2022 marks the fortieth anniversary of my appointment as an Officer of Arms (the proper name for a herald), part of the Ceremonial Royal Household. The heralds have an ancient role in state occasions going back to the Middle Ages: during a normal year there is the State Opening of Parliament at Westminster and the Garter Service at Windsor.
There are much more extensive responsibilities following the death of a monarch: the Proclamation of the new king, the State Funeral of the Sovereign and in due course the Coronation, all of which come under the control of the Duke of Norfolk, in his hereditary capacity as Earl Marshal of England. The heralds are traditionally his staff officers.
We knew that we would be mobilised for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral but it always seemed far away; she seemed to be eternal. It was a sudden shock when the announcement came from Balmoral on Thursday 8 September that her health was deteriorating quickly. That evening I was hosting a dinner at my club for the annual visit of the Royal Oak Foundation (the American Friends of The National Trust).
When I arrived the porter told me that the Queen had died; it had been announced while I was on the Tube. Following the drill, I immediately rang Garter King of Arms, our boss, and he told me to come to the College of Arms at 8 a.m. the following morning for briefing. There would be rehearsals for the Proclamation of the King two days later, at St James’s Palace and in the City. The latter took place late and did not finish until 8 p.m.
That first marathon was a foretaste of the intensive week to come. The dress rehearsal for the procession took place in the small hours, with the heralds leaving the College of Arms at midnight and not getting back until the morning. The porter’s saintly wife kindly cooked us breakfast, which was a nice treat. On some days we had only two hours’ sleep; this was the gruelling background to our moments in action.
The Proclamations of the King on 10 September, which were the first of our ceremonies, were in some ways the most fulfilling. Mourning was set aside; flags flew at full mast and we were still fresh. After donning our heraldic tabards at St James’s Palace we lined up in the Armoury while the black-clad members of the Accession Council trooped out from the Acclamation in the Throne Room; some greeted us as they went.
The heralds and state trumpeters passed through the window onto the roof overlooking Friary Court and flanked the Earl Marshal and Garter King of Arms, who read the Proclamation after a loud fanfare. The wording has barely changed since Queen Victoria’s time. After more trumpets the soldiers below gave three cheers for the new King and the National Anthem was sung. For most people “King” replaced “Queen” for the first time.
The King’s Guard—Coldstream, with their striking red plumes—were lined up in the courtyard below and we had an excellent birds-eye view of their movements. I was transfixed by the hat drill, where they almost genuflected to put their guns on the ground and then sprang upwards and backwards in a single gymnastic movement before removing their bearskins and balancing them on their shoulders, ready for the cheering.
The City Proclamation at the Royal Exchange was more spacious, with the heralds leading the Lord Mayor’s procession from the Mansion House through phalanxes of steel-helmeted and breast-plated pikemen from the Honourable Artillery Company. The City does things well, and with a hint of opulence. There were dozens of dignitaries in sable-trimmed robes, the scarlet-and-gold-uniformed City Marshal, the Lord Mayor’s chaplain, Mgr James Curry, and the sword-bearer, Tim Rolph, whom the press dubbed “the boy in a fur hat”. He happens to be in his forties.
There the proclamation was read by Clarenceux King of Arms, standing next to the Lord Mayor with the heralds ranged on either side and banks of liveried worthies on the steps behind. The fanfares were especially impressive; there were two lots of trumpeters, who answered each other antiphonally from the Corinthian porticoes of the Mansion House and the Royal Exchange. It was a perfect match of architectural setting and action.
The most moving of the ceremonies was perhaps the reception of Queen Elizabeth’s coffin into Westminster Hall on Wednesday 14 September. While standing in silence waiting for the cortege to arrive from Buckingham Palace, it struck me what an experience it is to admire great architecture in such circumstances, rather than as a tourist. The huge hall with special lighting and the central catafalque looked spectacular; Richard II’s awe-inspiring hammer-beam roof is the finest of its type in the world.
We lined up facing the entrance, where the part-glazed doors, though closed, allowed a view of the procession arriving with the horses, gun carriage and all the King’s men, and a first glimpse of the coffin draped in the royal standard and topped with the Imperial State Crown. There were three moments to be remembered for life. First, after the long silence of waiting, was the sound of drums becoming gradually louder as they approached, which announced the imminence of the coffin.
Then, as the bearer party of young Grenadiers carried the coffin through the door towards us, a ray of sun caught the 3,000 diamonds in the crown, nearly blinding us like a flash of headlights. The most transcendent moment was when four men from the Household Cavalry took up their vigil posts at the corners of the catafalque, reversing swords and placing their gloved hands on the hilts, then bowing their heads and standing absolutely still and reverent; it was like looking at sublime sculpture.
The funeral itself took all day and was the most widely-televised broadcast in world history. By then the ability to be moved had become more internalised; in some ways, in retrospect, the overnight rehearsals were as thrilling as the real thing. On the day itself, with all eyes on the processions, I was more concerned with keeping going and maintaining the reserves of stamina and adrenaline needed for the one-and-a-half miles of foot procession in London, and two miles at Windsor, while simultaneously being drained by the emotion and grandeur of it all.
As a Catholic, there was the interest of attending full Anglican traditional liturgy: the lack of frills; the glorious Gothic architecture; the sublime music; the beauty of the seventeenth-century English words. The “royal peculiars” of Westminster Abbey and the St George’s Chapel at Windsor remain the high exemplars of something uniquely English.
There were also heart-tugging moments, especially at Windsor. The verges leading up to the castle and the lawns in the Lower Ward were covered with flowers, spontaneous gifts from the public, slowly fading in the sunshine and giving off an elegiac smell of death. A groom held Queen Elizabeth’s favourite pony by the side of the drive, and the blinds were drawn in her personal rooms in the Victoria Tower. In the quadrangle were the two young corgis, Muick and Sandy, like orphans led by scarlet-coated footmen. Et in Arcadia Ego.
John Martin Robinson is Maltravers Herald Extraordinary
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