England Mourns Death of Queen Elizabeth II

The death of Queen Elizabeth II, defender of the Anglican Faith and sovereign of all the Commonwealth States, was at the very center of the world’s attention from the moment of her death on September 8th to the day of her burial on the Sunday of September 19th.

Over that duration, there were three noticeable attitudes: the minority attitude of celebration—mostly evidenced in places like Ireland or in the offices of colleges and universities—the majority attitude of sympathy on the part of the global community (even from nations on the periphery such as Russia and China), and then a third reaction, a reaction which was entirely unique and, to many outside observers, even surprising and alien. 

This was the reaction that was found in many citizens of the United Kingdom and of her related states abroad in the Commonwealth—an attitude of profound mourning for their lost sovereign, the rise of a renewed and antique sort of patriotism, and a softening of heart to their incoming head of state, the previously unpopular King Charles III.

Tens of millions of people around the globe have seen the moving video of the overwhelmingly English crowd gathered in London all singing together “God Save the King.” Sung by a crowd so young that likely not one of them ever had lived under any other monarch, and sung by a crowd with some faces weeping, others grave, all melancholic.

Another widely circulated video shows a man heckling Prince Andrew, a member of the royal family, at the Queen’s funeral procession before being shoved about and yelled at by the crowd and promptly arrested by a nearby police officer.

The age-old ceremonies and traditions have been scrupulously repeated by the English Crown, and watched with both intense interest by the world and  intense devotion by the English people. These traditions have been noticeably unaltered by contemporary political, cultural, or religious trends. At the late Queen’s funeral, the historical location, liturgical conservatism, and the classic hymns and high English prayers all came together to create a ceremony at once solemn, profound, and—as many viewers found—mesmerizing.

The events surrounding the death and burial of the Queen have given the world a glimpse of a rare thing in the contemporary Western world—national spirit. This national spirit is not a shallow nationalism, but a true sense of identity connected to one’s home and to one’s deeply rooted culture. It is a collective sense of “Britishness” that has so often seemed to elude their present political and cultural scene, a sense of belonging to something bigger, something older, something unchanging.

The whole world looked upon England and its people as they went about the traditions which were given to them, and which they were too humble to change, overturn, or move. And in seeing this, the whole world (not to mention the British people) was moved in turn—moved by the hand of the ancients who came before us, moved by the unseen hand of ancestral wisdom and tradition, moved by a hand so often forgotten and neglected in our current era.