Card of the Day: Bearing the Regalia from the Jerusalem Chamber

We seem to be stuck on the Jerusalem Chamber with these last few Churchman Cigarette Cards. This one, the twenty-fifth in the series, depicts the moment when the Regalia is carried from the Jerusalem Chamber into the Sanctuary.


This practice is nicely described in “The Annual Register or a View of the History, Politics and Literature of the Year 1825.”

On the arrival of their Majesties at the Abbey, at a quarter past eleven o'clock, they were received by the Great Officers of State and the Noblemen bearing the Regalia, and repaired to their robing-chambers without the west entrance. The Ladies of her Majesty's Household, the Officers of the Royal Household, and of the respective Households of the Princes and Princesses, as well as others who had formed part of the royal retinue from St. James's Palace, and to whom duties had not been assigned in the solemnity, passed immediately to the places prepared for them within the Choir.

This excerpt from 1825, however, does not refer to the more recent 1821 coronation, but rather to the coronation of King George III many years earlier.