Uncle George Remembers XI

Sir George Bellew reading the Coronation Proclamation.

The king is dead, long live the queen!

“As soon as is practicable after a demise of the Crown, a meeting of the Privy Council is called in order formally to “identify and elect” (meaning acknowledge, I suppose) the new Sovereign, and declare his or her “rightful accession to the throne”.

But this Privy Council Meeting, known as the Accession Council, is different from normal Meetings because, besides of course taking place once only in each reign, a number of persons, loosely described as “Other Gentlemen of Quality”, who are not Privy Council members at all and who in some cases are never likely to be, are summoned to attend as well. They are those who hold certain royal or government appointments which make their attendance desirable, or who are summoned to attend for some other reason, such as for example because they, or perhaps their predecessors, have always been so summoned. Though it might have been gratifying to have been summoned as a Gentleman of Quality, it was of course because I was Garter King of Arms.

The 1952 Accession Council was held at St James’s Palace on Thursday, 7th February, at 10 am, which was presumably as soon as possible after King George VI’s decease, which had occurred some 24 hours before. The Lord President of the Council, Lord Woolton, presided and the proceedings were brief. Everyone stood, which is customary at all Privy Council Meetings (there being in fact no chairs nor anything else to sit on), and the Lord President recited the circumstances which necessitated the meeting, declared that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second had of right ascended the Throne, and invited the assembled company to signify their concurrence. This they did with a sort of deep approving growl and, after a few other matters of detail had been dealt with, the Lord President terminated the proceedings by saying in a muted and melodious voice, “God Save the Queen”, which was repeated in near unison, again in a kind of growl. Then, because, as everyone knows, it is always just as well to put important decisions in writing, everyone queued up to sign, in a record-book, the “Minutes of the Meeting”. I found myself in the queue immediately behind the Archbishop of Canterbury and in front of the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, the former radiating benevolence and goodwill, as he always did, and the latter showing signs of impatience by scratching, fidgeting, and even pushing and shoving, which I thought surprising in a gentleman of such quality. But I did not give way, at least until we were close to the record-book, when, with what I hope looked a courteous smile, I ceded my place to him, which he accepted without much grace. Some time after, when I had reason to make closer acquaintance with each of these two grandees, I enjoyed a happy friendship with that most amiable of Primates, Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, but as regards Prime Minister Eden, as he later became, I came to the conclusion that, though handsome, he was immensely conceited, self-opinionated and tetchy.

The Accession Council is, of course, a profound and momentous happening, and yet it had, at least for me, a curious air of casualness and uncertainty, as if many people there did not quite know what it was all about nor why they had been summoned to it.

The origins of this meeting of the Sovereign’s Private Council go back a long way in history, to times in fact when it was really vital to identify, elect and confirm immediately an heir to the Throne as rightful monarch so that an enterprising usurper could not step in and seize it whilst people were still arguing. In Saxon times it was, one supposes, the Witenagemot, the Meeting of the Wise Men, the gathering together of responsible people who formed the ancient Establishment, who did this. There is perhaps a tenuous link, a hazy line of continuity, between the Witenagemot of 1,000 years ago or more and the Accession Council of today.

It so happened that on that particular day in February 1952 I had a fairly long-standing engagement to have lunch with the then Lord Mayor of London, the late Sir Denys Colquhoun Flowerdew Lowson. He could not help his resounding name and as a young man had been a friend of my family in Ireland and was an occasional visitor at Barmeath, my family home. He was a giant, several inches over 6 ft. tall, and I remember at Barmeath his height recorded against a wall there well above all others, including mine, which was 4 ft. 10 in. in 1912 and 5 ft. 10 in. a few years later, at which height it stopped.

The privilege is not given to everyone of chucking a Lord Mayor of London at a moment’s notice for lunch, but that is what I did and was secretly rather pleased at having to do it. Accession Councils came first and I did not know how long it would last.

The very rich Sir Denys Lowson was a Scot and yet a friend of mine, and I would like to place it on record that he had many good as well as many other remarkable qualities, and I am aware that, to put it mildly, not everyone admired him. His fall from grace, or at least from high esteem, was, I maintain, mostly due to failing health.”

The Hon, Sir George Bellew, KCB, KCVO, KStJ, FSA.