The Accession Council of King Charles III - What did it all mean? 

Hello, this has brought back memories for me of those ceremonies here in the UK. Even in my little town of Abingdon we had the new king proclaimed and I went to it. The local proclamation took place in the market place in the centre of the town, not far from the local council offices. It was led by our mayor (robed), with the rest of the town council in attendance and various other notables, including our local MP. The timing of the proclamation had to be later than the one in the nearby city of Oxford, partly because of the custom that the proclamations are made first centrally and then more and more locally down the chain of command (so to speak), but also because we share our MP with the western half of Oxford, so we had to wait for her to get here after attending the ceremony there first. It was very strange for me in my 60s to attend such a thing for the first time in my life (on average they take place about every 25-30 years, and my mother had lived in the reigns of 4 different monarchs). The poor mayor, trying to say 'God save the King', quite clearly started out of habit to say 'God save the Qu---' and had to check himself and change the word; and then we sang God save the King as the national anthem, again for the first time in my life. It still feels a bit strange even now.

I have to wonder whether the new king particularly wished to retain 'Charles' as his regnal name; after all, there's no reason he'd want to pay tribute to the regicided Charles I or libertine Charles II. As far as I can tell, the actual Christian names of British royal heirs weren't widely known before ERII - they were known only by their (mutable) titles, e.g. the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York (George VI, James II) - so it was no big deal for them to choose any regnal name they wished. In our more informal era, though, as the king's Christian name has always been publicly known, I imagine that the British public would find it pompous if he had chosen a different regnal name (imagine if he'd chosen 'Arthur', one of his middle names!) and would mock him for it so he was no doubt advised to stick with 'Charles'. I foresee that from now on, and for however much longer the British monarchy exists, regnal names will always correspond to Christian names. Anyway, another wonderfully informative video, great work, Professor Twomey!

Minor correction - the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London are not actually local, since they represent the neighbouring City of London. The Lord Mayor of Westminster, where St James’ Palace is actually located, is not invited. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London are historically invited as representatives of the financial powerbrokers of the kingdom, rather than as local representatives. (Also the Bishop of London is not an Archbishop.)