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mother had decided that he should wear ordinary clothes – a buttoned-up shirt and
shorts – and not appear like some miniature royal puppet in coronet and ermine.
Then began the ceremony, which in its essentials had changed little over 1,200 years.
Coronations had taken place at Westminster since Edward the Confessor built the great
abbey church there in the eleventh century; it was rebuilt by Henry III on the same site
in the thirteenth century. William the Conqueror’s was the first Coronation to take place
there, on Christmas Day 1066; he deliberately chose the site to connect his crowning
with Edward and the Saxon kings. The connection with Edward was maintained by his
successors; the Coronation Chair in which the Queen would sit for her crowning is still
known as St Edward’s Chair, even though it was actually made in 1300 on the orders of
Edward I to enclose the Stone of Scone, which he had captured from the Scots – it was
used for the first time at the Coronation of his successor, Edward II. (In 1950 some
Scottish Nationalist students had stolen the Stone of Scone, a potent symbol of England’s
subjection of Scotland; it was retrieved soon after but finally returned to Scotland in
November 1996.) The crown with which the Queen would be crowned is called St
Edward’s Crown, although it was in fact remade for the Coronation of Charles II in
1661. The Puritans who had decapitated Charles I sold the regalia; even the Saxon King
Alfred’s crown ‘of goulde wyer worke set with slight stones and 2 little bells’, which had
been used for the crowning of English kings up till the time of Charles I, was sold for the
value of its gold – £248 10s 6d. Only the eagle-headed ampulla, which holds the holy oil
for the anointing, and the anointing spoon date from before the reign of Charles II.
The core of the ceremony remained the same as it had for centuries – the recognition
by the assembled congregation of their sovereign, the administering of the Coronation
oath, the anointing with holy oil, the investiture with the regalia and the actual
crowning. As the Queen stood beside St Edward’s Chair, the Archbishop turning to the
four sides of the church asked, ‘Sirs, I here present to you Queen Elizabeth, your
undoubted Queen: wherefore all ye who are come this day to do your homage and
service, Are you willing to do the same?’ The congregation roared ‘God Save Queen
Elizabeth’ as the trumpets sounded. Returning to her ‘Chair of Estate’, the Queen sat for
the administration of the Coronation oath, promising to govern according to their
respective laws and customs the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan
and Ceylon, and of her possessions and the other territories to any of them belonging or
pertaining. There was no mention either of Commonwealth or Empire. She also
promised to the utmost of her power to maintain in the United Kingdom the ‘Protestant
reformed religion established by law’. Going to the altar and laying her hand on the
Bible she swore, ‘The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep.
So help me God.’ Then she kissed the Bible and signed the oath. While the choir sang
Handel’s Zadok the Priest, she sat in St Edward’s Chair, having taken off her crimson
velvet royal robe, under a canopy held somewhat unsteadily by four Garter Knights
while the Archbishop anointed her in the form of a cross on the palms of both hands, the
breast and the crown of the head, intoning: ‘As Solomon was anointed by Zadok the