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    Royal Jubilees
    Royal Jubilees
    Royal Jubilees
    Ebook110 pages48 minutes

    Royal Jubilees

    By Judith Millidge

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    About this ebook

    An illustrated history of British royal jubilee celebrations from George III to Elizabeth II.

    In 1809, thanksgiving ceremonies and feasts across Britain ushered George III into his fiftieth year as king. This was the first British celebration of a royal jubilee and set the tone for those that have followed since: processions, fireworks, construction of monuments, the striking of special coins and medals, and, of course, the sale of commemorative mugs. Queen Victoria marked her golden and diamond jubilees in 1887 and 1897 amid throngs of patriotic subjects from all over the world, and celebrations were also held for George V's silver jubilee in 1935.

    Following the festivities in 1977 and 2002, in 2012 Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch ever to celebrate her third jubilee, as she began her seventh decade on the throne. Judith Millidge describes the handful of British royal jubilees across 200 years, examines how they have been commemorated, their similarities and differences, and the myriad souvenir products that have accompanied them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJun 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782001225
    Royal Jubilees
    Author

    Judith Millidge

    Judith Millidge is a writer and historian who writes about a variety of subjects, with a special interest in royal topics. Among her other books are The Royal Family Album and World Royal Families.

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      Book preview

      Royal Jubilees - Judith Millidge

      2002.

      INTRODUCTION

      MONARCHIES are a rare breed. In the last century more hereditary rulers lost their crowns than survived long enough to celebrate dozens of years of glorious rule upon the throne; nevertheless, a number of royal jubilees were celebrated around the world, from the diamond jubilee of the venerable Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph in 1908, to the sixtieth anniversary of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in 2006. The British, who pride themselves on the quality of their ceremonial pageantry, have celebrated the jubilees of the kings and queens of Great Britain since 1809, the year of George III’s fiftieth anniversary, when the whole country was invited to join in a day of national rejoicing.

      Over the last thousand years, fourteen British monarchs have achieved at least twenty-five years on the throne: Ethelred the Unready, Henry I, Henry II, Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, George II, George III, Victoria, George V, and Elizabeth II. Henry III, Edward III and George III survived fifty years, as did James VI and I, as King of Scotland, and of course Victoria and Elizabeth II have reached sixty years on the throne.

      The word ‘jubilee’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary firstly as ‘a special anniversary of an event, especially one celebrating twenty-five or fifty years of a reign or activity’, and secondly as ‘a period of remission from the penal consequences of sin, granted by the Roman Catholic Church under certain conditions for a year, usually at intervals of twenty-five years’. Secular jubilees owe their origins to sacred jubilees, as described in the Book of Leviticus. The word itself is derived from Hebrew yobel, meaning ‘ram’s horn trumpet’, the instrument which was used to proclaim a jubilee year. The idea of a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon was known throughout medieval times, but the first documented religious jubilee was instituted in 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, who promised the ‘broadest forgiveness of sins’ to those who visited St Peter’s in Rome during that year. This first religious jubilee was immensely popular and the ritual continues today.

      The Porta Sancta in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, is opened only once every twenty-five years, in a holy jubilee year. The Pope uses the silver hammer to crack open the brick wall and open the door to pilgrims.

      Secular jubilees celebrating a monarch’s reign are dependent on regnal life spans and are therefore irregular occurrences, but in the nineteenth century in Britain they absorbed the religious traditions of remitting sins and freeing prisoners. Incidentally, it was not until the late nineteenth century that jubilees were accorded the same epithets as wedding anniversaries: silver for twenty-five years, gold for fifty and diamond for sixty.

      Henry III was the first English monarch to achieve fifty years on the throne, but his reign was by no means easy or especially peaceful. He inherited the throne at the age of nine in 1216, just a year after his father (King John) had signed the Magna Carta, the first great charter of rights that paved the way for modern democratic government. Henry proved to be a strong and pious king, who was especially devoted the to the cult of St Edward the Confessor. By 1266, the fiftieth anniversary of his accession, Henry had only just emerged from the bitter struggle of the Second Barons’ War, in which he had ultimately triumphed at the battle of Evesham. It was indeed a year of royal celebration, but it was also one in which vicious retribution was carried out on the enemies of the king. The Dictum of Kenilworth, which was issued almost fifty years to the day from Henry’s accession, was a pragmatic document that allowed the surviving rebels to buy back their forfeited lands and confirmed the legitimacy of the Magna Carta, but it also left no one in any doubt that royal authority rested on the king alone.

      These portraits of Henry III and Edward III, two

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