Hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel, where I bring you new videos
every Friday on all aspects of the past. Today on History Calling we’re travelling back
to 1838 to look at the story of Queen Victoria and her comical coronation. If you’ve ever
wondered what is a coronation is like when it all goes a bit sideways, then this is the
video for you. Stay tuned to learn about the peer of the realm who literally fell at the
young Queen’s feet (though not on purpose), a painful mishap with the coronation ring,
an altar which became a buffet table and how an ill-prepared and perhaps rather dozy Bishop
managed to miss out crucial bits of the ceremony and had to get the Queen back onto her throne
to fix his mistake. You’ll also hear how the ceremony was altered because Victoria
was female and if you stay til the end, I’ll tell you about the incredibly sweet and very
down to earth thing she apparently did when she got home that night. This whole day (which
Victoria later wrote about in her famous diary) is one of those funny royal stories which
pop up from time to time in the British royal family and I think you’re going to like
it.
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my username is History Calling. There’s a link for that in the description box below,
along with some links to books, movies and TV shows about Victoria’s life and a link
to a free copy of her diary entry for her coronation day.
At 2.12am on Tuesday 20 June 1837, King William IV of the United Kingdom died at Windsor Castle.
He had no surviving, legitimate children and so, barley four hours later, William Howley,
Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham, who was the Lord Chamberlain, arrived at Kensington
Palace, where William’s 18 year old niece, Alexandrina Victoria, was living with her
mother, the dowager Duchess of Kent. They informed the young woman that she was now
the Queen. Victoria (as she opted to be called), would go on to have one of the longest and
most successful reigns in British history, but as with virtually all Scottish, English
and British monarchs before and since, her early reign had to incorporate a coronation.
This was scheduled for one year later and along with plenty of serious ceremonial matters,
jaw-dropping crown jewels and a date with the most famous throne in the world, it also
included some moments of high comedy.
The day of Thursday 28 June 1838 was a fine one and Victoria awoke at 4am to the noise
of gun salutes in the Park (which I take to be St James’s Park) outside Buckingham Palace
to celebrate the impending ceremony. She couldn’t get back to sleep after that, given the racket
coming from the bands and the crowds of people who had assembled to wish her well, but fortunately
at just 19 years old, she managed to brush off this lack of rest, writing in her diary
that she ‘Got up at 7 feeling strong and well’. After having breakfast and dressing
in her ceremonial robes, she got into the famous Gold State Coach you’ll still see
the monarch using today and set off for Westminster Abbey.
The coronation procession was incredibly long and the streets were thronged with people.
Victoria wrote of ‘the millions of my loyal subjects who were assembled in every spot
to witness the Procession. Their good humour and excessive loyalty was beyond everything,
and I really cannot say how proud I feel to be the Queen of such a Nation.’ After just
over 90 minutes, she and her encourage arrived safe and sound at the Abbey and entered through
the west door.
After going into a robing robe to put on her official mantle and meet up with her eight
young train bearers, it was time for the main event. Unfortunately, although the Queen herself
had visited the Abbey the day before for a quick run through, there had generally been
very little in the way of rehearsals amongst those present and things soon started to go
wrong. As the choir sang, Victoria processed through the Abbey with the Bishop of Durham
on one side of her, but according to her diary, he was ‘remarkably “maladroit”, and
never could tell me what was to take place’, suggesting that her own run through the previous
day hadn’t completely prepared her for what she needed to do. Her trainbearers were suffering
too. They had trains of their own on their dresses which they struggled to manage and
they kept tripping up on them whilst trying to hold up the end of Victoria’s dress.
One commented later that ‘there certainly should have been some previous rehearsing
for we carried the Queen's train very jerkily and badly, never keeping step properly’.
The lack of practice was painfully evident to those watching too. One onlooker wrote
that the clergy ‘were very imperfect in their parts and had neglected to rehearse
them’. Another man, who was actually taking part in the ceremony as the deputy to the
elderly Dean of Westminster, later confessed that ‘there was a continual difficulty and
embarrassment, and the Queen never knew what she was to do next.’ Victoria however, looked
serene. Her outfit, as described by the Morning Chronicle newspaper, consisted of ‘a rich
mantle and train of crimson velvet above a slip of satin wrought with gold, and having
a circlet of diamonds around her brow’.
