The Coming Event.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 December 1901, Page 4

The Coming Event.

CORONATION CEREMONIES. I LONDON, Ocl. DC—Certain aspiring peeresses have had the most extra- I vacant plans for seir-adoriiment at the coronation of King Edward. One who has inside information says “Their coronets especially were to be dreams of magnificence, rivalling iin* Imperial crown itself in the display of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, and the rest." it was undoubtedly just to head those ambitious dames off, to prevent their eclipsing in magnificence royalty itself, that led the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, to issue nine months m advance his proclamations of instruction regarding costumes and requests for summonses or invitations. lie had a good excuse for so doing, it is sixty-three years since the late sovereign was crowned, and no peer or peeress who as a peer or peeress lias attended a coronation will attend the coronation of King Edward and Queen Alexandra.

There arc. indeed, few personages, among t hem the Duke of Cambridge, who were present at the coronation of Queen Victoria and are still living, hut they were not present as peers or peeresses, and therefore have no personal experience of the manner in

which peers and peeresses obtain their summonses and should he coronetted ami robed when responding to them. These proclamations were not issued in connection with the coronation, in

June, ifCis, of Queen Victoria, until the middle of the preceding month of April. There could have been then only a comparatively small number of peers and peeresses who had not at-

tended, or hud not been given the opportunity of attending, once or even twice at solemnities of the same august character. Seven years before King William IV., and Queen Adelaide had been crowned, and ten years before that the coronation of Cieorgc IV, l lie most gorgeous and expensive on record, had been celebrated. The great majority of the Peerage were therefore familiar with the steps they were required to take in order to secure a summons to attend, and not only knew in what coronets and robes they were expected to attire themselves, but had in their possession the coronets and robes which they had actually worn. Since peers and peeresses are permitted to adorn themselves with their coronets only on the occasion of a coronation, it is perhaps fortunate for many that coronets are not very expensive. Silver-gilt circlets and straw berry leaves, spikes and silver bells do not seem very imposing as insignia of dignity. Hut' to judge from the show tiiey ' now make in the goldsmith’s they are not without distinction, and when they are worn it may he safely

predicted 'that tiiey will look as well and impress the multitude as much as if they were the genuine articles for which they are the heraldic equivalents.

“ Originally,” writes an expert in such matters, “ peers and peeresses had no coronets such as they are now entitled to hear. In the old time the distinctive head covering or a duke was the chapeau or “ Cap of Estate,” or, in other words, the Cap of Maintenance, which is now ttic hereditary privilege of the Marquises of Winchester to carrv on a cushion on certain occasions of state. Marquises and Earls, who wore 1 circlets of gold' were not permitted to add caps to them until much later—the former towards the end of the fifteenth and the latter in tire sixteenth century. “ The sovereigns of England, indeed from a very remote period, according to Sir Harris Nicolas, down to K'ing William IV. 1 have ever proceeded to their coronations in the robes or estate of a duke, with the Cap of Estate upon their heads and formerly the act of coronation consisted in placing upon the ducal cap of Normandy the royal diadem of England.’ “ It is to he remembered, however, that the effigy of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral exhibits on the helmet a coronet of leaves, possibly that of the Principality of Wales, which was likely enough the prototype of the present ducal coronet. “it was only in the sixteenth century that the coronets of dukes, marquises and earls delinitely assumed the shape in which they now appear, and it was .not until the reign of James 1. that viscounts were accorded coronets at all. At the restoration Charles 11. accorded coronets to barons, a plain gold circlet with six silver balls, as now worn-. Previouslv they had worn first a scarlet cap guarded with miniver, and then a crimson cap, turned up with ermine with a gold tassel on the top. But Sir Symonds D’Ewes, in his account of the coronation of Charles 1., expressly mentions that when the higher grades of the peerage put oil their coronets the barons sat bareheaded.” “ But long after the Black Prince s time coronets appear to have been, so far as design is concerned, the result of individual taste or caprice. The coronet of Richard, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, on his tomb is a plain circle surrounded by balls, but without strawberrv leaves,while the coronets of other’earls of about the same era as may be seen on their monuments, differ even more from it than they do from an earl’s coronet of the present day.