign, the spiritual heart of the coronation ceremony with its links to the Anglo-Saxon kings, and the presence of Prince Harry, alone and without his wife. Today some more thoughts about last weekend’s events.
Jobs for the boys (and girls)
Some of the traditional offices of the court and household have become so honorary that they are only filled for the purposes of the coronation. There are also a number of historic roles which have fallen into desuetude or are regarded as peripheral to the occasion. Still more are held on an hereditary basis (like that of Earl Marshal, held by the Duke of Norfolk). So how was all of this sorted out?
The two Great Officers of State appointed only for the coronation are the Lord High Steward of England, the most senior officer, and the Lord High Constable of England. The office of Steward has not been regularly filled since the early 15th century; he had the sole legal right to preside at impeachment trials of peers (the last of which was that of Viscount Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1806) and at the felony trials of peers who claimed the right to be tried by their peers, that is, the House of Lords, which was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1948.
(The last trial of a peer, in December 1935, was that of the 26th Lord de Clifford, who was accused of manslaughter after he had a head-on collision with another car, the driver of which was killed. It was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, who was appointed Lord High Steward for the period of the trial, and the Attorney General, Sir Thomas Inskip, led for the prosecution. Clifford was acquitted.)
The Lord High Steward carries St Edward’s Crown at the coronation, the crown which is placed on the monarch’s head during the ceremony. In 1953, the office went to Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, an Irishman known by his initials of “ABC” who was First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from 1943 to 1946. For this coronation, the chosen individual was General Sir Gordon Messenger, a retired Royal Marines officer who served as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff from 2016 to 2019. Messenger is currently Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom (an honorary position) and Constable of the Tower of London; when he retired from the Marines in 2019 he told a Wall Street Journal event—a whole two hours after leaving office—that he was looking forward to “growing a beard and developing a very expensive cocaine habit”. In greater earnest, he was commissioned in 2021 to conduct a review of leadership in the NHS and social care, reporting in June 2022.
The Lord High Constable was originally commander of the royal armies but ceased to be a permanent office after the attainder of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521. For the coronation of Elizabeth II, Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, who had been Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1941 to 1946, was appointed. Brooke was from an old West Ulster Anglo-Irish military family, the so-called “Fighting Brookes of Colebrooke”, who had been invaluable to the conduct of the Second World War and one of Winston Churchill’s closest advisers. But he had also found the prime minister a cause of huge frustration, “genius mixed with an astonishing lack of vision”. His diaries, first published in a bowdlerised version in the 1950s but issued without censorship in 2001, revealed his characteristic combination of penetrating shrewdness and stinging asperity.
For Charles III’s coronation, the office was given to the current Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. He is the first sailor to be professional head of the armed forces in 20 years, appointed after being judged to have implemented the programme of Royal Navy Transformation successfully and in anticipation of future conflicts being likely to arise in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indo-Pacific. The Ministry of Defence wanted the head of Strategic Command, General Sir Patrick Sanders, but the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, chose Radakin instead. (Sanders became chief of the General Staff last year, and carried the Queen Consort’s Sceptre at the coronation.)
To deal with lesser claims to involvement in the coronation ceremony, in January the Cabinet Office created a Coronation Claims Office to consider such applications. It was all very neatly bureaucratic, with a downloadable form and guidance, designed to “fulfil The King’s wish that the ceremony is rooted in tradition and pageantry but also embraces the future”. This took the place of the old Court of Claims, dating back at least to 1377, which was established at the begin of each reign to deal with the assignment of ceremonial roles.
Many of these claims were based on hereditary rights, of which perhaps the most notable is that of King’s Champion, held by the Dymoke family of Horncastle in Lincolnshire. Originally the role of the champion was to challenge anyone who questioned the monarch’s claim to the throne to trial by combat: he would ride into Westminster Hall during the coronation banquet in full armour, escorted by the constable and the earl marshal, and literally throw down his gauntlet to call out any challengers. The formulation of words varied but in 1821 were as follows:
If any person, of whatever degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord George, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, son and next heir unto our Sovereign Lord the last King deceased, to be the right heir to the imperial Crown of this realm of Great Britain and Ireland, or that he ought not to enjoy the same; here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with him, and in this quarrel will adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.
