MAY 11, 1937
PAGE TWO THE CHARLO'l"1`E'l`OWN GUARDIAN
`sfabiiiiy“<§f the Harish Empiré
Again’ Formally Exemplified
74//ren
By Bruce Catton
'~‘ ‘ IRS, I here present unto you _ King George, the undoubted
king of this realm. Wherefore all of you who are come this
_'day to do your homage and service, are ou willing to do the same?" V On the 12th of May the Archbishop d Canterbury, standing in Westminster (Abbey, will call out these words four limes. facing to the four points obthe
compass by turn; and as he does so the, ancient ceremony that formally investsfl
George VI with the crown of England _will come to its colorful climax.
In all the world, there is no more
/gaudy show than the coronation of a I British king.
From the ends of the earth come the
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witnesies-princes of India, represen- tatives of the great dominions, admirals and generals, peers of the realm, nobles and commons-and _the ceremony itself l is made up of echoes of the long history _of England. The cry of the archbishop ,is a reminder of that far-oil day when ,the Anglo-Saxons elected their kings; .thc anointing of the new king reaches iback into the dim days of legend; the ‘ ,very names of the functionaries descend 'ffrom the days of chivalry, and read like `a paragraph from thqdcscription of the Field of the Cloth od-. Gold.
The great jeweled crown is finally
.held high, for all to see; then it is I placed on the king’s head, a cry of "God - save the king!" rings through the his-
! toric abbey, and the guns of the Tower , of London thunder out their announce- ' ment that the rite has been completed. » And as the event is recorded, people of the English-speaking world will find 1,themse1vcs looking in two directions: forward, to speculate on what will hap- i pan to the new king, and to the peo- f,p1e whose crown he wears, in the trou- i blous years just ahead; and backward, `,to examine the records of the other i‘Georgcs‘who have worn the English i crown.
'_\VIfl‘lfl George I, crowned in H14,
England got a new dynasty, the
I-louse of Hanover replacing the House of Stuart. lt was a time of change and confusion; Crmnxvell was still a' vivid memory, the Jzicobites were hatching plots innumerable for the "king ovcr the water,” and the 6,500,000 people who inhabited the kingdom were wit- nessini-! the slow rise of the middle class, the decline of the lower class, and ,the transfer of power from the great
. all families to the' new Bones which had
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A sletchrof the greet crown which will be placed on the klng’s head during _ Ile commotion ceremonies. flanked by photos of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
come kite prominence in the turbulent 17th century.
George I was a German, elector of
Hanover when summoned to the Eng- lish throne. To the end of his life he never learned to speak English.
There were stirring events aplenty
in his reign. A Jacobite conspiracy flared up in 1715, to die when half a dozen noblemcn were executed. An- other uprising came four years later, with Spanish troops landing on the west coast of Scotland to proclaim a Stuart king. Like the first, it was beaten down, not without bloodshed. The great South Sea Bubble-that 18th century forerunner of Florida land boom and 1929 stock market splurgc- burst midway in Georgc's reign, with effects like those of the 1929 crash.
George I seems to have exerted sin-
gularly little influence in the midst of all this. His job was simply to exist, as a living barrier to the return of the Stuarts; he did this well enough until 1727, when he died and left the throne to his son, King George II.
England was slowly turning from an
agricultural economy to an industrial. Dispossessed from the land, people were flocking to the capital. Poverty and crime were probably more prevalent in England then than ever before or since.
However that may bc, George II lived
through it Mblidly, his chief interest being a series of family quarrels. He and his Wife, Queen Caroline, bccaijae bitterly estrlngcd from their son, Wed~ crick, heir apparent to the throne.
Frederick ded before his fathcr;'ond
when Geogye ll dropped dead in 1760, his grandson ascended- the. throne as George III.
THIS particular Gcfqr , of course,
stands in the black ihoks of most
historians as thc m0l1U‘ch who, by a singular blend of tyrahlly and stupidity, managed to bring on thc American revoiuiiwi and loiyi for the empire what would hogs htlpmc its richest posses-
sion; and yet, as a matter of fact, he stands in rather refreshing contrast to the two Georges who preceded him and the one who succeeded him.
They had been great drinkers and
wenchers; George III was temperate and well-behaved to the point of prud- ery. They largely ignored statecraft; George III followed his strict sense of duty and revived the direct influence of the crown in British ailairs. And if England won Canada under George II and lost America under George Ill, it was largely because George ll was served by a great statesman in Chatham while George 111 was served by a great blockhead in Lord North.
George III was probably as unlucky
a monarch as England ever had. He had the American revolution to contend with. It was followed by a sharp wave of discontent at home. After that came the French revolution, unsettling to monarchs everywhere, and Napoleon, who was even more unsettling.
To top it all, this king fathered one
of the greatest blackguards who ever ascended to a throne~the Prince of Wales who was long known as “the first gentleman of Europe” and who later became King George IV. At 23 this in- credible lince had managed to run up debts of HD,000 pounds. Between 1784 and 1780, it is recorded, he spent no less than 869,000 pounds. And in 1785 thc prince jarred the empire by mur-
Fing a Roman Catholic widow, Mrs. itzherbert. Needless to say, this mar- riage was very soon dissolved.
George III became permanently in-
sane in 1810, and his son was made rc- gent. Luckily, the son (afterward George IV) had a succession of able statesman to guide the ship of state for him. llis own time was pretty largely token up with o bitter fight with his wife, Queen Caroline.
George IV was crowned in 1820,, Qtcr
the death of his luckless father. Saro- line, who had been living aiming for some time, returned to England and
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f/feS|xTu GEORGE
announced that she was going to BQ crowned queen. She actually showed up at the door of Westminster Abbey on coronation day in coach and six, but was denied admittance on the ground that she did not have a ticket. She gave up her attempt, left London, and died a year or so later.
George IV was true to type even
during the coronation ceremonies. The chapel of St. Edward, one of the most tradition-haunted spots in historic Westminster Abbey, was turned'in\to I bar and stocked with sandwiches and drink; from time to time, during the four-hour ceremonies, George caltmly absented himself and repaired to tha chapel for refreshment, with everything at a standstill until he returned.
NEVERTIlELESS, he seems to have
discovered a long-dormant sense of
responsibility on attaining the throne. He did much to rc-establish the bonds between England and Scotland by malf- ing a personal tour of the latter conn- try, and in similar fashions he actually brought about temporary harmony with Ireland. He died in 1830, having been a more useful king than anyone had dared to expect.
George V was crowned in 1910. lie
was a quiet, unostentotious man, who had been the second son of Edward VII and had hoped to make s career as naval officer.
Under George V the British empire
passed through one of the most trying periods in its history; and simply bc- cause he was ideally fitted to stand as a symbol of British character at its best, a` rallying point for the hopes and the loyalty of the empire’s peoples, George V did a great deal to bring the empire through intact. `
The World War was fought in his
reign, straining the empire almost to the breaking point. The period oi post- war confusion saw throne after throne go down-but not England’s.
An odd little fact stands out, in con-
nection with the dcuth of George V. lie was succeeded by one of the two uu- crowncd kings in all British history, Edward VIII, who ubdicatcd before his coronation. The other uncrowncd kim; was also an Edward-Edward V, the boy king who was locked up in the Tower of London and there murdered.
At any rate, the British will very
shortly bc crowning their sixth King George; and, to repeat, no one can ob- serve the spectacle without looking to thc future and trying to guess what fntc may have in store for the seFiouS»
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