After a lifetime as the heir to his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles III was officially crowned king on Saturday in the first coronation in Britain since 1953.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, put the solid gold St Edward’s Crown on Charles’s head at 12:02 p.m. (1102 GMT) as a sacred and ancient emblem of the monarch’s authority.
At the conclusion of the solemn ecclesiastical confirmation of his ascension, cries of “God Save the King” broke out from the 2,300-member Westminster Abbey audience, and trumpet fanfares sounded.
Outside, cannon salutes rang out across land and sea, and church bells rang out in celebration.
During his reign, Charles, 74, will only wear the St Edward’s Crown once. Camilla, 75, was crowned queen soon after in a less formal ceremony.
The build-up to the Christian service of prayer and praise, entrenched in 1,000 years of British history and tradition, complete with beautiful robes and valuable regalia, has been generally joyous.
Before Charles and Camilla left Buckingham Palace for a rainy procession to the abbey, police arrested hundreds of demonstrators, using new powers rushed into the statute book to crack down on direct action organizations.
The anti-monarchy movement Republic, which advocates for an elected head of state, reported that six of its organizers were imprisoned, while climate activists Just Stop Oil reported that 19 of its members were detained.
Nonetheless, scores of Republic activists waved banners aloft along the ceremonial path, proclaiming, “Not My King.”
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also expressed alarm over the arrests. “This is something you would expect to see in Moscow, not London,” HRW stated.
The Metropolitan Police Service in London has 11,500 officers on the streets in one of its largest ever security operations. It has issued a warning that it has a “extremely low threshold” for protests.
It was the first coronation in 70 years, as well as the first of a king since 1937. It was just the second to be aired, the first in color, and the first to be streamed online.
