From how to watch it here in NZ to the big questions “Will Harry be there!” the Herald has got you covered with the King’s coronation explainer. Video / NZ Herald
The King’s coronation will be planned with military precision, every step rehearsed, every potential risk averted. But even the grandest of state occasions can prove unpredictable and almost all previous coronations have fallen victim to one mishap or another. From the St Edward’s Crown being placed on King George VI’s head back to front, to Queen Elizabeth II’s fainting maids of honour and a forgotten curtsy, some such moments will have passed by unnoticed by the watching crowds.
The same cannot be said for earlier monarchs, many of whom were crowned amid shambolic scenes that somewhat detracted from this most solemn and important occasion.
Whether it was clattering cutlery as bored spectators dug into their picnics mid-ceremony, or red hot sparks raining on guests from thousands of candles suspended from the ceiling, the historic coronation tradition has not always been plain sailing.
Queen Elizabeth II, wearing her Coronation dress, arriving with the Duke of Edinburgh to open Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Photo / Getty Images
With valuable jewels once falling from the monarch’s crown, a fight over the canopy and bouncers hired to keep unwanted guests out of Westminster Abbey, the King might take comfort from the fact that, come what may, his own May 6 ceremony should be relatively uneventful.
Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 suffered from none of the overt disasters that befell her predecessors but the service did not go without the odd comic hitch. A few minutes before 11am, following the entrance of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, there was a kerfuffle near the West Door of the Abbey and the 8000-strong congregation immediately rose to its feet in excited anticipation.
However, the many heads craning for their first glimpse of the young Queen, saw only four cleaners who emerged from the organ loft and were busily using carpet sweepers to ensure the red carpet was in pristine condition. The guests duly returned to their seats and a ripple of laughter broke the tension. However, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, was less than amused, noting later: “After the many solemn processions finishing with that of the Queen Mother, the cleaners created an undesirable and disturbing anti-climax.”
When the Queen did eventually arrive, she is said to have struggled to get her heavy robes moving over the thick red carpet, which had been laid with the pile running the wrong way.
“Get me started,” she urged the Archbishop of Canterbury.
As the three-hour service got under way, the new Queen made only one minor error, forgetting to curtsy with her maids of honour at the north pillar of the Abbey. While the many millions watching on television would not have noticed, the Archbishop, did, again noting dourly in his diary: “The maids of honour regretted it because they had taken so much time to get it just right, and I regretted it because from the altar the sight of the Queen and the maids of honour curtseying was a very lovely one.”
As the ceremony went on, one of the six maids, Lady Anne Coke, later Glenconner, struggled to breathe in her tight dress and began to feel faint. The young women had been given vials of smelling salts which they secreted in their long gloves.
Another of their number, Lady Moyra Campbell, would later recall: “Anne Coke did begin to droop and I was able to crush the thing and it let out an enormously strong smell but she gallantly revived.”
Lady Anne told a BBC documentary in 2018: “Luckily I was standing with my back to a pillar and a wonderful gentleman called Black Rod saw me swaying about. I thought ‘I cannot faint in front of millions and millions of people, I just can’t.’
“He put his arm like that, sort of pinning me the pillar, and just gave me that amount of time to recover.”
Lady Anne also described how another maid, Lady Rosemary Spencer-Churchill, stretched out her arm to shake the Archbishop’s hand when she saw him approaching, only to crush the vial concealed in her glove. “There was a terrible crack and her eyes started to water,” she said. “Luckily, we laughed actually, we thought it was quite funny.”
Ahead of the 1937 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II’s father, George VI, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, diligently marked the front of the St Edward’s Crown with a tiny piece of cotton so he would know which way to put it on the King’s head. One can only imagine his terrible panic when, in the moment, he could not find it. Archive footage shows him turning the crown around and around in his hands, desperately searching for the piece of thread.
The King would later write in his diary that he never did know whether it was placed on his head the right way around. The Queen told the BBC only relatively recently that her father was not best pleased about the debacle. But both George VI and Elizabeth II got off relatively lightly compared to the calamities that befell their many predecessors at previous coronations.
While George V’s passed largely without incident, Edward VII’s would prove a logistical challenge. The long reign of his mother, Queen Victoria, meant that the order of service from her ceremony 64 years earlier had been lost. The only person still alive who had attended was the elderly Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who, as luck would have it, was able to provide a lucid account.
Prince Charles with his Aunt, Princess Margaret (r) and his Grandmother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, at the 1953 Coronation of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Photo / Getty
When the great day arrived, on August 9, 1902, there were a handful of unfortunate mishaps, not least with the new carpet, ordered to cover the Abbey’s main aisle from the West Door to the throne. As the royal party entered the Abbey, the long ermine-trimmed velvet trains of the peeresses holding the Canopy of State over Queen Alexandra connected with the new carpet and promptly stuck to it, bringing the procession to an abrupt halt. This incident was easily dealt with as the trains were disconnected by the Queen’s pages before being looped over the ladies’ gloved arms.
