A gathering of the faithful gives thanks for 70 years of divine duty
A profoundly Christian service ensured that the Queen’s presence was felt even while she was absent
We are richer, healthier and more humane than we have ever been, and royalty has played its role in that evolution
The key line of yesterday’s jubilee thanksgiving service was delivered by the Prime Minister, his hair almost brushed, as he quoted from Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “If there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
The instruction that follows – to “keep on doing” that which you have “learned and received” – is the essence of tradition, and it is what the Queen has done for 70 years. She might have been absent from St Paul’s Cathedral that bright June morning, but she was present in spirit – in every sense of the word.
Sat in St Paul’s you could really appreciate the scale of the event; you felt the walls vibrate with trumpets, and the pin-drop silence as the congregation caught its breath.
There were more than 2,000 of us, including 400 honour recipients (the theme was “public service”), veterans, clergy, retired politicians and here-today-gone-tomorrow rivals, including Priti Patel and Nicola Sturgeon, both pretty in pink (so many ladies wore pink that, from the bird’s-eye of the press box, they seemed like roses in a thicket). The yeomen marched; the red-jacketed guards followed suit. Outside, the royal party arrived in separate cars, greeted by the Lord Mayor in ermine, chain and white gloves, flanked by a boy in an enormous fur hat and a chap in a wig. The band played the Jubilee Overture. A cavalcade of priests filed down the nave.
As he took his red seat facing the altar, the Prince of Wales was enveloped in the introit hymn I Was Glad, by Hubert H Parry: “Jerusalem is builded as a city that is at unity in itself; Vivat Regina Elizabetha! Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!” Charles was beheld by millions outside, by painted saints in the dome of St Paul’s, and by the statues of angels and heroes.
A bore would say this is all invented tradition (the first jubilee was only held in 1810, for George III’S 50th) – ceremony that was suitable for when Britain had an empire but inappropriate today, especially when many people can’t afford to put their heating on. The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, himself filling in at the last moment after his colleague at Canterbury came down with Covid, used the word “uncertainty” twice in his sermon to describe our era – and the fact that Her Majesty was missing, after experiencing “discomfort” following Thursday’s events, hinted at a nation ambiguous about its future.
But it depends on how you interpret the challenges of great age. In 1897, Queen Victoria, then 78, was too frail to walk into St Paul’s for her diamond jubilee. It was proposed that a ramp be built so that her carriage could enter the church and park under the dome, the horses held steady by grooms, but officials lost their nerve and held the thanksgiving service outside instead.
This was not considered to be a disappointment: on the contrary, Victoria was the real spectacle, wrote Mark Twain, “all the rest was embroidery”.
The Queen’s longevity was celebrated as evidence of medical progress and Britain’s stability, and Victoria, wearing a bonnet with ostrich feathers, was greeted by her son, the future Edward VII, on horseback, in the courtly manner of a knight. Now, thanks to the miracle of technology, Elizabeth II – older than Victoria – can watch her own jubilee service from the comfort of her armchair and her son, dutiful and very happy with his future consort, took his mother’s place, with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge sitting to his side. Tensions exist within royalty; they always have (hence all the beheadings and revolutions). Harry and Meghan were parked on the second row; their official position is out of the picture, though they seem perpetually on display.
But people who write off the British monarchy, or the country that birthed it, miss the bigger story, that we are richer, healthier and, in some ways, more humane than we ever have been, and royalty has played its role in that evolution.
The imperial subjects who turned out for Victoria’s jubilee were exotic displays of our dominion. By contrast, the children from various states headed by the Queen who led the congregation in an Act of Commitment represent the Empire turned Commonwealth turned partnership of equals.
“Rejoicing in the life and reign of Elizabeth our Queen, will you hallow life in all its richness and diversity?” they asked.
“We will,” replied the congregation. Charles will some day lead the Commonwealth, because his mother asked for it. William, perhaps not. But Her Majesty has made certain that the institutions within her direct influence remain as strong and relevant as possible. The future is in equally faithful hands – and faith is the oil that keeps things going.
The Queen wasn’t there, but she felt present. Why? I’d wager because the service was so profoundly Christian.
That might sound like a statement of the obvious – it was in a cathedral, after all – but at a time when many churches are nervous of proclaiming the truth as they used to see it, the Queen is not, and that inspires a self-confidence in other believers.
Picking up on the PM’S reading from Philippians, the Archbishop of York said Paul’s advice is only worth taking because he follows Jesus, and Jesus is to be obeyed because he “shows us who God is”. So “the best leaders are those who know how to be led” – which is constitutional monarchy in a nutshell. The Queen governs not by divine right but by divinely mandated duty, which might be hard for the modern mind to grasp, but Elizabeth II truly believes that she was physically transformed by her coronation into a servant of the people who, like the kings of the Old Testament, is only worth her salt so long as she is loyal to the Lord. Custom and ritual are a manifestation of that magic, at the heart of which is a practical and moral mission to help others.
The prayers that followed the sermon, led by a Sacrist, the Rev Robert Coupland, who looked about 16, were a naked attempt to tie the event to the causes of the present. Oh Lord, the people prayed, “encourage us to respect our diversity” and “safeguard the earth”. But, with the exception of the odd 21st-century buzzword, it felt like a service out of the 1950s.
The music was by the giants of the English Renaissance: Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton. The order was almost exclusively Anglican. There were plenty of ecumenical guests, including imams, rabbis and, spotted around the nave in a bright orange tunic, a Buddhist monk, but the selection of prayer and music contained none of the nods to multiculturalism that future jubilees will almost certainly include – no quotes from the Koran or wisdom of the Tao (in a century from now, we’ll be singing John Lennon’s Imagine as if it were a hymn).
There would be no objections from the nuncios or sheiks to this because they respect the Queen absolutely. Faith speaks to faith. The thanksgiving was in this regard reminiscent of Prince Philip’s funeral, for what we saw was another coherent, reverent, literate expression of the values of Britain when it was at the height of its power and self-confidence – when it had a clear understanding of what it stood for – values that Her Majesty inherited from her father, George VI, and has passed on to her children.
One hymn sung lustily, because we all remember it from school, was Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise. Human beings, even the powerful, come and go: “We blossom and flourish as leaves on a tree, and wither and perish.” But as for God, or, if you prefer, the benign values of Christian civilisation, in that instance: “nought changeth thee.”
Everything has changed in Britain, yet also it is the same. The Bishop of London, a woman – hard to imagine in the coronation year of 1953, indeed, the Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally had said she was nervous about wearing her regalia because it was designed for a man – gave the final blessing. The cathedral stood for the national anthem. And then, in a reminder that after centuries of change our church and state remain hand-in-glove, the clergy formed a semi-circle around the monarchy, the Lord Mayor of London in its centre, and bowed. They departed to by Holst.