After she and her little band of tripping train-bearers and clueless clergy had come
to the middle of the Abbey, she knelt at the foot of her chair of state, or recognition
chair (not to be confused with the actual coronation throne, which we’ll get to).
She prayed, then sat on her chair briefly before rising so that she could be proclaimed
to the four corners of the building by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The onlookers called
back pledges of homage to the sound of trumpets and this was followed by the National Anthem.
After a brief interlude while the necessary items were brought to the altar, Victoria
herself stood up and moved there where she made offerings to the Church of a gold altar
cloth and a golden bar. Having then resumed her seat, she listened to the Litany, which
was read by the Bishops of Worcester and St David’s. The Times newspaper noted the following
day that ‘the choir did not read the responses, in order, we presume, conveniently to curtail
the service’, however given the lack of preparation, this actually may have been an
oversight by people who didn’t really know what they were supposed to be doing. Certainly
the Litany had been reached too soon, a result of Edward Maltby, Bishop of Durham, having
lost his place in his prayer book. The choir did pitch in with a song after it was done,
then the Archbishop of Canterbury began the communion service. This was followed by a
gospel reading, prayers and the coronation sermon, which was delivered by the Bishop
of London and to which Victoria reportedly listened with great attention.
The coronation oath was now delivered to the Queen in her state chair by the Archbishop
of Canterbury who asked her a series of questions pertaining to her willingness to be a good
and just monarch and to which she gave her ascent. She then walked over to the altar
where she knelt, placed her hand on the Bible there and completed her verbal oath by saying
‘The things which I have here before promised I will perform and keep. So help me God’.
She concluded by kissing the book and setting her signature to a transcript of her oath.
At some point there was a change of clothes. Victoria doesn’t make it plain in her diary
exactly when this occurred, but based on paintings and other reports, it would seem to have been
at about this point. She writes that she briefly withdrew to St Edward’s Chapel behind the
main altar. This Chapel actually had its own little altar, but this had been turned into
a rather undignified buffet table, with plates of sandwiches and bottles of wine laid out.
In her own words, Victoria ‘took off my crimson robe and kirtle and put on the Supertunica
of Cloth of Gold, also in the shape of a kirtle, which was put over a singular sort of little
gown of linen trimmed with lace; I also took off my circlet of diamonds, and then proceeded
bare-headed into the Abbey’.
The Queen now took her seat for her anointing on what may be the most famous throne in the
world, St Edward’s Chair, under which was the Scottish Stone of Scone. The anointing
was carried out by the Archbishop using this golden spoon, which is one of the few pieces
from the medieval crown jewels to survive Oliver Cromwell’s destruction of them during
the 17th century (that’s a topic for another video). For the sake of modesty, Victoria
was anointed only on her hands and head, rather than on her chest as well, as was normal for
a male ruler and it was done underneath a canopy of cloth of gold held up by four Knights
of the Garter. To her bemusement, she was handed the very heavy orb at this point, which
was yet another error that a good practice run in the days before the coronation would
have prevented. Not expecting this turn of events, she asked what she was supposed to
do with it and was told to carry it.
She was covered with a golden robe, known as the Dalmatic robe, symbolising the religious
nature of the ceremony and given additional symbols of monarchy; spurs, a sword, a sceptre
and her coronation ring. The ring however, caused one of the many problems of the day.
Due to a misunderstanding on the part of the jewellers who had created it, it was designed
to go on the Queen’s pinky finger. However it was meant to be put on her ring finger
and despite clearly being much too small for that, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was
tasked with placing it on her hand, insisted on shoving it onto her fourth finger. As a
result of how tightly it was wedged on, Victoria could only get it off again later that day
with much difficulty, pain and a bowl of iced water that she soaked her hand in for thirty
minutes.
Finally it was time for the pinnacle of the ceremony, the actual crowning. Normally this
was done with St Edward’s Crown, however it’s very large and heavy and so a smaller,
lighter crown which weighed only 3lbs had been made for this petite Queen. This crown
no longer exists in its original format, however it was the basis for the Imperial State Crown
we have today. It was so tight however that it soon gave her a headache to go with her
sore hand, hurting her ‘a good deal’ as she later told her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
Still, the moment it was placed on her head was a momentous one for this teenager. She
remembered afterwards that, just as you can see in this picture, ‘all the Peers and
Peeresses put on their Coronets at the same instant ... The shouts, which were very great,
the drums, the trumpets, the firing of the guns, all at the same instant, rendered the
spectacle most imposing’.