There was less that could be done about the elderly Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, who continually forgot his lines and duties, almost dropped the sacramental bread and placed the Imperial State Crown back to front on the sovereign’s head.
After performing the homage, the 80-year-old Archbishop struggled to get back on his feet and had to be helped up by the King himself. He died four months later.
Meanwhile, society was positively scandalised by the presence in a box near the throne of a collection of the new King’s former, and current, mistresses.
Queen Victoria’s ceremony, which took place on June 28, 1838 was described by historian Sir Roy Strong as “the last of the botched coronations” - widely criticised for being chaotic, under-rehearsed and - at five hours - interminably long. Victoria lamented the farcical scenes in her diary, complaining that the Bishop of Durham was hopeless, “and never could tell me what was to take place”.
She wrote: “The Archbishop of Canterbury got terribly confused and tried to deliver the Orb to me when I already had it, and then forced the Coronation ring onto the wrong finger, which was very painful… and the consequence was that I had the greatest difficulty to take it off again.” The Queen went on to describe how “poor old Lord Rolle,” who was 82, fell over backwards after making his obeisance.
Elsewhere, she described how two pages of the Order of Service were turned over together, causing “much confusion”. It meant that the Bishop of Bath and Wells told her to go to St Edward’s chapel before the service had been completed only to have to bring her back.
Queen Elizabeth wearing the King William IV buckle bracelet. Photo / Getty Images
The ceremony was so long that a side chapel was repurposed as a dining room and equipped with a picnic to enable the monarch to retire for much needed refreshments.
However, having arrived at the chapel earlier than expected, she was disgusted to find it littered with wine bottles and sandwiches. “If the coronation had taken place in the television age it would have been deemed an unmitigated disaster,” Sir Roy wryly noted.
King William IV insisted that he did not want a coronation at all but was eventually persuaded of its merits on the proviso that all the medieval pageantry was removed, leading to what was dubbed the “half-crown-ation.” William may well have been put off by his brother’s fantastically elaborate and expensive ceremony ten years earlier, on July 19, 1821.
George IV barred his estranged wife, Queen Caroline, from his coronation and to ensure she did not force entry and create a scene, had bouncers posted on all the doors.
Undeterred, Caroline made her way to the Abbey escorted by Lord Hood, who said to the doorman: “I present to your Queen. Do you refuse her admission?”
Caroline declined to enter alone, and realising that the game was up, burst into floods of tears and withdrew to cries of “Shame” from the surrounding crowd. Two weeks later she was dead.
Meanwhile, the ageing and obese King sweltered in his thick velvet robes, wig and plumed hat, using no fewer than 19 handkerchiefs to mop his heavily perspiring brow.
George III’s coronation took place on September 22, 1761, and was described by contemporary observers as “a complete shambles” and a “fiasco”.
As the five-hour ceremony unfolded, it quickly became clear that there had been no rehearsal. The heralds forgot their lines, the Dean omitted to provide any chairs for the King or Queen Charlotte and the canopy was mislaid, meaning that a substitute had to be lashed-up at such short notice that the Queen spent the entire service worried it would fall on her head.
The Sword of State was also mislaid and the Lord Mayor’s had to be used instead.
Meanwhile, the King removed the crown at the wrong moment and a large diamond fell from its setting, prompting a frantic search.
Worse was to come when many of the congregation, who couldn’t hear a word of the Archbishop’s sermon, took out their picnics and began to eat.
Lawyer and diarist William Hickey described how “a general clattering of knives, forks, plates and glasses ensued, producing a ridiculous effect, and a universal bout of laughter followed.”
After the service, the royal party processed to Westminster Hall, where 3000 candles in glass chandeliers had been suspended from the ceiling for the coronation feast.
The candles were to be simultaneously lit by a complicated system of fuses but in the moment, guests were showered with ash.
Poet Thomas Gray recorded: “The instant the Queen entered, fire was given to all the lustres at once by trains of prepared flax which rained fire upon the heads of nearly all the spectators causing terror to all present.”
George I on October 20 1714 fared little better. For a start, the new King didn’t speak English and most of his British courtiers didn’t speak German so the ceremony had to be conducted in Latin. The procession to get inside the Abbey lasted over two hours, as the great and the good slowly filed through the Great West Door.
One hold-up was blamed on Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, who, apparently needing to rest her legs, took a drum from one of the soldiers and sat on it.
Queen Caroline’s dress, encrusted in pearls, diamonds and other jewels was so heavy that she could not properly kneel down and a pulley had to be used to help lift her skirts.
During the service, which included the first public performance of Handel’s Zadok the Priest, the choir managed to sing two sacred anthems at the same time.
King Charles II was crowned on April 23, 1661 in a ceremony not without its problems.
By tradition, the canopy was carried by the Barons of the Cinque Ports and was theirs to keep after the coronation feast.
However, on this occasion, a party of royal footmen tried to seize it for themselves and a fight broke out in Westminster Hall during the meal.
