For about eight centuries — from the end of the 10th until the coronation of George IV in 1821 — the national importance of Oxford was recognised in an extraordinary way.
Mayors of the city attended coronations and then served as assistant butlers at the feast following the ceremony.
London and Winchester were the only other towns honoured in a similar way, with the mayor of the latter ceremoniously assisting the king’s cook, and the lord mayor of the former, together with Oxford’s mayor, assisting the Chief Butler (the Earl of Arundel since the late 14th century).
The elaborate ceremonial of the mayor kneeling before the new sovereign and humbly inviting him or her to take a drink seems to have lapsed with Queen Victoria’s accession — and William IV, her predecessor, simply refused to have an expensive feast; and was indeed only with difficulty persuaded to have a coronation at all.
But even Mayors of Oxford (they only became lord mayors in 1962) have continued to be invited to attend coronations even after their butling duties lapsed.
Alan Brock Brown (1911-1980) was Mayor of Oxford at the time of the coronation of Elizabeth II, 60 years ago this month. He was born in Australia. He attended Geelong Grammar School, and then won a place at New College, Oxford. After practising law back in New South Wales for a year he accepted a fellowship back at Worcester College.
Leonard Henry Alden (1873-1937), a member of the family that has run Alden’s butchers since the 18th century and has had a stall in the Covered Market since the early 19th century, attended the coronation of George VI in 1937.
Other colourful characters who have attended coronations as Mayors of Oxford include Walter Gray (1848-1918), a former porter with the Great Western Railway who went on to make a fortune by developing what is now North Oxford; and High Street grocer Robert Harrison (1646-1714) who served claret to King William and Queen Mary at their coronation in 1689 — and then caused the water conduit in Carfax to run with wine for the townspeople of Oxford to drink.
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