A half-crown coronation would proclaim managed decline

The portents are ominous. Even if there is a strong element of exaggeration and inaccuracy in the rumours that are swirling in the broadsheet media regarding a “slimmed-down” coronation next year, there is clearly a kernel of fact and it suggests that the British establishment, not for the first time, is about to commit a crass error that could diminish the Monarchy – and with it the nation – for at least a generation to come.

We have just experienced the melancholy, but impressive, pageantry surrounding the late Queen’s funeral. Yet again, the mantra was heard on all sides: “Nobody does pomp and pageantry like the British.” The whole world, especially America, was fascinated by this time-honoured spectacle. It brought consolation to a country dismayed by the loss of a beloved icon. It renewed national confidence and unity, while asserting British identity. It was flawless. It was admired and respected. It demonstrated that it is impossible to improve upon tradition, which furnishes the template for all great national occasions.

So, it seems positively perverse that, instead of building upon that success by applying the same principle of continuity to the crowning of the Queen’s successor, there are proposals to vandalise the Coronation ceremony, reducing its duration from three hours to a little more than one. That rumour, at least, appears to have substance. In fact, the coronation of Elizabeth II, in terms of the ceremony, lasted two and a half hours rather than three. The ritual is coherent and timeless: to abbreviate it to a little over an hour would mean the loss of innumerable traditional observances.

Reports attribute the proposed changes to the King: that is surprising, since he has always shown himself sympathetic to tradition. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that advisers are assailing him with essentially political admonitions that, during a cost of living crisis, it would be provocative to have a lavish Coronation. That is the reverse of the truth: the successive experiences of a pandemic and a financial crisis provide precisely the circumstances in which the public needs to have its spirits raised by a breath-taking ceremony, celebrating the nation before the whole world.

In 1953, when Elizabeth II was crowned, the country had been through the even worse experience of the Second World War, with lingering rationing and a still devastated national infrastructure. The Coronation raised the spirits of the public and that sense of renewal endured long after the ceremony was over. That is the kind of psychological uplift from which the country would benefit in 2023. Nobody, except the usual suspects, would cavil at the expense of a ceremony that is the ultimate expression of national identity and which has not taken place for 70 years.

Yet the reports suggest that, in the various forums that advise on the ceremony, They are present: They, the “modernisers”. Any institution or event that is subjected to the baleful influence of modernisers is doomed. The Conservative Party has never fully recovered from David Cameron’s modernisation drive: they even held a fund-raising dinner at which the dress code was dinner jacket and open-necked shirt. The insult to the public’s intelligence in pretending that millionaires taking off their ties were somehow embodying “equality” was pathetic.

Modernisers are keen on suppressing pageantry at public events since it relieves them of the trouble of dressing up; but after they have deprived the general public of the spectacle it enjoys, they will retire to some expensive restaurant and enjoy the good life. It reflects the liberal conviction that the elites know what is best for the masses and tradition is not good. It is inappropriate to a contrite nation that will soon be queuing up to return to the Single Market – in the elites’ deluded expectation.

There is additional reason to hold a splendid Coronation in a Britain that has recently recovered its sovereignty. At the same time, the justification for doing so must be explained. The hypocritical gripe that it would be wrong to enact the ceremonial presentation of gold ingots during a cost of living crisis is easily refuted: donate them afterwards to a charity of the King’s choosing. Some of the hair-shirt proposals seem hardly credible and may well be apocryphal, such as the suggestion that peers should attend attired in lounge suits.

To what purpose? Since peers bring their own robes and coronets, there is no cost to the taxpayer and the spectacle of them donning their coronets as soon as the crown is placed on the King’s head is a wonderful piece of pageantry. There could be no reason for abolishing that moment except a deliberate attempt to make the occasion drab.

But drabness, for its own sake, is cultivated by so-called progressives, who would dearly love to impose the ultimate drabness: a lounge-suited republic. A heavily diluted Coronation ceremony would help their agenda by taking Britain a step closer to a continental-style bicycle-clip monarchy. How many people cross the Atlantic or travel from the southern hemisphere to witness the drab inauguration ceremonies of Scandinavian monarchs? If Americans flock to London and discover an attenuated pageant that lasts little more than an hour, they will not be back.

Events such as the Coronation, royal weddings and funerals are an important element in the projection of British soft power. In that respect, the Prime Minister would be within her constitutional rights to advise the committee of Privy Counsellors preparing the Coronation ceremony that any significant reduction in the traditional ritual would be against the national interest. It would be the ultimate denial of Bagehot’s admonition against letting daylight in on magic.

There is no valid reason for any significant alteration in the Coronation ritual. Although the traditional ceremony, in both England and Scotland, dates back more than a millennium, the ritual of modern times essentially derives from the crowning of Edward II at Westminster Abbey on 25 February, 1308. It is divided into six successive parts: the recognition, the oath, the anointing, the investiture and crowning, the enthronement and the homage.

It follows a logical and integrated pattern, which cannot be abbreviated while retaining full coherence. Much is being made of the robes the King must wear: the simple linen Colobium Sindonis, the Supertunica or Dalmatic, the Stole, the Robe Royal in gold and Robe of State in velvet and ermine. Obviously, His Majesty does not wear them all simultaneously, so debates regarding the robes are largely a distraction. The basic dress worn by George VI was compatible with all of these and was verging on the austere: a Nehru-style coat with just one row of gold lace over knee breeches. Since the King, as Prince of Wales, routinely wore knee breeches at state banquets, this would hardly be an imposition.

There is today an animus against formal or even decent dress. The King has always stood out against that American-inspired sloppiness: Charles III has achieved what his predecessor George IV vainly aspired to, by being the best dressed man in Europe. As for his subjects, many of them in the streets outside the Abbey will impart a truly historical atmosphere to the occasion, in their hoodies, since half of the population today are dressed like medieval churls.

There are real grounds for dread of a “slimmed-down” coronation. It would repeat the mistake of William IV, whose cut-price coronation was nicknamed “the half-crowning” and made him a laughing stock. A mean ceremony in 2023 would have a disastrous effect on the national psyche: it would induce a sensation of anticlimax and lend credibility to the siren voices of national self-hatred claiming that Britain is a third-rate nation of diminishing consequence.

The rumours may be exaggerated, but there is already a canary in the coal mine, in the shape of the Royal Mint’s new coinage, with the King’s name in English instead of Latin (“Carolus”), while the abbreviated titles remain in Latin – a Macaronic inscription. This breaks a thousand-year tradition: throughout that period the only king whose name appeared on the coinage in English was Stephen of Blois – a usurper. The patronising elitist notion that the public is not intelligent enough to grasp the King’s name in Latin contradicts the official myth of ever-advancing education in Britain.

Above all, the Coronation is a religious ritual. As such, it must remain distinctively Christian. Naturally, adherents of many other faiths will be present – as they were in 1953 – but the ceremony itself must reflect the Established Church. As for the post-Coronation appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony, it makes sense, on first appearance, to restrict it to the King and those in the line of succession from him; at the customary second appearance, however, it would be wise to open it to the extended family, minus the black sheep, as the public likes to see many children on the balcony. A royal house is not a nuclear family, but a pool of dynasts from different branches.

So, let us have a golden coach, trumpets, heralds, ermine, coronets, feudal homage – everything that elevates us from the sublunary world and gives us a sense of the numinous. Let us do things as we did them for Elizabeth II. Anything less would be a celebration of Roundhead drabness and a proclamation of managed decline.