Traditionalist doubts about the wisdom of King Charles’s plans for his Coronation on May 6 are increasing.

Religious aspect

As I remember, in his accession oath last year, the King pledged to be the Defender of the Faith, instead of Defender of Faiths, as he had wished to say so many years ago.

However, on April 8, 2023, The Mail reported that the King was at loggerheads with senior Anglican clergy over the role that other faith leaders could play in his coronation (emphases mine):

It is already expected that the Coronation will be more religiously and culturally diverse than the late Queen’s 1953 service.

But The Mail on Sunday has been told that Church leaders are resisting a more active role for other faith leaders, given that it is an Anglican ceremony, as well as a constitutional event.

A compromise option could be for the King to hold a separate ceremony at which other faith leaders would play an active role.

In a joint message last month, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who will officiate at the ceremony, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said the Coronation ‘at its centre is a Christian service… rooted in long-standing tradition and Christian symbolism’.

According to a source, a meeting held at Lambeth Palace last month heard that the drafting of the order of service was led by Archbishop Welby and ‘conducted with scrupulous regard for the range of opinion among Anglican clergy’ …

The Archbishop is also understood to be giving the King ‘religious guidance’ on the significance of his oath, the commitments he will make to his subjects and the Christian symbolism of the regalia …

The King, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, is required by the Bill of Rights Act 1688, modified by the Accession Declaration Act of 1910, to declare at either his Coronation or at the first State Opening of Parliament that he is a ‘faithful Protestant’ and will ‘secure the Protestant succession’. 

In addition, the Coronation Oath Act of 1688 requires the King to declare he will maintain the established Anglican Protestant Church.

One source said Church laws meant that the participation of non-Christian faith leaders should be restricted to them just being present in Westminster Abbey and taking part in the procession.

On April 19, UnHerd posted an article urging the King to proceed with the traditional ceremony, ‘We non-Christians don’t need a “multi-faith” coronation’:

The coronation is, in formal terms, a solely religious ceremony. No legal power depends on being anointed. Despite concerns over the erosion of the religiosity of the coronation, the fact remains that placing oil blessed in Jerusalem on a monarch in imitation of the anointing of David, Solomon, and Christ is about as Christian as a ritual as can be. Indeed, just today it has been reported that the coronation procession will be headed by a cross made out of supposed relics from the cross on which Christ was crucified …

… Those of us who are not Christians are perfectly capable of appreciating the coronation on its own terms, without modification. While the meaning of the coronation is undoubtedly different for those of us who lack a relationship with Jesus, it is meaningful nonetheless. 

… Much of its significance comes from the fact that the King, obviously an Anglican, takes it seriously. By elevating the obligation to govern according to law into a perceived divine commandment, the coronation oath impresses upon the head of state the seriousness of their duty.

On December 24, 2022, The Express summarised the anointing ceremony, which is traditionally done under a golden canopy away from public view. The monarch removes his garb to don a simple white linen shirt to receive the oil from Jerusalem:

King Charles will be anointed with holy oil, receive the orb, coronation ring and sceptre, and be crowned with St Edward’s Crown, which was made for Charles II in 1661.

Afterwards, the canopy is lifted and the monarch reappears in full regalia.

Alleged invitation snubs

The aforementioned Mail article reported on likely snubs to nobles on Coronation Day:

Only about 2,000 guests and dignitaries are set to be invited – including more than 850 community and charity heroes – compared with the 8,000-plus peers and commoners who witnessed the 1953 ceremony …

However, disappointed MPs and peers can apply for up to 400 ‘pavement tickets’ to watch from outside the Commons as the procession passes to and from Westminster Abbey.

Lady Pamela Hicks

One of those snubbed, according to her daughter India, is Lady Pamela Hicks, herself related to the Royal Family and one of the late Queen’s ladies-in-waiting of long standing.

