Preface

Fellow in History Associate Professor Justice removed, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? This book was written in the only country in the world where Christian kingship retains some kind of constitutional reality. On 6 May 2023 Charles III was crowned and anointed as king at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony which, although much adapted and self-consciously modernized for the occasion, found its origins in the early Middle Ages and some of the rituals that I have had occasion to write about in the pages that follow. Right from the beginning, the liturgy on that May morning directed those present and viewing the coronation to note the connection between Charles and Christ, the King of Kings; the new king announced on his arrival: ‘In his name, and after his example, I come not to be served, but to serve.’1 The point was repeated shortly thereafter by the presiding Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented the king’s ritual sacralization as similarly indicative of his duty to serve, speaking of ‘his crowning and anointing, as he is set apart and consecrated for the service of his people’.2 The Church of England’s specially authorized commentary on this liturgy stressed that these were new additions to the coronation liturgy, no doubt wishing the reader to be struck by the contemporary and responsive nature of the modern monarchy.3 Readers of this book will by the end of it, I hope, be a little doubtful as to just how distinctively modern such an understanding of Christian kingship is.