The Windsor Uniform

The videos and the magazine produced by The Antiqury are always a source of information and pleasure, and I most certainly recommend them.

 

His latest, and suitably topical, video is about the Windsor Uniform which The King, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Gloucester and Sir Timothy Laurence, as well as some senior courtiers, wore to the state dinner for President and Mrs Trump in Windsor Castle on Wednesday evening.

The article can be seen at THE WINDSOR UNIFORM - A British Royal Tradition

If readers peruse the comments section on The Antiquary for this post they will find one that I added to the article, in respect of the origins of such distinctive Court Dress in European courts in the time of King George III, and also about a portrait in Oxford of Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson wearing the Windsor Uniform. That particular portrait can be seen in my posts Disturbing images and Kaiser Wilhelm II and his Garter Insignia

The King visits the Birmingham Oratory

On September 3rd His Majesty The King visited the Birmingham Oratory with its treasures from the life of its founder St John Henry Newman. 

The visit can be seen in two videos on the Royal Family Channel, to which my attention was drawn by a friend. The shorter version can be seen at King Explores Cardinal Newman’s Untouched Room at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri and the longer one, which includes the same footage at King Charles Tours The Historic Oratory of St. Philip Neri

In them The King can be seen visiting the main Oratory church, the Newman shrine chapel, the Cardinal’s library and the room he occupied, which has been preserved altered since his death in August 1890.

In the video His Majesry can be heard to say he had been trying for five years to visit the Oratory but his schedule had not permitted it. I wonder if St John Henry’s elevation to being a Doctor of the Church quickened the pace.

Having had the very real privilege of visiting the Birmingham Oratory on several occasions myself I can appreciate the monarch’s clear fascination with what he was shown. If any reader ever has the opportunity to visit Newman’s rooms it is one to be taken up. The The present.Oratory church from 1911 is one of the most beautiful settings for Catholic liturgy and it is very well worth attending Mass there.

An inedible pie for the King

The BBC News website reports on the conscious creation of an inedible lamprey pie for the King as a gift from the City of Gloucester. This is not some backhanded insult but a celebration of a longstanding tradition of an annual gift to monarchs by the City of that medieval delicacy, a lamprey pie. Remember the fate of King Henry I, who died of a surfeit of these curious fish who live in the waters of the Severn. These daysthe pie is proffered to mark coronations and jubilees.

This lamprey pie is definitely not intended to be eaten as it is carved from stone and will be an ornamental feature in the garden of the King’s Gloucestershire home at Highgrove.

The article about the creation of this stone pie, and the tradition behind it can be seen at 

King Charles given special pie as part of ancient tradition

The new Great Seal

Last Tuesday at a meeting of the Privy Council His Majesty The King handed over to the Lord Chancellor the new Great Seal of the realm. 

The always well researched and well presented website The Antiquary has a good video about this, which looks at the history of the Great Seal, its evolution over the centuries, and how it  is physically applied to Letters Patent. 

The video can be seen at The Great Seal of King Charles III

Unfortunately I have to admit to a lot of disappointment about this new seal.

The obverse, the Majesty side, does show the King enthroned in what appear to be meant as his coronation robes, and wearing a generic crown and holding the sceptre and orb. The artist has made a credible attempt at a portrait of the King. However the robes flow out, rather as with the second Great Seal of the late Queen, and lack the detailing that could have surely been achieved. The throne is not a recognisable state chair like St Edward’s Chair, the throne in the House of Lords or at Buckingham Palace. The King actually looks uncomfortable, his uniform trousers are too prominent and he appears to be wearing boots with platform heels.

The reverse replicates to all intents and purposes that of the 2001 second Seal of Queen Elizabeth II by just having the Royal Arms. 

Prior to that from the time of King William I the monarch was usually shown on horseback. Up to King Charles I they were shown in full armour as the commander of the military forces of the Crown, and Queens Regnant were shown riding side-saddle. Following the Resoration until the early nineteenth century Kings appeared, as they did on statues, in classical armour. Queen Victoria was shown being led on horseback on her Seal. In the twentieth century the tradition continued, but after King Edward VII with the monarch dressed as for Trooping the Colour, including the late Queen until 2001. One exception was an early Seal of King George V which showed him in the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet and standing on a battleship, which was appropriate at the time.