After the coronation of George IV in 1821, however, the banquet was discontinued. In 1902, the claimant, Frank Dymoke, was appointed Standard Bearer of England, originally responsible for carrying the flag in battle, but by the 20th century required only to carry the standard in the coronation procession (alongside those of the other nations of the United Kingdom). In 1953, Lieutenant Colonel John Dymoke was appointed to carry the Union Flag, and for Charles III’s coronation the Dymoke claimant, John’s son Francis, carried the Royal Standard in the procession after the Coronation Claims Office upheld his application for a role.
Scotland has historically had its own Lord High Constable, like the English counterpart in command of the royal armies and dating at least to the early 12th century. He was also chief judge of the High Court of Constabulary, responsible for dealing with murder, rioting, disorder and bloodshed within four miles of the King or the Parliament of Scotland. In 1309, the office of constable was made hereditary in the Hay family who later became earls of Erroll, with which title it remains. In 1953, the suo jure Countess of Erroll was allowed to be represented by a proxy, Lord Kilmarnock, since, as a woman, she was not permitted to take place herself (the new Queen’s gender notwithstanding). This year, her place in the procession was taken be her son and successor, the 24th Earl of Erroll, an excepted peer elected to represent the other hereditaries after the House of Lords Act 1999. He is a marketing and IT consultant and a senior member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers.
Those who study Whitehall might note that these are some of the more outré responsibilities which can cross the desk of civil servants in the Cabinet Office. It is the ultimate administrative grab-bag, even more than the Home Office; as well as providing the secretariat for the cabinet and administrative support to the prime minister in his role as chairman of the cabinet, it handles discrete areas of policy and delivery which do not have an obvious home in a major department. Therefore the Cabinet Office is responsible for vital institutions like the National Security Council and the Joint Intelligence Organisation, deals with policy on constitutional reform, resilience, civil service efficiency and reform and handles matters relating to honours and ceremonial. It may be that the solemnities of the coronation provided a degree of light relief in the corridors of 70 Whitehall.
Quirks of the Regalia
Much has been written about the Regalia used in the coronation, with loving descriptions of goldsmithery, jewels and ceremonial weapons. Almost all the Crown Jewels were melted down or sold after the abolition of the monarchy in 1649, the only mediaeval survival being the Coronation Spoon (about which I wrote in my recent Coronation Miscellany), so, while the objects which we now venerate are old by most modern political standards, dating from 1661, they are “recent” replacements in the history of the monarchy and its rituals. But it many cases they were intended as direct substitutes: St Edward’s Crown, for example, the five-pound diadem with which the monarch is crowned, took the place of the original worn by Edward the Confessor, who died in 1066. After the late king’s canonisation in 1161, it took on aspects of a holy relic, and was first used in a coronation for Henry III in 1220. It was generally kept at the Benedictine convent of Westminster Abbey; in 1533, for the first time, it was used to crown a queen consort, Anne Boleyn. But Oliver Cromwell condemned it as a symbol of the “detestable rule of kings” and it was melted down in 1649.
The oddest piece of the Regalia must, however, be St Edward’s Staff. A plain, tapering gold rod made for Charles II’s coronation in 1661, it is 4’6” long and has a cross at its tip and a steel pike at its base. The original, like almost all the other pieces of the Regalia, was lost during the Interregnum. What makes St Edward’s Staff unusual is that it was recreated based on vague (and inaccurate) recollections of the original, which had a dove at its tip and was in some way associated with the Confessor, carried at the coronations of Richard III, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James VI and I. So the current St Edward’s Staff is only an approximation of the mediaeval “Long Sceptre”.
Odder still, no-one knows what role the staff played in the pre-1649 coronation ceremony, nor did they recall even in 1661. But Britain places a high value on tradition, so St Edward’s Staff remains part of the coronation objects. It is carried in the procession by a peer: in 1953, it was borne by the Earl of Ancaster, formerly Conservative MP for Rutland and Stamford and joint Lord Great Chamberlain from 1951 to 1983, while last weekend it was carried by Baroness Manningham-Buller, formerly Director General of MI5. It plays no role in the ceremony and is merely placed on the altar for the duration of the coronation, and perhaps this is fitting. It is now, essentially, merely a relic, both of the monarchy but also of St Edward, the only English king to be made a saint, thereby honouring both the temporal and spiritual aspects of the monarchy.
At least, that’s how I would spin it.
At that point I will conclude for now. More reflections to follow in my next essay…