A millennia of shocking Coronation moments.

It’s hard to move in London at the moment without walking head first into something or other that is Coronation related. Doing my tours around Westminster I’ve noticed the momentum building for weeks and I’ve happily taken a rare weekend off as I just know what a nightmare the whole place will be for all but the most Royal obsessed well-wishers. I’m not one for crowds of any sort so shall be happily plonked on the sofa watching from afar. Besideswich, a few months ago I was made a Freeman of the City of London by Redemption and so was one of the very first to swear allegiance to our new King.

Though few are left today who have witnessed the last Coronation, it’s safe to assume that even at royal events such as the State Opening of Parliament or the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II that things tend to fall on the side of dignified of things, This hasn’t always been the case even with Coronation banquets that almost bankrupted the nation and breath-taking moments involving a monarch and horses behinds so if these more informal occasions have their moments, it’s not too hard to imagine that even in just the last millennia of coronations, things have happened that might take ones breath away.

Let’s start back with the man who stole my family crown, William The Bastard, or the Conqueror as he no doubt preferred to be known. At his Coronation in 1066, the guards outside, ‘hearing the tumult of the joyful crowd’, thought there was a riot starting, so torched nearby buildings, ‘presumably as a distraction’. French-speaking Norman soldiers waiting outside thought the shouts of approval inside were part of a bid to kill the king, and they began setting fire to houses around Westminster Abbey. The congregation rushed outside, seeing the chaos as ‘an ideal opportunity to do some looting’.  It all sounds like a right laugh doesn’t it?

Bad King John, in 1199, treated the ceremony with ‘unseemly levity’, and left before the end which no doubt gives a clue about what a good king he was going to be.

Edward II’s gay friend Piers Gaveston insisted on giving the monarch ‘kisses and repeated embraces’, and was wearing more jewellery than the queen. On one occasion, the wall behind the High Altar fell down, killing a Knight of the Bath.

Poor old humpback Richard III, ‘just to be on the safe side’, protected his person with 6,000 troops, if only they had stayed with him during his fateful battle.

Centuries later and King George III’s queen was locked out of the Abbey, so went home. Something I’m sure may happen if Meghan appears on Saturday! During a lull, the congregation opened their picnic hampers. George’s ceremony continued to the tinkling of glass and rattle of cutlery, as everyone consumed meat pies. At Queen Victoria’s do, which lasted five hours, lords were to be seen, coronets askew, ‘knocking back champagne’. Perhaps this is why King Charles III wants a rather shorter service.

In fact perhaps the most dignified monarch of all time didn’t really start off too well as Queen Victoria hadn’t bothered to rehearse and people tripped over her robes. The bishops kept losing their place in the Order of Service. The Archbishop jammed the Coronation Ring on the monarch’s wrong finger, causing her to yelp in pain. In the procession back to Buckingham Palace, Victoria wasn’t amused by the ‘distressing oscillations’ of the Gold State Coach. Still she had it better than some of her ancestors as back in 1274, Edward I’s royal procession had lasted 16 days, as the route took in Tonbridge and Reigate.

At Edward VII’s Coronation, in 1902, the Archbishop put the crown on backwards. Clearing up afterwards, ushers found ropes of pearls, bracelets and ‘twenty gold balls knocked off coronets’ abandoned in the pews. During the procession, the royal princes, aged 11 and eight, had a fight in a carriage something you might imagine happening today with all the young royals around. More recently still at George VI’s Coronation, a dean fell backwards down the steps when carrying the crown.

Traditionally after a Coronation there was a huge feast with festivities, including jousting, lasting a week. Edward I ordered 60 oxen, two boars, 40 pigs and 22,460 chickens, plus swans and peacocks.

At Henry VIII’s banquet, there were servants crawling underneath the table, their task being to assist the ladies to ‘urinate when required’. Queen Mary Tudor, who scowled throughout her Coronation, ‘rested her feet on two of her ladies’, whose sole job was to be an uncomplaining human footstool.

During the Restoration (1660), the ‘dancing, leaping and solemn minstrelsy’ grew out of hand, and as Pepys wrote in his diary, ‘We drank the King’s health, and nothing else, till one of the gentlemen fell down stark drunk, and there lay spewing’. We’ve all been there I’m sure.

Coronations were generally money-no-object events, much to the disgust of William IV, who in 1831 said that the whole affair was ‘a useless and ill-timed expense’. He had in mind his elder brother George IV, who had spent £25,000 on his Coronation clothes alone.

The biggest bill was submitted to the Exchequer by Charles II, who had to re-make the regalia, which had been melted down and sold by Cromwell. The new Imperial State Crown consisted of 890 diamonds, ten rubies, 20 emeralds, 549 pearls and 18 sapphires, at a cost of £1.8 million.

Henry IV’s ermine cap was infected with lice and he went bald. William III had an asthma attack, while George I was surrounded by his mistresses.

In fact George I had a controversial coronation by anyones standards with riots in 20 towns across the south and west of England. It was 1714 and the rioters objected to having the German-born monarch as the new sovereign. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701, Queen Anne, who had no surviving children, had to be succeeded by a protestant.

Her uncharismatic German second cousin George, who was frequently absent in his beloved native Hanover, became king despite there being more than 50 Roman Catholic relatives with stronger claims to the throne. A Jacobean rebellion was also started in Scotland by supporters of the Catholic James Stuart.

Spectators at George I’s coronation shouted “out with the foreigner”, and one protester was pulled from the crowd for waving a turnip on a stick –  an insult suggesting the king was a country bumpkin.

George I spoke very little English, so the ceremony itself was conducted mostly in Latin, and he had little idea of what was going on. Still his one redeeming quality seems to be that he was rather frugal and as such rented the jewels that adorned his coronation crown.

Laden with sceptres and orbs, rings, swords and spurs, the monarch had to climb 20 steps to a dais and perch ‘high above the congregation’ on the Coronation Chair, which holds the Stone of Scone — stolen by Scottish Nationalists in 1950 and recovered in time for Elizabeth II’s ceremony in 1953. The Met Office had recommended the date for guaranteed good weather. It poured down.

The velvet and satin robes can be a trial, the trains so heavy they can’t easily be lifted off the ground. Charles I had a circus strongman underneath, ‘bearing the brunt of the load on his head’.

Queen Caroline, in 1767, had a special pulley system to lift up her jewel-encrusted skirt. ‘Ready, girls?’ said Elizabeth II, her 18ft velvet cloak carted by six strapping Maids of Honour. Charles II later gave his Coronation outfit to a theatre, for use as a costume.

One can only hope that King Charles III Coronation beats the odds and goes by without a major mishap for I have listed only some of the highlights above.

And if there is talk about family divisions and arguments today then think how much worse it could be with for example my wonderful forebear King Stephen. He was crowned in 1135 and surrounded by his nine sons and 13 daughters with every single one of them being illegitimate!