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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studiousigianz now icitns. J
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