![]() In London and Edinburgh, select members of the Church, aristocracy, judiciary, Royal Company of Archers, College of Arms, Honourable Artillery Company, Privy Council, not to mention various regiments, bands and corps of drums, and a whole host of state bodies whose very existence we have forgotten, will be summoned to don their glad rags. The manuals of monarchy have had to be dusted off and their (presumably illuminated vellum) pages consulted as to what actually happens, who announces what, how and where. The reaction of the crowds to this last event was proof of what President Macron alluded to, that royalty and tradition still hold sway in 21st century Britain. ![]() After her, was the 2015 final interment of Richard III. Although Sir Winston Churchill (in 1965) and Earl Mountbatten of Burma (in 1979) were accorded state funerals, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was the last given a major royal funeral in 2002, when more than a million people lined the 23-mile route from Westminster Abbey to St George’s Chapel, Windsor. All the officials then present are no longer with us. We are in unknown territory here, for the last proclamation of a King was made in 1936. As I write, the next representative of that heritage, Charles III, has been proclaimed as King. ![]() ![]() An institution so old as to be almost intangible. The Queen, then, was the embodiment of something much larger than herself. Of a set of accumulated traditions and an inheritance that stretches back to the Norman arrival on these shores, around 35 generations ago, that prevails to this day. The president’s words also hinted at something deeper, which France and other nation-states have mostly shed over the centuries. That an omnipresent figurehead has suddenly disappeared from our midst. She will be with all of us forever.” Macron’s erudition hit on something. With a palpable sense of regret, he intoned that “she embodied a people and represented a sense of eternity,” praising her for “mastering our language and touching our hearts. President Macron was particularly effusive, delivering a rare television address in English. Germans and Greeks, Italians and Poles, Ukrainians, Americans and the French, and many more, showered upon the new king words of heartfelt admiration for his late mother. Apart from small groups of die-hard republicans and anti-monarchists scattered here and there, one cannot fail to have been impressed by the respect paid by those who have no monarch of their own. Some 537 years and 24 monarchs after Richard’s violent end, the peaceful departure of Queen Elizabeth II, whose funeral will take place on 19 September, sent ripples around the world. Here was a royal corpse and the British public wanted their share of the occasion of a state funeral, however obscure. It mattered not that he had died over 500 years earlier. Here was a monarch, much lambasted by Shakespeare, who was killed on 22 August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Three years earlier, his battered remains, hurriedly dumped in a long-gone abbey, had been retrieved from under a car park in the city and exhaustively identified by forensic science. It was 26 March 2015, and I was witnessing the final interment in Leicester Cathedral of King Richard III. A moving service with a special poem composed by the Poet Laureate. There was the usual array of royals and civic dignitaries, splashes of blue uniforms, chainmail, bishops in their bright stoles, croziers and mitres, the flap of judicial robes caught by the wind, the reflected brilliance of the chains of lord mayors and mayors. I will never forget the moment the chatter died away and a respectful hush descended as the former Sovereign passed by. Hundreds of thousands had earlier filed past the coffin or lined the route. The simple, wooden sarcophagus had arrived by special hearse, drawn by four seal-brown horses, escorted by mounted knights, the dazzle of a spring sunburst mirrored on their full armour and helmets. Such occasions even have a language of their own. Medals glinting in the noonday sun, slowly into the cathedral they came, lowering their burden onto the catafalque, the funeral bier. They shouldered the lead-lined, English oak coffin bearing the royal remains, wrapped in wool and linen, embroidered with royal heraldic symbols. But it did not deter the army burial party, six of them, burley men all, in dress uniforms, under the command of a keen-eyed sergeant major. The great north wind kept the many flags and banners busy: slashes of bold colour, straining on their poles. The last royal funeral I attended was held on a bright, breezy March Thursday. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |