LONDON: King Charles told parliament on Monday he was “resolved faithfully to follow” the example set by his mother Queen Elizabeth, addressing lawmakers and peers in what he described as “the living and breathing instrument of our democracy”.

At a ceremony in Westminster Hall, the oldest building on the parliamentary estate, Charles used his address to the upper and lower houses of parliament to pay tribute to his mother and to pledge to uphold the principle of constitutional government.

“While very young, Her late Majesty pledged herself to serve her country and her people and to maintain the precious principles of constitutional government which lie at the heart of our nation. This vow she kept with unsurpassed devotion,” he told the assembled lawmakers and peers.

“She set an example of selfless duty which, with God’s help and your counsels, I am resolved faithfully to follow.” The queen, aged 96, died at her home in Scotland on Thursday, setting in train a period of national mourning during which tens of thousands of Britons are expected to pay tribute to her.

Charles, quoting William Shakespeare’s description of Elizabeth I, said “she was ‘a pattern to all Princes living’.” The ceremony, where the speakers of the House of Lords and the House of Commons address the monarch either on their accession or at a jubilee, has taken place in the Palace of Westminster since Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

Queen Elizabeth came to Westminster Hall on her own Diamond Jubilee, and Monday’s ceremony took place in the light of a stained glass window installed on its north wall to mark that celebration in 2012.

John McFall, Lord Speaker, told Charles the queen had been “both a leader to, and servant of, her people.” Britain’s system of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy has operated since 1688, when parliament invited William of Orange to replace King James, establishing its primacy over the crown which monarchs since have had to respect.

Charles III accompanies queen’s coffin

A dog barking and sporadic gun salutes were among the only sounds as hushed crowds watched King Charles III on Monday lead his siblings in poignant procession behind their mother’s coffin through the historic heart of Edinburgh.

Well-wishers packed along the Scottish capital’s iconic Royal Mile, holding up their mobile phones in near-silence to film the hearse carrying Queen Elizabeth II as it crept out of Holyroodhouse Palace.

Kilted soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Scotland marched slowly alongside the casket — covered with a royal standard and wreath of white flowers — on the roughly kilometre-long (0.6-mile) journey to the 14th-century St Giles’ Cathedral.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2022