PAGEANTRY & MAJESTY

The grand state funeral for Britain’s longest-serving monarch drew on royal traditions and ceremonies that date back centuries

“History is now and in England”, wrote T.S. Eliot in ‘Little Gidding’, last of his Four Quartets. And who could not have felt it, watching the funeral of

Queen Elizabeth II in the hallowed 12th-century space of

Westminster Abbey? The pomp, the pageantry, the livery and plumes, the heroic, scarlet-clad Grenadier pallbearers, the heralds and pursuivants, the trumpets, the lone bagpiper’s lament…

For ninety-six minutes, on the minute, in the Elizabeth

Tower, the tenor bell had tolled. Ninety-eight Royal Navy

Ratings of the Sovereign’s Guard had pulled the gun carriage bearing the lead-lined coffin; 40 came behind. They were flanked by service equerries, members of the King’s Body

Guards of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, the Yeomen of the Guard and Royal Company of Archers.

Behind walked Charles III and the Royal Family, while ahead went 200 pipers and drummers from Scottish and

Irish regiments, the Gurkhas and Royal Air Force.

Nothing so connects us to our past as the monarchy.

Dynasties have come and gone. The Houses of Denmark,

Normandy, Blois, the Angevins, Plantagenets, Tudors,

Stuarts, Netherlanders, Hanoverians, Sax-Coburg-Gotas, in a dazzling succession broken only by Oliver Cromwell’s dreary interregnum.

State funerals are part of a centuries-long tradition, deriving from heraldic royal funerals, deeply emotive, charged with symbolism, changing with the times. Many of those who lined the Mall had never witnessed a state funeral; very few remember four.

St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where the late Queen now lies with her ‘strength and stay’, Prince Philip, hosted the state funerals of George V and VI, in 1936 and 1952. On 30 January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral was conducted at St Paul’s Cathedral. Normally the preserve of the sovereign, state funerals have been granted to such rare, towering figures as Sir Isaac Newton, Horatio Nelson and

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.

Some 300,000 people came to pay 2022 GETTY IMAGES/LEON NEAL/NARIMAN EL-MOFTY/THE PRINT COLLECTOR/SOPA IMAGES LIMITED/ALAMY their respects as Sir Winston lay in state in stupendous Westminster Hall, Parliament’s oldest edifice. Built in 1097, in the reign of William Rufus, it has been the scene of feasts and jousts and coronation banquets, and of the fateful trials of William Wallace, Sir Thomas More and Charles I. The funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, and of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in 2002, though held in Westminster Abbey with the full panoply of state, were ‘ceremonial’. Prince Philip, wanting none of the ‘fuss’, declined the razzmatazz for his funeral in 2021, at St George’s, with a green Land Rover ‘hearse’, modified to his own specification. A place of worship and celebration, of coronations and royal weddings, Westminster Abbey is, too, a royal mausoleum, “a frozen requiem, with a nation’s prayer ever in dumb music ascending”, as American author Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood expressed it. The sombre roll © PHOTOS: call of royalty buried here includes former reigning monarchs, among them Edward the Confessor, Edward I,

Previous page: The Queen’s funeral cortège makes its way along The Mall during the Lying-in-State procession on 14 September 2022 Clockwise from left: 98 Royal Navy sailors pulled the gun carriage carrying the Queen's coffin after her funeral; Sir Winston Churchill's funeral procession on 30 January 1965; King Charles III followed behind his mother's coffin with his siblings and sons State funerals are part of a centuries- Henry III, Richard II, Henry V, James I, Charles II, Mary II, Queen Anne, long tradition, deriving from heraldic George II, and numerous consorts, royal funerals, deeply emotive and dukes, princes, princesses. Inimical in life, united in death, the Catholic Mary charged with symbolism I shares a tomb with her half-sister, the Protestant Elizabeth I; their halfbrother, the boy king Edward VI, is interred before the altar. Among effigies displayed are those of Edward III, his face a death mask; Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, and a seated Queen Anne. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away. Royal funerals of the 16th and early 17th centuries were elaborate affairs, reaching their apogee in 1625 with James VI and I, whose body lay in state in Denmark House (now Somerset House). Chief mourner Charles I accompanied a hearse designed by Inigo Jones to the Abbey, where the Bishop of Lincoln gave a two-hour sermon. After the Civil War, royal funerals became more low-key and private. The exception was that of Mary II, who died of smallpox in 1694, and lay in state in Banqueting House in Whitehall, before a ceremony in the Abbey with music composed by Henry Purcell. Both Houses of Parliament

attended; Mary’s inconsolable husband, William III, did not. Their wax effigies are displayed in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries high above the abbey floor, a crown between them signifying their joint monarchy.

Responsibility for state funerals falls to the Earl Marshall, a hereditary position held by the Dukes of Norfolk, descendants of Edward I, who, since the 16th century, have had authority over the kings of arms, heralds and pursuivants at the College of Arms. However, monarchs themselves make their own plans.

In accordance with Queen Victoria’s wish to be buried with full military honours “like a soldier’s daughter” for her funeral on 2 February 1901, her white coffin was carried on a gun carriage. She was clothed in a white dress and her wedding veil, and in the coffin with her were laid a dressing gown belonging to the late Prince Albert, a plaster cast of his hand, and a lock of hair from John Brown, former ghillie, Victoria’s friend and confidant.

Proceedings descended into farce when the eight white horses from the Royal Horse Artillery, who were to draw the carriage, panicked and broke their traces. Captain Prince Louis of Battenberg, Prince Philip’s future grandfather, saved the day, offering the Royal Navy, who were lining the route, to pull the carriage to St George’s Chapel, and so a tradition was born. As Victoria was buried at the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore, beside Prince Albert, her dreams of an all-white funeral were fulfilled, as, outside, the sleet turned to snow.

The custom of the sovereign lying in state in Westminster Hall was instituted for Edward VII in 1910. Thousands queued in the rain to see him (“They’re givin’ ’im back to us!” a young woman cried), and over three days a half a million people passed through. For the cortège, on Friday 20 May, a Highland soldier walked behind the coffin, while in front trotted the king’s devoted fox terrier, Caesar (nicknamed ‘Stinky’), ahead of the largest ever gathering of European royalty, to the ire of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The advances in broadcast media allowed for wider public involvement in the funeral of George V, while George VI’s funeral procession was the first to be televised.

Elizabeth II ordained that her funeral be held in Westminster Abbey, where she married and was crowned, instead of the far smaller St George’s Chapel. The late Queen’s funeral was the first of any British monarch to be televised, and the live streaming of these events was watched by 4.1 billion people of the world’s 7.9 billion population.

The late Queen is said to have been involved in every aspect of the planning. As well as the pomp and pageantry to be expected at a state funeral, there were also some deeply affecting personal moments. Next to the Crown Jewels on the Queen’s coffin lay a wreath of flowers including rosemary, for remembrance, and myrtle cut from a plant which was grown from the Queen’s wedding bouquet. Many of the pieces of music chosen were first heard at her wedding and coronation. And as a deeply affecting personal touch, at Windsor her two corgis, Sandy and Muick, and favourite horse, Emma, awaited her return for a last goodbye.

Clockwise from left: The Queen's coffin is carried into St George's Chapel; Queen Victoria's funeral procession; the Queen's corgis had a part in her funeral procession; Emma, the Queen's fell pony, stood by as her hearse drove past; a note on the Queen's coffin reads 'In loving and devoted memory. Charles R.' As Victoria was buried, her dreams of an all-white funeral were fulfilled as, outside, sleet turned to snow