They got here by bus to pay their respects. Presidents, prime ministers, troopers and royalty traveled to Westminster Abbey in central London to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. His coffin was carried by means of the Nice West Gate to the sound of ‘funeral sentences’ and the ringing of the abbey bell.
The Dean of Westminster known as on the congregation to “commend Queen Elizabeth to the care and holding of Almighty God”. This explicitly Christian finale to the Queen’s 70-year reign was knowledgeable by rites and passages from different royal funerals.
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle stated the pageantry and ritual can be “a very powerful occasion the world will ever see”. It appears unlikely. However for a lot of, the occasions of the previous few days have been deeply felt.
The Queen’s coffin remained in Westminster Corridor for 4 days. A whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals marched to pay their respects, many stopping to bow their heads, make the signal of the cross, supply a namaste or a salute. Some got here with an emblem of their connection to the Queen, whether or not it was a clerical collar, army medals or a information scarf. You would hear the cry of infants, the occasional cry and the clink of canes. Many individuals turned to take a look at the coffin one final time earlier than leaving the room. Few entered New Palace Yard with dry eyes.
These pilgrims had traveled almost 5 miles. At its longest, the queue was ten miles lengthy with a wait time of 24 hours. Each minute or so the queue superior, the motion reverberating alongside the road. Firefighters distributed water bottles. An unofficial marshal chastised these taking photos on the steps close to Westminster Bridge.
Standing in line intensified folks’s feelings. Strangers turned pals and there was a way of camaraderie. The expertise made folks extra useful and extra prepared to ask for assist. “It was nearly as good as a queue,” stated Stuart, an accountant. “It was a relaxed and peaceable solution to come right here,” a curate from Wakefield informed me. “Getting off the prepare and going straight in would not have been the identical.”
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“We stayed up for six and a half hours for a day of our lives. The Royal Household does this on a regular basis,” stated a girl known as Penny.
Close to parliament, a statue of Queen George V’s grandfather watched over the queue. Will Elizabeth now turn into a statue? There are plans for her to exchange the whipped cream and cherry sculpture at present on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Sq.. However some argue that this place wouldn’t be sufficiently big. Or how about an epithet? Elizabeth the Nice, as really useful by Boris Johnson? Good? British pathe proclaimed his father “George le Bon” in 1952 however no person remembers George VI as such as we speak.
Nonetheless her life is commemorated, the Queen has turn into a conduit for the non-public grief many really feel for their very own just lately deceased relations. Subsequent to Westminster Corridor, a person I attempted to talk to only raised his hand and stated, “I believe I would somewhat simply let it in.” One lady talked about her mom’s current demise and one other stated the Queen was the lasting connection to her personal childhood.
Exterior Westminster Abbey, 4,000 servicemen shaped a procession over a mile lengthy to honor their Commander-in-Chief on the finish of the service. A bunch of NHS employees, elevated to a sort of royalty in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, joined the motorcade close to the again. Crowds gathered to look at. The final time Britain buried a monarch, in 1952, hawkers offered small items of mirror to assist these within the again see. They held these squares of glass the identical approach folks elevate their smartphones as we speak. Because the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stated in his sermon, Jesus did not inform his followers easy methods to comply with however who to comply with, and for a lot of that was the queen.