Now it was time for the Bishops, Victoria’s royal uncles and the peers of the realm to
step forward and pay homage to her individually by touching the crown then kissing her hand.
Some were a little over-enthusiastic, touching and grabbing at the crown so roughly that
had it not been so tight on her head one female witness felt sure they might have knocked
it off. However things were going well enough until the unfortunately named Lord Rolle approached
the steps to the throne. In his late 80s and ‘dreadfully infirm’ according to the Queen,
he ‘fell and rolled quite down’. Victoria said that he ‘was not the least hurt’,
however when he attempted to approach her again to cheers of encouragement from the
onlookers, she ‘got up and advanced to the end of the steps, in order to prevent another
fall’, a gesture which earned her great praise for its kindness and thoughtfulness.
While all this was going on, the Treasurer of her Household threw some coronation medals
(of which this is one) into the crowd for souvenirs. According to one newspaper report,
‘many amusing scenes arose out of the anxiety and eagerness displayed, even by grave and
reverend men to possess themselves of one of these prizes.’ In other words there was
a undignified, but hilarious, scrum amongst the Lords and Ladies of the Realm to get a
hold of one of these medals.
The Queen now left the throne and was able to take off the uncomfortable crown for a
few minutes while she made another offering to the Church and took the sacrament, thereby
completing the Communion service started earlier. She then had to put it back on however and
returned to the throne on Lord Melbourne’s arm, only to leave again when another Anthem
began. It seems to be at this point that one of the most amusing botch-ups of the day occurred.
It appeared as though the main ceremony was complete, until the Bishop of Bath and Wells
realised, presumably with some horror, that he’d turned over two pages at once and skipped
a crucial part of the service. Victoria, who had gone into St Edward’s Chapel and changed
out of her golden robe and back into her crimson one therefore had to come back out, reascend
the throne and complete the service. With this mistake corrected, she was free to retire
again to the Chapel with its buffet altar, accompanied by the peers and her ladies and
train-bearers. The comedy of errors wasn’t over yet however. ‘The Archbishop came in
and ought to have delivered the Orb to me’ she wrote afterwards, ‘but I had already
got it, and he (as usual) was so confused and puzzled and knew nothing; and - went away.’
After a few minutes it was back on with the Crown (which she had again removed for comfort’s
sake) and the post-coronation procession through the Abbey began, with the 19 year old Victoria
loaded down with the orb in her left hand and the sceptre in her right. To the sound
of cheers, she now moved to what she called ‘the first Robing-room’, where she had
to wait for an hour while final preparations were made for the procession back to Buckingham
Palace. It was 4:30pm, five hours after the ceremony had begun, before Victoria was finally
back in her carriage and on her way home. If anything, the crowds were even bigger than
earlier in the day and she noted in her diary that ‘The enthusiasm, affection and loyalty
was really touching, and I shall ever remember this day’.
Back at the Palace, it was just after 6pm and despite her lack of sleep and the long
day she had already had, Victoria wasn’t tired. One story, later recounted by Charles
Leslie, who was present in the Abbey and painted the event, recounts that when she arrived
back, she heard her dog, named Dash, barking for her and immediately ran indoors to give
him a bath. By 8pm she was eating dinner and discussing the events of the day with Lord
Melbourne, among others. If you’re wondering, there was no coronation banquet as it had
been deemed too expensive. She stayed in her drawing room until 11.20pm, then went onto
the balcony in the room belonging to her mother, so that she could see the fireworks in Green
Park ‘which were quite beautiful’ according to her diary. At long last, it was then time
for bed.
And that, history lovers, is the story of the botched but comical coronation of Queen
Victoria. If you like royal history, why not have a look at my playlists on the Tudor monarchs
and the six wives of Henry VIII, or my video on the mystery surrounding whether Marie Antoinette’s
hair spontaneously turned white the night before her execution? Let me know in the comment
section what you think was the funniest part of Victoria’s coronation and of course,
please remember to give this video a thumbs up, share it with your friends and subscribe
to the channel. I’ll be back next week and until then, keep learning.