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the Duke, was the first day of the Epsom meeting and he didn’t know if the Jockey Club
(the supreme and exclusive ruling body of English racing) would consider it a good thing
to have the Derby the following day or whether they would push the whole Epsom
meeting and Ascot as well a week forward to avoid this contretemps. ‘Incidentally,’
Colville wrote, ‘the reason why June 2 was chosen is that the possible dates were
narrowed down to May 28th to June 6th. The Cabinet was opposed to two bank
holidays in Whitsun week for production reasons; June 1, being a Monday, would entail
a great deal of Sunday travel which would upset the Sabbatarians and June 2nd seems
to be the first possible date which will upset nobody but the runners in the Rosebery
Memorial Handicap!’ 19 Apparently the grandees of the Jockey Club (who to a peer
would be attending the Coronation) did not raise any objections and the date of 2 June
was officially announced on 29 April together with the membership of the Coronation
Commission.
The composition of the Coronation Commission, nominated by Elizabeth, reflected the
importance which she – and the Government – placed on the Commonwealth. She had
been the first British sovereign to have been specifically entitled ‘Head of the
Commonwealth’ at her accession, while the Royal Titles Act of 1953 stipulated that she
was separately Queen of each of the Commonwealth territories which were not
republics. She proposed the Duke of Edinburgh as Chairman of the Committee with the
Duke of Norfolk as Vice-Chairman, and representatives of all Commonwealth
Governments present. Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl
Marshal of England, and, unusually, for a high aristocrat, a Catholic by family tradition,
was a bluff, conservative, sporting figure who, in the words of one biographer, had
‘failed to pass what in those days was an undemanding entrance examination to Christ
Church, Oxford, particularly when the candidate was a duke’. 20 He had then joined the
army as an officer in the Royal Horse Guards, one of the two cavalry regiments whose
official duty is to guard the sovereign. He was an enthusiastic racing man, having
bought his first thoroughbred on his twenty-first birthday, a steward of the Jockey Club,
the Queen’s representative at Ascot race meetings, and president of the MCC
(Marylebone Cricket Club). As a duke since the age of eleven, he viewed human beings
with little unnecessary respect. ‘If the bishops don’t learn to walk in step we’ll be here
all night,’ he lectured them at a Coronation rehearsal, and when asked if it were true
that peers carried sandwiches in their coronets during the service, he answered,
‘Probably. They’re capable of anything.’ A few months before the Coronation, a peer
had nervously approached him saying that he was afraid he might not receive an
invitation because he had been divorced. ‘Good God, man,’ the Duke replied. ‘This is a
coronation not Royal Ascot.’ His training at marshalling troops and organizing the
tenants of his large estates, plus his experience of past state occasions such as the
funerals of George V and the Coronation of George VI, had given him immense expertise
in mounting huge theatrical ceremonies which required precise timing behind the pomp
and splendour.
Philip, the modernizer, does not seem to have made much headway against his Vice-