The centuries old tradition was then discarded in 2001 in favour of the Royal Arms, and without the customary inscription. The reason, I am told, was the design was dropped because the Queen no longer rode to Trooping the Colour. That does not seem a good argument to me. The Grat Seal traditionally represents the two key functions of the monarch, both as source of justice law and authority, and as head of the armed services. It is less a portrait, more an image.

I am surprised that the King, noted as a defender of traditional usages agreed to this design, and that there are people in the Palace and government who are either so insensitive to tradition or ignorant of it as to sanction such a change. Very sad.

The Sacristy at Westminster Abbey

Writing about the proposed rebuilding of the north-west tower and spire of the Abbey of St Denis coincides, I find, with publicity about a not altogether dissimilar project at what is in not a few ways its English equivalent as a royal monastery and necropolis, Westminster Abbey. This is the plan to rebuild on the excavated medieval foundations the Great Sacristy which was an original part of King Henry III’s scheme. It stood to the north of the nave, an almost freestanding structure on an L plan, linked at one end to the North Transept, and on the other to the north door of the nave. It was demolished in the early eighteenth century. The new building will rise from the medieval foundations and provide storage space and serve as an entrance for visitors to the Abbey, who will then walk round to the West Door to enter the main building. As a new building in the present reign it is to be named the King Charles III Sacristy.

Westminster Abbey has produced two short videos about the project which can be seen with the Dean at Introducing: The King Charles III Sacristy. and with the architect at  Designing: The King Charles III Sacristy . The main website, which includes those two videos, can be viewed at The King Charles III Sacristy | Westminster Abbey

There is also a video of The Queen visiting the site as the recently announced Patron of the scheme, which can be seen at Camilla tours site of new King Charles III Sacristy at Westminster Abbeyand in a longer version at Queen becomes Patron of Westminster Abbey's Sacristy project

There is a report on the excavation from the archaeologists responsible for the work, Pre-Construct Archaeology, which can be seen at Westminster Abbey – Pre Construct Archaeology

There are other reports from 2020  about the excavation in The Guardian at Lost medieval sacristy uncovered at Westminster Abbey, and shorter ones in Current Archaeology at Sacristy uncovered at Westminster Abbey, and in Archaeology Magazine at Medieval Great Sacristy Uncovered at Westminster Abbey - Archaeology Magazine

Jacobite Heraldry

Thanks to the friend who sent me the original post about Fr Elvins and the former Slains Pursuivant I republished earlier I can now also give the link to the splendid display of the heraldic ancestry of the Jacobite claimants King Charles III and King Henry IX and I. This was commissioned by Peter Drummond Murray, and as a Scots Herald, not surpringly, he displays the Royal Arms in their Scottish form rather than the English version. The display can be seen here.

Bonnie Prince Charlie

Today is the 225th anniversary of the death in 1788 of Bonnie Prince Charlie - to the Hanoverians and their supporters the Young Pretender, but to Jacobites, of course, King Charles III.

 The King over the water - a portrait of 1775

Image: Wikipedia

His life, with its dramatic elements of daring and romance which turned into personal tragedy as failure evermore overshadowed his life after 1746, is covered in the excellent biography by Murray G.H.Pittock in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography can be read here  and there is a shorter, illustrated online life here.

As late as 1758-9 there was a French plan to support him in another invasion, but the Duc de Choiseul thought the Prince unrealistic. Such disappointment took its toll, and he was denied the Papal recognition as King which his father had had after the latter's death in 1766.  

Too much alcohol, a failed marriage to Princess Louise of Stolbergin 1772 and melancholy over the fate of his supporters made his last years sad and meant that in many ways by 1788 he was a relic of a past era- one that was to become even more remote with the upheavels that began in France the following year, and with the impending extinction of the male line of the Stuarts with his brother.

For Scots Episcopalians praying for King Henry IX after the accession of a Cardinal to the claimant throne was too much - there were groans in their church of  Old St Pauls in Edinburgh when King George was prayed for after 1788. Similarly in England Bishop Challoner recorded how in his youth Catholics had prayed for King James, but how with the 1791 Relief Act in prospect they prayed for King George. 

Nonetheless as the Pittock ONDB life shows , using modern reassessments, the life of Charles Edward had displayed genuine qualities and his career remains one with not a few "what ifs" and will continue to excite interest.