THE CORONATION ROUTE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE CORONATION ROUTE

Landmarks Of British History A PAST THAT LIVES ON

[By

WALTER DAVIS

LONDON, By Airmail, REUTER

When Queen Elizabeth II rides in her golden coach to Westminster Abbey for her Coronation, she will travel along a route rich in historical associations of Britain’s past.

As she turns, first to this side and then to that to wave to the crowds lining the sidewalks, she will see reminders of that past, sometimes glorious, sometimes inglorious. There will be memories of monarchs as unhappy as she is gay, ghosts of elegant fops, daredevil highwaymen, and men of letters whose names and works have lived on. There will, too, be memories of her own childhood as the golden coach goes through the streets of the heart of the nation’s capital. On leaving Buckingham Palace, with the Duke of Edinburgh at her side, the Queen will first drive along the milelong Mall, one of the finest processional avenues in the world, lined wijh trees and, along one side, mansions each of which has its own place in history. One of the first houses she will pass will be Clarence House, the first home of her own as a married woman. It was . there that she lived with her husband before moving to Buckingham Palace when she became Queen. Next to it is a house with a very recent sad memory for the Queen. It is Marlborough House, where Queen Mary, her grandmother, who did so much towards her training for the throne, died only recently. A special stand was to have been erected from which she could watch her granddaughter on the way tb her Coronation. The Mall stretches up to Admiralty Arch, a lofty stone gateway to Trafalgar Square and the teeming streets of London’s West End. Both the Mall and the arch were made between 1903 and 1913 as a national memorial to Queen Victoria, the new Queen’s great-great-grand-mother who, like the new Queen, was Queen in her own right The procession escorting the Queen to Westminster Abbey then goes down Northumberland avenue, the home of a number of exclusive clubs, to the Embankment of the River Thames, the waterway which has made London great. Here, where thousands of schoolchildren will have special stands to watch the procession, she will drive along the riverside, past the Houses of Parliament and finally into Parliament square and up to Westminster Abbey. It was in Parliament square that there once stood the notorious and feared Star Chamber, a State tribunal where offenders against the Government could be tried without recourse to common law. Before this grim assembly once came William Prynne, a Puritan lawyer who wrote a book denouncing the stage as immoral. It was ill-timed, for Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, was just then taking part in a play. His comments were taken to refer to her.

Archbishop Laud, a cold, sinister figure in English history, found him guilty of libel and condemned the unfortunate Prynne to life imprisonment. He also lost his ears, was put into the pillory and had the letters “S.L.” (seditious libeller) branded on his forehead.

After the Coronation After the Coronation, when the Queen leaves the Abbey escorted by the Royal procession to return to Buckingham Palace, she will pass the spot where her ancestor, King Charles I, lost his head. This was in Whitehall, now the street of Government departments. Here stood Whitehall Palace from which, on January 3, 1649, Charles stepped through a window on a scaffold erected in the street outside. After the executioner had carried out his task, he held aloft the King’s head, shouting to the multitude “This is the head of a traitor.” His remark was greeted with groans from the crowd, for Charles had made himself somdftiing of a martyr by his kingly bearing during the last few days of his life.

The palace, where Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell, England’s only republican dictator, died, and where the first Queen Elizabeth sometimes entertained her suitors, was destroyed by fire in 1698. Only the banqueting hall and a few adjoining buildings—now used as a war museum—stand today. Whitehall leads straight into Trafalgar square, which is dominated by a towering 145-foot column surmounted by the statue of Admiral Nelson, hero of Trafalgar. Built between 1829 and 1867, the great square occupies part of the site of the 13th century village of Charing, Near here at what is now known as Charing Cross, heart-broken King Ed-

ward I erected one of a number of crosses to commemorate his much-loved wife. Queen Eleanor, who had died at Harby m the County of Nottinghamshire. He ordered crosses to be put up at every place where her coffin stopped on its way to Westminster Abbey. There were 12 of them. That at Charing, a particularly fine one, made of stone brought from Caen m Normandy, and marble from Dorsetshire, cost £6so—a fortune in those days. It was demolished by Cromwell.

Queen Elizabeth II will- then enter London’s clubland—Pall Mall and St. James street, Literary giants, politicans, painters—Dr. Johnson, Sheridan, Steele, Gibbon, Burke, Pitt and Reynolds-used to discourse there. Pall Mall took its name from a French game called Palle Maille, a cross between croquet and 8°“, wh , ich the leisurely dandies of the 1660 s played.

The Queen then drives down Piccadilly where, as a child, she used to live and play in a house near Hyde Park where her father, then the Duke of York', lived m the days before the abdication of his brother Edward VIII made him king. The procession will go through the park to Marble Arch, its northern gateway. In the days when London small town, this was open country, and not far away the masked highwaymen with their flintlock pistols used to lie in wait to rob the coaches coming from the north.

Tyburn Tree At Marble Arch stood Tyburn Tree, where great crowds once gathered to see men hanged, drawn and quartered. The first recorded execution there was in 1196 when Fitzosbert, a rebel, was brought from London, dragged along the ground by a horse, to the gallows. In 1724 Jack Sheppard, most notorious of all highwaymen, was executed there.

In 1447 five condemned men brought to Tyburn ended up as blushing nudists instead of corpses. Suspected of the murder of a duke, they were cut down from the gallows while still alive. As they were being marked for dismemberment a reprieve arrived. But the hangman, according to custom, was. entitled to the clothes of his victims and he refused to be deprived of them. So the reprieved men had to walk naked back to London.

After Marble Arch, the Queen’s procession will wind into modern thoroughfares, Oxford street and Regent street, lined with big department stores, before reaching the Mall again and so to Buckingham Palace.

Flags of all the Commonwealth and doubtless of many other countries will fly along the Coronation route. Buildings will be decorated with scarlet, royal blue, white and gold. Heraldic standards will flutter from the decorated lamp posts and artists have been commissioned to paint large panels and design gay and fantastic set-pieces.