On April 19, The Mail reported:

She may have been in the shadow of Queen Elizabeth as her lady-in-waiting, but Lady Pamela Hicks has had a glittering life of her own as a relative of the royals.

The 94-year-old has experienced adventure, immense privilege but also tragedy, including the assassination of her father Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Moving in the Queen’s inner circles, she shared intimate moments with the Princess before she became monarch – being there to comfort her when she was informed of her father’s death and acting as a bridesmaid at her glamorous wedding.

Since the Queen’s death, Lady Pamela has become the oldest living descendant of Queen Victoria, but it was revealed today has failed to receive an invitation to the Coronation of King Charles next month due to a guestlist based on ‘meritocracy not aristocracy’.

Lady Pamela was born five weeks early while her parents were on holiday in Morocco and Spain:

Born Lady Pamela Mountbatten, her unexpected and exciting arrival in 1929 was the start of her whirlwind life.

Her parents, Edwina Ashley and Lord Louis Mountbatten, had been on holiday in Algeciras and Morocco where Edwina had ridden a donkey while heavily pregnant.

Pamela was then born five weeks early at The Ritz Hotel in Barcelona which King Alfonso XIII had surrounded by the Royal Guard who arrested a doctor entering the hotel with equipment to help deliver the baby.

In her podcast, Pamela revealed that her parents ‘lost their minds for a moment’ and considered calling her Ritzy because of her place of birth.

Her father Lord Mountbatten was Prince Philip’s uncle – the younger brother of his mother Princess Alice of Battenburg – and Pamela became his first cousin. 

She was the younger of two children, with her older sister Patricia Knatchbull later inheriting the title of 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma. 

Pamela and Patricia also spent much of their young lives with sisters the Queen and Princess Margaret …

After the abdication of Edward VIII and the crowning of their father as King, Pamela wrote in her diary: ‘Poor Lilibet and Margaret. They’ve got to go and live in Buckingham Palace.’

The article details Hicks’s life, which was interwoven with the Queen’s. Hicks was the widow of the famous British interior designer David Hicks, who died in 1998. They had three daughters.

India is her mother’s spokeswoman and announced that the Coronation Day invitation would not be forthcoming. Apparently, there are no hard feelings:

After the Queen’s funeral last year, India said her mother hoped to be one of the few people to have attended three coronations by attending the Coronation of King Charles III.

But she was informed on her 94th birthday that she had failed to receive an invitation to the ceremony which was to have a much smaller guestlist than that of the Queen’s in 1953.

‘One of the King’s personal secretaries was passing on a message from the King,’ her daughter India shared on social media.

‘The King was sending his great love and apologies, he was offending many family and friends with the reduced [guest] list.’

The palace official ‘explained that this Coronation was to be very different to the Queen’s’ in 1953, when thousands more squeezed into the Abbey.

‘Eight thousand guests would be whittled down to 1,000, alleviating the burden on the state.’

India, who is a goddaughter of King Charles and was a bridesmaid when he married Lady Diana Spencer, insists: ‘My mother was not offended at all.

”How very, very sensible,’ she said. Invitations based on meritocracy not aristocracy. ‘I am going to follow with great interest the events of this new reign’.’

Non-royal dukes also snubbed

Allegedly, some hereditary dukes have also been left off the Coronation Day invitation list.

The Express gives us the rank of nobility titles:

The ‘duke’ title stands as the highest-ranking hereditary title out of the five peerages.

In order, it is followed by marquess, earl, viscount and baron.

The article, dated April 15, states:

The King has snubbed a number of dukes by not extending an invite to them for his Coronation, taking place in three weeks’ time. In line with King Charles’s long-expected plan to slim down the monarchy, not all members of nobility have been invited.

… the Duke of Rutland and Duke of Somerset have not even received an invite, according to reports.

One Duke who will be attending is the Duke of Norfolk, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, who is also known as the Earl Marshal.

The Earl Marshal title means he is the highest ranking duke in the country – and is in charge of overseeing planning of the Coronation.

