The Coronation Oath

Articles

The Coronation Oath Act 1688 (the 1688 Act) requires the sovereign to take an oath in the form prescribed in the Act. The 1688 Act has never been expressly amended but various constitutional statutes have effected amendments by implication. The oaths taken by our present Queen and her late father omit elements which have not been removed from the form of the oath by any legislation. The legality of the oaths thus taken is therefore questionable. The purpose of the present article is to examine: the original statutory authority for the oaths; how this has developed; the necessity of taking the oath in the prescribed form; and whether there are any provisions of law which might ameliorate the failure to adhere to that form.

THE STATUTORY AUTHORITY FOR THE OATHS

By section 3 of the 1688 Act the sovereign must answer three sets of questions:

Will You solemnely Promise and Sweare to Governe the People of this Kingdome of England and the Dominions thereto belonging according to the Statutes in Parlyament Agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same?

Will You to Your power cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be Executed in all Your Judgements.

Will You to the utmost of Your power Maintaine the Laws of God the true Profession of the Gospell and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law? And will You Preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of this Realme and to the Churches committed to their Charge all such Rights and Priviledges as by Law doe or shall appertaine unto them or any of them.

Following the answers, the monarch kisses the Bible having declared 'The things which I have here before promised I will performe and Keepe Soe help me God.'

DEVELOPMENT IN THE FORM OF THE OATH SINCE 1688

Lambeth Palace Library holds the service books used in coronations, with various manuscript amendments.¹From those it is possible to chart the amendments in the form of the oath administered from the coronation of Queen Anne to the present. There have been considerable textual amendments, all achieved without express amendment of the 1688 Act itself. It is not proposed to dwell on the amendments made throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but we...