CHAPTER XXX
THE KING IS CROWNED!
The day of the coronation came at last. It was a bright clear day, king’s weather the Londoners called it.
The streets all along the route of the procession were crowded with great masses of people, held back from the road by London bobbies. They hung out of windows, sat in trees, covered the tops of buildings, and filled immense grandstands. Some of them had been in their places all night. Others, long before dawn, had found their way through the dark streets. It seemed as though all the world was there, waiting expectantly for the royal family.
When the procession came at last, wave after wave of cheering swept along the crowds. From her place in a coach, Nan looked out on a merry happy throng, for the king was well beloved by his people.
Nan, with others who were to surround the royal family in its moment of triumph, was ushered through a side door of the Cathedral and taken to her place under the great pointed arches. Here, in this church, every English sovereign since the beginning of England’s history had received his crown, and here, now amid the tombs of kings and queens and the distinguished dead of all ages, a new king and queen were to take their vows.
These things ran through Nan’s mind as she glanced about the Cathedral and tried to locate her friends. Was that Bess that she saw in a gallery high above her? And that Walter sitting next to her? Nan puckered her brows and looked again. Yes, it was, and she had no more than found them, when the deep tones of the great cathedral organ spread out through the church. The Westminster choir joined in singing, “I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the House of the Lord.”
With this, the king and queen entered, walking slowly and solemnly down the long coronation carpet to the altar where they stopped and knelt.
During the service that followed, so solemn and serious that many in the church were crying, Nan, for the first time began to realize what a great honor had been bestowed upon her in allowing her to be present. She felt humble and insignificant as the ceremony proceeded from one climax to another.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury finally placed the crown on the king’s head and said, “God crown you with a crown of glory and righteousness,” no other sound could be heard under the great vaulted arches. Then, as he finished his words, drums and trumpets broke into a clamor and the shout of “God Save the King!” rang through the Abbey, from floor to roof, while far away outside, guns announced to the waiting throngs that a new king had been crowned.
The peers put on their coronets. In the same manner as the king, the queen was crowned. The peeresses put on their coronets.