Lies, Damned Lies, and History(8)

Most gracious Queen, we thee implore

To go away and sin no more.

Or if the effort be too great

To go away at any rate.

Markham and I took a moment to pull ourselves together ready for the next part of the assignment. The king himself.

Markham wiped the sweat from his face. I checked my recorder and took some footage of the area around the Abbey. We found a reasonably good position at the West Door and waited patiently for the procession to make its way from Westminster Hall, because we knew the king would be late.

In the 19th century, there were no crush barriers or any form of crowd control and everyone just milled happily about, enjoying themselves. The streets were full of carriages trying to get past, cabs and carts tangled with pedestrians, harassed officials, beggars and spectators.

Drivers swore at the crowd, who happily swore back again. The hot day was filled with the sights and sounds of overheated horses and people. The smell was ripe to say the least.

The noise was tremendous – people shouting, carriage wheels rattling over the paving, a band playing somewhere. The crowd was too thick for me to see them, but I could hear dogs barking all around us. I made a note to check whether London contained packs of feral dogs during this time period.

Word went out that the procession had begun to make its way from Westminster Hall, and people around us began to stand on tiptoe and crane their necks.

We passed the time discreetly recording the important people arriving. Everyone looked hot and harassed. George himself had designed their costumes, which were based on Elizabethan and Stuart design. He’d missed his calling. Never mind being king – he should have been a party planner.

The procession was preceded by a group of young women with baskets and I was pleased to see they kept up the medieval tradition of strewing the king’s path with herbs as a prevention against the plague.

We watched the Crown Jewels and all the coronation regalia parade into the Abbey. It was almost worth being here just to see the massively long Great Sword of State. A couple of bishops followed on behind. I had no idea which ones – one bishop looks very like another to me, but someone would be able to identify them.

There was a lull. All around me, everyone was straining for the first sight of the king. Word had got around that he would be late. Apparently, he tore something just as he was leaving and being George, he’d had a bit of a panic.

We were bumped and jostled a little, but everyone was very good-natured, and the air of anticipation was building.

Finally, here he came. Sumptuously dressed, obese and oddly impressive. Everything about him was completely over the top. His train was nearly thirty feet long with beautifully intricate golden embroidery. Tall, white feathers nodded in his hat. The crowd fell silent, craning their necks for a better view. Men removed their hats. Women curtseyed as he passed. He was fat. He was unpopular. He’d wasted a fortune on this day – but as he walked past them, the crowds fell silent out of respect. He was their king and, at this moment, he wasn’t ridiculous at all.

I was hot in my skimpy summer frock. Markham must have been baking, and George, surely, would burst into flames at any moment now. To ensure everyone had the opportunity to admire his splendid get-up, the silly juggins had instructed his canopy to follow along behind him, so he was exposed to the full blast of sunshine. His round, red, jowly face was streaming with sweat. He carried a silk handkerchief in one hand, with which he alternately mopped his faced and flourished at the crowd. Even as I stared, an attendant whisked it away and replaced it with a fresh one.

It was quite sad really, because in his youth, apparently, he had been a bit of a poster boy. There was now no trace of the dashing young prince. Except in his own memory, anyway. I thought he looked like a petulant baby with his protruding eyes and tiny, rosebud mouth, but he was very good-natured. He turned and waved at the people, who, with typical crowd mentality, cheered and waved at the man they had previously hissed and booed on every possible occasion. He knew how to work a crowd and even I found it hard to believe this was the man who had mistreated his wives, betrayed his friends, and been involved in every scandal imaginable.

He paused outside the Abbey. His pageboys – real ones this time – got his thirty-foot-long train sorted out. I could hear his oddly high-pitched voice instructing them to hold it wider so that everyone could see the exquisite golden embroidery, and then, to a fanfare of trumpets, and with one last wave to the crowd, he entered the Abbey, to be crowned George, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover.

Around us, a hush fell as the fanfare died away and the last of the procession followed him in.