Earlier this year, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain celebrated her Platinum Jubilee. It was a celebration of her 70 years as a reigning monarch. In fact, she has reigned longer than any earlier British monarch — no other king or queen has ever lasted long enough to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee.
One who came close, however, was the current queen’s great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria, who died in January, 1901, just shy of 64 years on the throne. Not only was her name synonymous with most of the nineteenth century as the “Victorian” era, she had presided over a great expansion of the British Empire during a time of astonishing industrial advancement.
Few people in England could even remember a time before Victoria had been queen (just as few alive now remember Queen Elizabeth’s 1952 coronation). And once the obligatory mourning period had passed, it was time to crown a new monarch, something most Britons had never experienced. And of course, as today, the British are better at pageantry than anyone.
So the stage was set for Victoria’s 60 year-old son, Prince Albert, to go through the coronation ceremony. Prince Albert, incidentally (once they let him out of the can) did not become “King Albert”; instead, he decided to use his middle name, becoming King Edward VII.
A British coronation is both preceded and followed by a procession. It’s the mother of all parades: The monarch-to-be rides from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey in a glittering carriage pulled by white horses, accompanied by hundreds of attendants and soldiers in their, well, royal finery — some on horseback and others on foot. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury plunks the royal headgear on the new monarch.
The coronation was scheduled for June 26, 1902, but two days before the big event, Albert/Edward developed a tummy ache. The royal physician diagnosed appendicitis. So the story goes, Prince Albert initially wanted to go forward anyway so as not to disappoint the public. His physician is said to have responded, “Then I fear that this will become not your coronation procession, but your funeral procession.”
So, instead, Albert had what at the time was a risky procedure — an operation to open his appendix and treat the infection. He recovered, but it meant postponing the coronation and related ceremonies.
In the meantime, thousands of people had planned to join in the festivities. In an era with no television or even radio — there were barely primitive, silent newsreels — anyone who wanted to view the events had to stake out a spot along the parade route. And wealthier folks rented rooms along the route the procession would take.
When the ceremonies were cancelled, those who’d paid for lodgings demanded refunds. Disputes naturally arose. Those who had accepted rent took the position that the rooms were still useful regardless of what was going on outside the windows. (“Hey, you wanted a room — you got a room! What’s the problem?”) And these disputes led to a series of court rulings that became known as the “coronation cases.”
The leading case involved a dispute between Paul Krell, who rented a room to a man known today only as C.S. Henry. Henry hired the room for £75 — a “princely sum” for the time. He paid Krell a £25 deposit, but refused to pay the balance when the ceremony was postponed. Krell sued for the £50 balance; Henry countersued for his £25 deposit.
When the case reached the appeals court (somewhat ironically, known as “the King’s Bench”) in 1903, the court had to decide who was right — Krell, the building owner, or Henry, the short-term tenant.
The contract between the two men didn’t mention the coronation, but the court was able to infer from such facts as the steep price of the transaction, and that Henry only rented the room for the day, not overnight, that there was indeed an implied agreement that the rental was just for the ceremony. The court found that Henry was both excused from paying Krell and also should get his money back.
For his part, King Edward eventually was crowned that August, and managed to preside over an extension of Victoria’s time of peace and prosperity, in what is now known as the Edwardian era. When he died just eight years later, in 1910, his subjects bade him farewell in another glittering ceremony.
This time, the attendees included two more ominous figures — Edward’s nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany — soon to become England’s mortal enemy; and Austria’s Franz Ferdinand, the monarch whose assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 would usher in the most horrific war the world had seen to that time.
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.