A Thousand Years of the Kingdom ~ England

HISTORY

A Thousand Years of the Kingdom ~ England 953-1953 AD

29 March 2025

Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, LONDON, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on 3rd June 1953

Introduction by His Grace, the Lord Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

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The Opening Address by His Grace, the Lord Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury is one of the finest examples of the English language in its embrace and explanation of a thousand years of our History, and I include it here as much in memory of King Edgar (973) as I do his descendant Queen Elizabeth II (1952) and through whom His Majesty King Charles III Regina. Long may he reign.

And all the People do rise and acclaim God Save the King, and the Prelate pronounced the Great Amen, and all the People did again rise and proclaim Amen, and again, AMEN.

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The Introduction can be followed on the Spotify link below, it being the opening Introduction followed by the Royal Fanfare and then the entire Service.

 

The Coronation of the Sovereign is one of the oldest Institutions of our English Church and State.

It is older than Parliament.

It is older even than Domesday Book and the Norman Conquest.

 

Its origins are Anglo Saxon and belong to a time when England was hardly a single kingdom.

 

The first English Coronation Service was drawn up for the crowning of Edgar the great grandson of Aélfred the Great as King of all the English in the year 973.

 

The importance of the occasion was matched by the impressiveness of the Service. Dunstan himself had compiled it. Though he used continental material, he handled it with such skill, that his Service is acknowledged by Scholars to be notably superior to the models which he consulted.

 

In fact, so excellent was Dunstan’s work that the broad pattern of it has endured to our day and not a little of its detail is preserved in the coronation service of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

 

The title Coronation strictly applies only to one ceremony in the service thereby obscuring the most solemn and significant feature of it.

 

Before the Queen is crowned, she is anointed with consecrated oil.

 

The Ceremony of anointing is an adaptation to Christian purposes of the ancient Hebrew usage recorded in the Old Testament.

 

Solomon for instance was anointed King by Zadok the Priest as we are reminded by the words said and sung at the time of the anointing in the Coronation Service.

 

The anointing gives its distinctive character to the rite. For by means of it the Queen is consecrated or set apart under the special blessing of God for her unique function as Sovereign.

 

When she has been anointed, then, and not til then, does she receive the emblems of royalty

The Sword
The Robe
The Ring
The Sceptre
The Rod

and, finally

The Crown

 

From time to time in the course of its long life of nearly a thousand years the Coronation Service has inevitably been submitted to change and revision.

 

The terms of the Oath for example have been adjusted more than once to the existing political situation.

 

The Reformation necessarily imposed certain changes on the Service, and since the Coronation of King James I in 1603 the language has been English.

 

The Revolution of 1689 led to the last major change in the coronation tradition by which the greater part of the solemnities have been inserted into the Communin Service as at the consecration of a bishop, instead of coming before it.

 

Even this change is not as radical as it might seem. For a form of coronation in an old Anglo Saxon service book exhibits a parallel arrangement.

 

But great though the historic interest of the Coronation Service is its real significance is and always has been in its religious and spiritual meaning.

 

In this holy rite and by this solemn sacrament, the Queen offers herself on behalf of all her Peoples to God, and is consecrated by God, to her lifelong ministry among them.

 

Surely no one of her Peoples can follow this Service without feeling afresh the duty which we all owe both to God and to our Queen and our need to rely as she does always upon the faith and Grace of God, to keep us faithful to our duty.

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29 March 2025