“I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God,” states the pledge that the public will be invited to recite.
It is the first time in history that all royal subjects have been invited to formally participate in a coronation service in such a way, something its organizers called an innovation made possible by modern technology.
The oath replaces a traditional allegiance pledged by hereditary peers, who would line up to kneel before the monarch in Westminster Abbey, according to details of the service released by the archbishop of Canterbury.
“Never before in our history have the general public been offered such an opportunity to join with national figures in declaring their allegiance to a new Sovereign,” the official liturgical commentary states.
According to newly published guidance, the archbishop will call upon “all persons of goodwill” from across the realm “to make their homage, in heart and voice, to their undoubted King, defender of all.” Participation in the oath — which will be followed by a musical fanfare — is encouraged but voluntary, organizers said.
“The Homage of the People is particularly exciting because that’s brand new,” said a spokesman for Lambeth Palace, the archbishop’s official London residence. “Our hope is at that point, when the archbishop invites people to join in, that people wherever they are, if they’re watching at home on their own, watching the telly, will say it out loud — this sense of a great cry around the nation and around the world of support for the King.”
The moment’s inclusion in Saturday’s service is among a number of changes being introduced for a ceremony that has taken place in Westminster Abbey since 1066 — when William the Conqueror was coronated on Christmas Day. Every monarch in the almost thousand years since has been crowned in the abbey apart from two: Edward V (the boy king), who was presumed murdered before he could be crowned, and Edward VIII, who abdicated 11 months after inheriting the throne in 1936, before his coronation.
On Saturday, for the first time, female bishops and members of other faiths will also play active roles in what for hundreds of years has been a strictly Protestant service.
In 1953, at the coronation of Charles’s mother, Elizabeth II, women were forbidden by the Church of England from being appointed as bishops — a ban that remained until 2014. Lords and ladies attending Saturday’s abbey service will wear business suits and dresses, instead of their red robes and coronets. Also, hymns will be sung not only in English, but in Welsh and Scottish and Irish Gaelic. And a gospel choir featured at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan, the duke and duchess of Sussex, will perform.
William Booth contributed to this report.
