George I was crowned King in Westminster Abbey on October 20, 1714. Those who had been present at the three previous coronations agreed that the inauguration of the Hanoverian dynasty lacked a certain style and splendour. The Queen could hardly be present as she was incarcerated at Ahlden, and though the Princess of Wales had arrived in time she did not take part in the procession. There was, consequently, less opportunity for ceremonial, though public interest could hardly have been more intense.

The Abbey contained a number of prominent Jacobites, and there was considerable speculation as to how they would behave. Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, could not be excluded, and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was observed to bow three times almost down to the ground when the King enquired who he was. Lady Cowper later noted in her diary:

But Lady Dorchester was unusually outspoken. A former mistress of James II, when she espied the Duchess of Portsmouth, one of Charles II’s mistresses, and Lady Orkney, who had fulfilled the same function for William III, she exclaimed, ‘Good God! Who would have thought we three whores would have met together here.’

Drawn swords or no, the Tory peers gave every appearance of enthusiasm for the new monarch as he was crowned. The coronation service proceeded on its leisurely way. The Bishop of Oxford delivered himself of an interminable sermon, mingling piety with politics (Dr Tennison, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was far from well, and a new Primate of England might be required any day), congratulating God on having selected so propitiously the hour of Queen Anne’s death, when ‘the unsettled posture of affairs abroad would not permit the Pretender’s foreign friends to send any forces to encourage an insurrection, and the unreadiness of his surprised abettors here would not permit them to appear in such a manner, as to invite an invasion’, and deploring the faintest possibility of the Old Pretender ascending the throne of England. Warming to his theme, the Bishop referred darkly to ‘the maxims of French tyranny’ and ‘the principles of Popish superstition’, looked back in sadness to the reigns of Charles II and James II – ‘if those Princes chastised us with whips, this would have done it with scorpions, who would have come with a spirit, not only of popery and bigotry, but also of resentment and revenge’; and was convinced that, with the accession of George I, a new era of lasting happiness was on the point of being ushered in. Outraged references to Louis XIV were given a touch of irony by the presence, in the Abbey, of two gentlemen in robes of crimson velvet edged with miniver. These were supposed to represent the Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy.

There were a few discordant notes. The Venetian and Sicilian ambassadors quarrelled over the seats they had been allocated in the gallery set aside for foreign diplomats. Lady Cowper took her friend Lady Nottingham to task for shouting out the words of the Litany with rather too much gusto. And, when the King’s Champion rode into Westminster Hall to deliver his challenge, one lady was heard to declare that James III was the rightful king of England. But there was a feeling of relief in the air. The Whigs were in ecstasies, and even High Tories like Robert Harley and Bolingbroke appeared to condone the Hanoverian succession by their presence in the Abbey. The Treasurer of the Household scattered coronation medals with a liberal hand, eight new peers were created, the banquet in Westminster Hall was lavish, even the sun shone. Lady Wentworth’s comment was ill-spelled but convinced: ‘All hear are in great raptures of the King and say he is the Wysest and the Richis Princ in Yoarup. I hope he will prove soe.’

The Coronation of George III, a month short of forty-seven years later, was considerably less dignified and free of incident. As Jocelyn Perkins’s The Coronation Book puts it, ‘never was the English mind, with all its total incompetence to grasp details of ceremonial, displayed in such utter baldness and nakedness, as in the frantic efforts of the Deputy Earl-Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain’. First, there was a strike of workmen who were to erect the decorations. Then Lord Effingham, the Deputy Earl-Marshal, completely forgot about the Sword of State and the canopy; the Lord Mayor lent his own sword, but the loss of the canopy delayed the start of the procession until midday. In the Abbey, the Bishop of Salisbury droned on, becoming so muddled that he alluded to the extraordinary number of years the King had already sat on the throne, and the coronation service took six hours to complete.

During the banquet, Lord Talbot, the Lord High Steward, came into his own. Already in a state of high nervous tension, he proceeded to argue furiously with the Barons of the Cinque Ports, the Knights of the Bath, and the Aldermen of the City of London:

The Knights of the Bath were less persistent and less fortunate. Their plumes nodding ever more funereally, they were banished to the Court of Requests and a lonely, and inferior, dinner. But it was the Barons of the Cinque Ports who suffered the most. Talbot lost his temper completely and raged at them: ‘If you come to me, as Lord Steward, I tell you it is impossible; if as Lord Talbot, I am a match for any of you!’

The unfortunate Barons were afforded some small consolation by Lord Talbot’s next manoeuvre. He was due to accompany the King’s Champion during the latter’s traditional arrival in Westminster Hall, and had spent many weary hours practising and training his horse to back out of the Hall once the challenge had been delivered. The horse was too literally minded, and proceeded to back into the Hall and to present its rump to the startled King. It was a theatrical coup of enormous popularity. Laughter was unrestrained, and several ladies succumbed to hysterics. It was all, as one observer put it sharply, ‘a terrible indecorum, such as one might expect at Bartholomew Fair’. Only the King seemed unmoved by the goings-on. Bishop Newton wrote approvingly,

Finally, though, George complained to Lord Effingham, who did not ease the situation by his answer: ‘It is true, sir, that there has been some neglect; but I have taken care that the next coronation shall be regulated in the exactest manner possible.’

Thomas Gray was an eye-witness and left a vivid account of the scene in Westminster Hall: