5th May 2023
Here is a remarkable, and as this post will contend misconceived and historically illiterate, take on the coronation:
And here is a similarly misconceived message:
Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low.
We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration.
🧵🔽
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) May 3, 2023
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Let this blog introduce you to the King’s (or Queen’s Champion).
According to that history website:
“Originally it was the champion’s duty to ride, on a white charger, fully clad in armour, into Westminster Hall during the coronation banquet.
“There he threw down his gauntlet and challenged any person who dared to deny the sovereign’s right to the throne. The king himself of course, could not fight in single combat against anyone except an equal.
“It was only at the Coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 that the traditional ride and challenge was left out of the ceremony. Henry Dymoke – Queen’s Champion at the time – was created a baronet by way of compensation.”
And here at Wikipedia is more information – and a splendid pic:*
And akin to the familiar challenge in a wedding ceremony, the challenge was expressly made:
“If any person, of whatever degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord [ ], King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, son and next heir unto our Sovereign Lord the last King deceased, to be the right heir to the imperial Crown of this realm of Great Britain and Ireland, or that he ought not to enjoy the same; here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with him, and in this quarrel will adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.”
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Times change, and the nature of challenges change, but the essence is just the same.
A confident monarchy should welcome challenges on coronation day.
Offering this challenge was part of the reason there were coronations.
From a constitutional and legal perspective, a coronation has little significance: the new monarch rules and can exercise powers on the death of the last monarch.
The function of the coronation is therefore largely symbolic: and part of the symbolism was to show off the confidence of the new monarch by offering a challenge to, well, challengers.
Bearing this in mind, let us go back to the take quoted above.
“The Coronation is not the moment to start an argument about the future of the monarchy” – yet hundreds of years of the king’s champion says otherwise.
“Our tolerance for any disruption…” – imagine the, ahem, disruption of a knight arriving to challenge the coronation.
Perhaps it is understandable though that some pundits and the police don’t realise that coronations were once about challenges as well as about validations.
After all, it would take a sense of history.
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