The Accession Proclamation: the full text. God Save the King!
What follows is the full text of the Accession Proclamation, as so masterfully read by the Clerk of the Privy Council (Richard Tilbrook, CVO) at St James’s Palace on Saturday morning, 10 September 2022. By the time you read this, the selfsame Proclamation will have been read throughout the UK, in Edinburgh, Cardiff, at Hillsborough Castle, and in various cities and towns.
It is such an extraordinary, solemn, moving and historic(al) text in so many ways.
If you are wondering how the pageantry of the Accession on Saturday proceeded so smoothly and magnificently so soon after Her Majesty’s death, the whole process is laid out step by step down to the last detail in a paper (The Death of a Monarch) in the Commons Library here. I have to thank Michael Hocken on Twitter for pointing me to this document, which, inter alia, contains the text of the 1952 Proclamation for King George on p.20. and makes for fascinating historical reading.
Not only does the paper lay out the procedure to be followed, it also has historical information about earlier deaths and accessions, and in particular what happened upon the death of King George VI and the late Queen’s accession.
I had already transcribed the current Proclamation in full when I was alerted to the aforementioned paper. That Proclamation is similar, but not identical, to the one read on Saturday. For instance, the 1952 phrasing refers to ‘the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth’, a form of words dropped for obvious reasons from the latest Proclamation.
What particularly struck me was the metonymy of ‘do now hereby, with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart…’ in the second paragraph, meaning ‘and as our speech and our sentiments will show’ and carried over from the earlier Proclamation. Also, the old-fashioned use of is with become, rather than has.
On another linguistic note, in this royal context the word demise, meaning ‘death’, is not pronounced /dɪˈmʌɪz/ to rhyme with rise but as dimeeze /dɪˈmi:z/
The 1952 Proclamation is laid out simply as two paragraphs, whereas I had broken up the text for legibility. I have kept my paragraphing but copied the capitalisation of the 1952 Proclamation or imitated it.
At the end of the reading of the Proclamation, after the Clerk intones ‘God Save the King’, the assembled company solemnly and joyfully repeated those words.
The Proclamation starts at about 31:25 in this link, if it works.
Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His Mercy our Late Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth the Second, of Blessed and Glorious memory, by whose Decease the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is solely and rightfully come to the Prince Charles Philip Arthur George,
We, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm, and members of the House of Commons, together with other Members of Her Late Majesty’s Privy Council, and Representatives of the Realms and Territories, Aldermen and Citizens of London and others, do now hereby, with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim
that the Prince Charles Philip Arthur George is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become our only lawful and rightful liege lord, Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of His other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith,
to whom we do acknowledge all Faith and Obedience with humble Affection, beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless His Majesty with long and happy Years to reign over us.
God save the King!
