THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
You don't have to have lived in the UK for long to be reminded that this is a very old country.
After the Queen passed away in September 2022, it seemed like you couldn't turn on the TV without witnessing some kind of royal ceremony. Up and down the land, formal proclamations of loyalty to the new monarch, Charles III, were read out by ruddy-faced officials in coats of scarlet and gold, while Parliament gathered for special sessions involving parchment and wax seals. Trumpets played and canons blasted. Charles got cross with a pen. I was absolutely riveted.
There's not much a true-born Brit won't complain about when it comes to their native land – the weather, the football, the fact that Bake Off isn't as good since it went to Channel 4 – but one thing that everyone can agree on is that we know how to put on a show. And on May 6th at Westminster Abbey, the nation will witness the first coronation of a monarch since 1953. It's going to be a huge spectacle.
Which makes it all the more surprising to learn that it's completely unnecessary.
Charles became king the moment his mother passed away. He's just as much king now as he will be when the crown is placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In fact, out of the 12 countries in Europe that still have monarchies, Britain is the only one to still bother with a coronation at all. So what exactly is the point?
One word: tradition. The ceremony is a direct connection with royal history that stretches back a long way. A really long way in fact – the earliest English coronation ceremony was that of King Edgar, who was crowned in Bath in the year 973. The oath Charles will recite is essentially the same as the one Edgar took. The chair in which he will sit has been used in every coronation at Westminster Abbey since 1300. The choir will sing a liturgy that hasn't changed since 1327.
Like I said, it's a very old country.
As a writer of historical fiction, I love all this stuff. Yes, I know that it's basically just showbusiness. But like all tradition, it's the history that gives it power. And never more so than at the coronation of King Charles' ancestor and namesake, Charles II (1630 – 1685). For him, the coronation wasn't just about pomp and pageantry. It was a matter of survival.
Charles was crowned on April 23rd ,1661. Technically, he had already become king in 1649, on the death of his father, Charles I. At that point England had already been torn apart by a bloody and brutal civil war, in which the king and parliament had vied for supremacy. Parliament won, Charles I was beheaded, and his son fled into exile. The country was governed as a republic for a decade, mostly under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. But after Cromwell's death in 1658 the turbulent republic couldn't hold together, and Parliament began secret negotiations for the return of the King.
We know a surprising amount about the preparations for Charles II's restoration, due to the work of one man – the most famous diarist in English history, Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703). I became immersed in Pepys' world when researching my debut novel, The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys. I had to imagine what he did next after putting down his pen in 1669, at the age of 36. In my version, he becomes an investigator for the crown, drawn into a dangerous mystery that could ignite a war in Europe. It was great fun to write, but the life of Samuel Pepys was filled with real-life drama. He had a front row seat at some of the biggest historical events of the century, including the Great Fire of London. And in 1661, he was part of the delegation sent to bring Charles back to England as king.
At the start of Pepys' diaries, England was still a republic. In a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of royalism, the government had re-formed what was known as the 'Rump Parliament' ('rump' meaning 'remnant', referring to the MPs who were left after those opposed to the execution of Charles I had been expelled). The Rump had been popular when it was created in 1648, but not so much by the time Pepys came to write about it on February 7th, 1660: "Boys do now cry 'Kiss my Parliament', instead of 'Kiss my rump,' so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to."
Pepys was involved in the preparations for the exiled king's return – but they do not go off without a hitch. Not only do the delegation realise at the eleventh hour that the naval vessel chosen as the flagship still bears the name of a civil war battle the king's late father disastrously lost (so The Naseby was hurriedly renamed the Royal Charles) but other aspects of the trip are nothing less than farcical. On May 25th, 1660 he writes: "I went, and Mr. Mansell and one of the King's footmen, with a dog that the King loved (which shit in the boat, which made us laugh and me think that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are)."
Not everyone welcomed the return of the monarchy, but Londoners turned out in force to show their support as the King made his way to the coronation. Pepys describes how Charles processed to Westminster Abbey through streets lined with cheering crowds. (Although he neglects to mention that the procession went past the Banqueting House on Whitehall – where, as a schoolboy, a young Pepys was among the crowd who gathered to watch the old king's execution).
Pepys' description of the coronation itself conjures a sense of majesty and splendour: "And a great pleasure it was to see the Abbey raised in the middle, all covered with red, and a throne (that is a chair) and footstool on the top of it; and all the officers of all kinds, so much as the very fidlers, in red vests: At last comes in the Dean and Prebends of Westminster, with the Bishops (many of them in cloth of gold copes), and after them the Nobility, all in their Parliament robes, which was a most magnificent sight."
It is said that we can expect the coronation of Charles III to be a toned-down affair. No doubt thinking it unwise to have too lavish a ceremony when the country is in the grip of a cost of living crisis, the event will not be as grand as his mother's in 1953. By contrast, it was considered essential that the coronation of Charles II was as big an occasion as possible. If Charles II was to survive as king, he needed his subjects to see him as worthy of the title. And that meant some good, old fashioned swagger. It was the ultimate royal comeback after years of civil war and division. Charles needed shock and awe. He needed majesty. And a big ceremony helped to provide that.
Then, as now, the coronation was all a matter of politics.
Jack Jewers is the author of The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys, published in paperback on 11th May, £8.99.
