On this very day 60 years ago Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and she is still Queen. She is unique and so we are uniquely fortunate. It has become almost a truism to say that the Queen has presided over astonishing change in this kingdom and has been the still small voice of calm at the centre of the storm.
But even clichés can contain truth. The white cliffs are still there, but this country is almost unrecognizable as that in which she was crowned. But she has remained the same as the beautiful young woman who was presented in Westminster Abbey as 'Your Undoubted Queen'. The Coronation is a Christian service but with elements of older, almost primeval sacrifice and dedication. The words resound with glory.
In his account of the ceremony (shown in the video clip above) the historian Harold Nicholson asked if it was an anachronism, merely a magnificent charade symbolizing with splendour the memories of a mighty imperial past? Or was it more accurately a pageant of British history and its long progress towards democratic kingship?
I think the latter. The monarchy is the second oldest institution in Europe after the Papacy and it has survived so well because of its ability to adapt to retain the consent of the people.
Each Coronation since that of Queen Victoria has been a milestone in the narrative of the progress of our constitutional monarchy. In particular the oath taken by the new monarch differs from Coronation to Coronation according to the changing circumstances of the kingdom and the world.
Sixty years ago today the Queen swore to govern her peoples all over the world 'according to their respective laws and customs'. She was then asked: 'Will you, to the utmost of your power, cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?', to which she replied, 'I will'. Thirdly, she also promised to maintain and 'preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England'. Laying her right hand on the bible, she promised: 'The things that I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.'
For her – like for her mother in 1937 – the most sacred moments of the Coronation were her communion and her anointing. Indeed, when she agreed to the Coronation being televised she insisted that those moments remain private, unseen by the world. The Archbishop anointed her with holy oil on forehead, hands and breast and said, 'And as Solomon was anointed King by Zadok the priest and Nathan the Prophet, so be you anointed, blessed and consecrated Queen over the peoples whom the Lord your God has given you to rule and govern.'
That was it. The Archbishop said that the anointing brought her into the presence of the living God and there is no doubt that she believed that. One Herald who stood near her spoke later of 'the sense of spiritual exaltation that radiated from her'. She was now Queen in the eyes of man and in the eyes of God – for life. 'It's all right for you,' she once said to a departing elderly courtier. 'But I can’t retire'. And at 87, she has not.
The philosopher Roger Scruton has described our monarchy in a happy phrase as 'the light above politics which shines down on the human bustle from a calmer and more exalted sphere'. The paradox of constitutional monarchy is obvious in the coronation. The Queen was anointed in the presence of God. The lords of the land, temporal and spiritual, knelt in homage before her. But she also swore a solemn oath to preserve the laws and customs of her realm. She was God’s Anointed, but she would obey the elected representatives of her people. That is the kernel of the ceremony and the genius of constitutional monarchy.
Parliament is the voice of today; the monarch is the voice of history. The system gives the proper space to politics but it enhances the spiritual and timeless above the merely practical and temporal. It allows room for the sacred. It is both democratic and mystical. This may seem an archaic way of creating government to some, but it has worked wonderfully well for our lifetimes.
But of course the success of a monarchy depends above all on the character of the monarch who is crowned. We have been immensely lucky in this regard since Queen Victoria.
Never more so than now. Our Queen has invested her role as head of state with a particularly luminous quality.
And this I think is because of her personality and her piety. God and duty have always been part of her life. Her parents brought their daughters up in the love of family, country and God.
She was confirmed and had her first Communion in Windsor Great Park at Easter 1942 – a ghastly time in the war. Her mother wrote 'It was very peaceful and lovely, just Bertie and she and I. It was so nice to be together & quiet after these years of war and turmoil and perpetual anxiety, for even a few moments of true peace.'
Ever since then, though she has been discreet about it, in a way which might be described as very English, her life has been guided by her commitment to God and to the teachings of Christ. It is I think above all that which has enabled her to carry on and on.
In 1952, she asked all her people to pray for her on her Coronation Day - 'to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve him and you all the days of my life.' Throughout her reign, her Christmas messages (the only speeches not controlled by government) have talked of the place of God in our lives. She has spoken of Christ as 'the Prince of Peace who preached the brotherhood of man' – which perhaps explains the immense and successful efforts she has made to preserve and build the brotherhood of the Commonwealth.
At the time of the Millennium, she reminded us that the revolution in computers and the internet meant nothing compared to the 2000 year old Christian message of Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself. 'I believe it gives us the guidance and the reassurance we need to step over the threshold into the 21
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Remember, she said, only last Christmas, that God sent his only son ‘to serve, not to be served. He restored love and service to our lives in the person of Jesus Christ.' Year after year, decade after decade, she too has served thus. She has said that she takes every day as 'a new beginning. I know that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give of my best in all that the day brings, and to put my trust in God.'
At the beginning of the Second World War the then Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to our Queen’s mother, 'I feel inclined to say to Your Majesty what was said in the bible story to Queen Esther, ‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.'
One can say the same of Queen Elizabeth II.
This is an extract from a sermon given by William Shawcross in St Paul's Cathedral at yesterday's Evensong service.