SCOTLAND’S PLACE IN BRITAIN’S CORONATION TRADITION

Abstract

INTHE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED his arrival in London in 1603, James VI of Scotland and soon-to-be I of England busied himself with the establishment of his court, forging its character through the selection of its personnel and the organisation of its ritual calendar. In this enterprise he was to make many concessions to English courtly precedent, breaking with the austere Scottish courtly ritual practice in which he had been reared.1 In keeping with this spirit, James took the decision to postpone the Garter Festival of St George from April until July in order to celebrate the saint's day in person at the traditional site of Windsor Castle. His Protestant predecessors on the English throne had expressed concern about the Catholic connotations of this quintessentially English gothic rite.2 So how would the saviour of England's Protestant line find the festival after his initial enthusiasm? Dudley Carleton recorded that during his first major monarchical celebration in England James attended service, went in procession, made an offering at the altar and dined publicly all rites incidentally which the Garter Festival shared with the impending coronation. 'At which sight every man was well pleased: Carleton observed, 'save some Scottish kirkemen who sayde it sented too much of the Pape.'3 I begin with this vignette because it is an early example of a phenomenon that would rent apart the British state during the civil wars of the 1640s: the inability of the Scots and English, cohabiting for the first time in a British relationship, to agree on an acceptable model of monarchical ritual. And I begin with this vignette because it has a direct bearing on the coronation ceremony: the supreme expression of monarchy and the master template for monarchical ritual. The specific question about the future of British coronations that I would like to reflect on might surprise many people: how many coronations should a British sovereign hold in our day and age? The answer seems perfectly obvious: one coronation, of course, for one United Kingdom. Certainly for the last three hun...; dred and fifty years this has been the case. But it was not always so. In fact there