Straightforward Devotion

Today marks the sixty-sixth anniversary of the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, which I mark by sharing some words on a spiritual aspect to the coronation - beyond the ceremony and rite itself - in a letter by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, to George V, following the King’s coronation in June 1911; words that are as applicable to our Queen now as they were a hundred years ago.

‘If our Coronation Service means anything, it means the promise of that help [from God], a promise accompanied by the knowledge of the King’s part that his people are in almost every English-speaking home praying for him and expecting that their prayers will be answered, and that God will indeed grant them as their head a “consecrated” man, not in any pedantic or over-wrought sense of the word – but a man who deliberately means, by the help of God, to lead a life of “service”, a life of straightforward devotion to some of the most important duties on Earth, a life of manly purity and justice and truth’.

Randall Davidson, Lord Davidson of Lambeth, GCVO PC, 1848-1930
Archbishop of Canterbury, 1903-1928

O God, who providest for thy people by thy power, and rulest over them in love: vouchsafe so to bless thy Servant our Queen; that under her this nation may be wisely governed, and grant that she being devoted to thee with her whole heart, and persevering in good works unto the end, may, by thy guidance, come to thine everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.