The most sacred part of the ritual is now underway.
The King sits on the Coronation Chair to receive the anointing after having his ceremonial robe removed. It serves to highlight the sovereign’s spiritual stature as the leader of the Church of England.
The King is hidden from view behind a screen that has been set up around the chair.
What the anointing involves
The archbishop is pouring special oil from the Ampulla – a gold flask – on to the Coronation Spoon before anointing the King in the form of a cross on his head, breast and hands.
The Ampulla was made for Charles II’s coronation, but its shape harks back to an earlier version and a legend that the Virgin Mary appeared to St Thomas a Becket in the 12th Century and gave him a golden eagle from which future kings of England would be anointed.
The Coronation Spoon is much older, having survived Oliver Cromwell’s destruction of the regalia after the English Civil War.