Richard Eden, of The Mail‘s Eden Confidential column, had more the day before, writing about the King’s:

… exclusion from the service in Westminster Abbey of most of the grandest aristocrats in the land, along with almost all their fellow hereditary peers. Even most of the 24 non-royal dukes – the most senior rank in the peerage – are not exempt from the cull …

Before going into more detail from the article, over 20 years ago The Spectator ran an informal series on how friendly and affable non-Royal dukes are. They are true gentlemen in every sense of the word, gracious to all, no matter whom.

It takes some doing to make them cross.

Now back to Eden Confidential and the dismay of the Duke of Rutland, head of the Manners family:

The Duke of Rutland, who lives in one wing of his 365-room family seat, Belvoir [pron. ‘Beaver’] Castle in Leicestershire, while his wife, Emma, lives in another, is one of the many dismayed and bewildered by their exclusion. ‘I have not been asked,’ he tells me, saying that he does ‘not really understand’ why. ‘It has been families like mine that have supported the Royal Family over 1,000 years or thereabouts,’ adds the Duke, who has two sons and three lively daughters, Lady Violet, Lady Alice and Lady Eliza Manners.

His own father, Charles, the 10th Duke, attended two coronations – Queen Elizabeth’s, at which, irked by a remark by Lord Mowbray about ‘upstart dukes’, he hid Mowbray’s coronet, and her father, George VI‘s, when the Manners family seemed to be everywhere. Charles and his younger brother, Lord John Manners, were Page of Honour to the Duke of Gloucester and Lord Ancaster, the Lord Great Chamberlain, respectively, while their mother was a canopy bearer for the Queen. Their father, John, the 9th Duke, ‘carried the orb in the procession into Westminster Abbey’, as Charles’s sister, Lady Ursula, later recalled.

This is what normally happens at a coronation after the anointing of the monarch — and what happened in 1953:

… not only did peers attend coronations, they were required to ‘give the kiss of homage and touch the Crown’ – a vestige of feudal allegiance to the monarch, for whom, it was implied, they would fight and, if necessary, die on the field of battle.

At Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, a royal duke, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, took off his coronet, ascended the steps of the throne, knelt before the Queen, placed his hands between hers and ‘pronounced his words of homage’. He was followed by two more royal dukes, the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent.

Then it was the turn of the senior peer of each ‘degree’ – the duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron with the oldest titles. As they ‘paid homage in like manner’, their fellow peers of the respective ‘degree’, knelt in their places in the Abbey, removed their coronets, and also said their words of homage.

The Duke of Somerset was also ready to attend:

Perhaps the disappointment will be even more acute for the Duke of Somerset. ‘He was sprucing up the family state coach,’ a chum tells me, adding that the Duke had entertained the idea of arriving in the Abbey in it. ‘He thought he might be invited, even if not all the dukes were, because his is the second oldest dukedom after Norfolk’s.’

Alas, it appears that the Duke of Somerset, whose title was created in 1547, is among those who have been discarded. After explaining to me a few weeks ago that he didn’t want to comment at ‘this stage’, he now declines to say anything at all.

Viscount Hereford is another model of discretion:

Robin Devereux, 19th Viscount Hereford … as premier viscount, might have expected to ‘pay homage’ on behalf of his fellow viscounts. He, too, declines to comment, but has, apparently, taken his exclusion in good heart. ‘He says he’s still waiting for his invitation,’ I’m told. ‘But he’s not upset about it. He knows that this is a new era.’

What a mistake for the King to make.

Eden Confidential contacted Buckingham Palace, to no avail:

A Buckingham Palace spokesman declines to comment, but a royal source insists that ‘a good representation of non-royal dukes will be in attendance’.

OK! says that anyone snubbed might be invited to attend a reception on Friday, the day before the coronation:

… for those not in attendance at Westminster Abbey, it has been claimed that Buckingham Palace has added a special Friday “reception” to King Charles III’s Coronation weekend plans for a select group of individuals.

