Note 178 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
"The coronation is over, 'tis even a more gorgeous sight than I imagined," Horace Walpole told the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway. "I saw the procession and the hall; but the return was in the dark. In the morning they had forgot the sword of state, the chairs for the King and Queen, and their canopies. They used the Lord Mayor's sword for the first, and made the last in the hall; so they did not set forth till noon; and then, by a childish compliment to the King, reserved the illumination of the hall till his entry, by which means they arrived like a funeral, nothing being discernible but the plumes of the Knights of the Bath, which seemed the hearse." Indeed, the whole was a comedy of errors, crowned by the historic apology of the Earl Marshal, Lord Effingham, in reply to the King's complaints: "It is true, sir, there has been some neglect, but I have taken care that the next coronation shall be regulated in the exactest manner possible."