The Friday event is said to cater for a group of VIPs, some of which won’t have received an official invitation to the main event the following day.

It will be interesting to see who shows up.

Late April Royal anniversaries

The Mail enumerates the number of Royal anniversaries that occurred this week, complete with historic photos and news clippings.

Princess Grace of Monaco

The non-British event was the marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Ranier in Monaco on April 18 (civil ceremony) and April 19 (wedding Mass) in 1956. She was 26 and he was 32. They spent the evening of April 18 apart as they were considered officially married only after Mass in St Devote Cathedral.

The Mail carried adverts for the home cook from Green’s: boxed Sponge Mixture and Carmelle custard powder.

Queen Elizabeth II’s birth

Our late Queen was born on April 21, 1926, in Bruton Street, Mayfair. She came into the world at 2:40 a.m. that day:

Then, her father, the future King George VI, was three years in to his marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and the pair were looking forward to a life largely out of the public spotlight. 

But the course of the tiny princess’s life would be changed forever a little over a decade later, when her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated in December 1936 so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson … 

She was born at at 17 Bruton Street in London’s Mayfair in what was the year of the General Strike.

A bulletin was issued to the Press the following day. It read: ‘The Duchess of York has had some rest since this arrival of her daughter. 

‘Her Royal Highness and the infant Princess are making very satisfactory progress’ …

The Bruton Street home belonged to Elizabeth’s Scottish grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore.

Her mother and father had moved into the house only weeks before her birth.

The property and its surrounding homes were demolished in the late 1930s and replaced with an office complex. 

Today, a Chinese restaurant stands near where 17 Bruton Street once stood.

The Mail of April 22, 1926, carried a front page splash of photos of mother and baby.

Adverts run along the right-hand column. Hyreco Dog Soap promised to ‘give your dog a treat!’ As Whitsun (Pentecost) was approaching, Blakey Morris & Co. advertised ‘WALLPAPERS FOR WHITSUN DECORATION’.

Queen’s 21st birthday speech

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth delivered her 21st birthday speech on the wireless (radio) during a tour of South Africa with her parents and Princess Margaret. The BBC also filmed the message to the British Empire and Commonwealth nations:

I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

She certainly did fulfil that pledge.

She ended with this:

‘Let us say with Rupert Brooke: “Now God be thanked who has matched us with this hour”.

Seven months after the speech, the Princess married Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey.  

As Queen, Her Late Majesty would undertake more than 200 visits to Commonwealth countries, demonstrating her devotion to royal service.

Launch of the Royal Yacht Britannia

On April 16, 1953, just under two months before her coronation, the Queen launched the Royal Yacht Britannia in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, with Prince Philip by her side:

The launch took place at the shipyard of John Brown & Co. Ltd …

… she told a huge crowd: ‘I name this ship Britannia. I wish success to her and to all who sail in her.’

Amid loud cheers, she then released a bottle of Empire Wine, which smashed on the side of the vessel.

A rendition of Rule Britannia then played as the ship entered open water. 

For the next 44 years, until the ship was retired by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997, the Queen would use the yacht both as a beloved refuge and for official overseas tours.

At 412ft long and weighing nearly 6,000 tons, at the time of her launch the Britannia was the largest yacht in the world.

During the summer, the ship would travel to the Cowes Week regatta of the Isle of Wight, and then for the Royal Family’s annual holiday at Balmoral in Scotland.

She also carried out 968 official voyages, sailing more than a million miles. 

An advert at the bottom of the Mail’s page with photos of the launch says, ‘I shave like a Prince with Personna Precision Blades’. Another advert is for Palmolive Brushless Shaving Cream: ‘NEW AFTER-SHAVE COMFORT FOR YOU OR YOUR MONEY BACK’.

Those were much happier days, in retrospect.

Will we look back 70 years from now and say that these were, too?