A PLAN for everyone across Britain to be asked to pledge aloud their allegiance to the King has been met with a backlash in Scotland.

Briefings reported in newspapers today said it was a move towards a more inclusive coronation service, with people watching the service on television encouraged to give their allegiance to Charles in a “homage of the people”.

While previous coronations included a “homage of peers”, next Saturday’s service will prompt everybody in Westminster Abbey and all those watching on TV at home or elsewhere to make the same promise to the new King, according to reports.

After Charles, 74, is crowned, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will invite the congregation — and an expected global audience of many millions — to pledge their allegiance with the words: “I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.”

Lambeth Palace spokesman said: “For the first time in history, a chorus of millions in this country and around the world will be invited to participate in this solemn and joyful moment [in a] great cry of support for the King.”

Scottish writers and commentators took to social media this morning to discuss the plan with many finding it strange.

"Are we just supposed to do it in the house? Around the table with the kids? Super-weird….."wrote Andy Maciver, a columnist for The Herald and a former head of communications for the Scottish Conservatives reacting to one newspaper report.
Responding to another front page article on the oath of allegiance, he wrote: "Emmmmm, we could do with not getting all North Korea about this….."

Kenny Farquharson, a columnist on The Times, wrote in response to a Mail on Sunday front page on the pledge: "Sorry, I’m washing my hair that night."

And to another headline that the nation is being "invited to chant for Charles", he wrote: "It gets worse".

Tom Collins, a former editor of The Irish News, who now lives in Scotland and continues to write regularly for the Belfast-based paper, wrote: "Big misstep imho [in my humble opinion."

SNP activist Tim Rideout wrote on Twitter: "Lets have a Republic instead."

The people’s homage will follow the moment Prince William kneels before his father to pledge: “I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you, and faith and truth I will bear unto you as your liegeman of life and limb. So help me God.”

The words echo those said by Prince Philip to Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation in 1953. William will also help clothe Charles in the robe royal, which represents what the sovereign has been given by God.

In what will be the most diverse coronation in history, the ceremony for Charles and Camilla will include female bishops and leaders of other faiths for the first time.

In another unprecedented move for a monarch, Charles will pray aloud.

Dunfermline Press:

First Minister Humza Yousaf, speaking in Holyrood, is due to attend the Coronation Ceremony.   Photo Gordon Terris/The Herald.

The two-hour service will also include languages spoken natively in the UK other than English for the first time, with a prayer in Welsh and a hymn, Veni, Creator, sung in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic.

The ceremony, which will be conducted by Mr Welby, 67, has taken months of planning, with the Archbishop in “close consultation” with Charles, the government and a coronation advisory group.

Prince Harry will have no official role in the ceremony, which his wife and children will not be attending.

The liturgy for Saturday’s ceremony was published last night by Lambeth Palace, with an overarching theme of “called to serve”. It includes several striking features not present in previous coronations, which Welby said “reflect the diversity of our contemporary society”.

Other breaks with tradition:
• Charles, who is head of the Church of England, will recite aloud a “King’s Prayer” written for the occasion. The prayer is inspired by the biblical language of Galatians 5 and the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country.
• The service will begin with Charles being greeted by one of the youngest members of the congregation, Samuel Strachan, 14, the longest-serving chorister of the King’s Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. Charles will respond: “I come not to be served but to serve.” The Chapel Royal choir dates back to the reign of Henry V and is made up of ten child choristers who are traditionally pupils of the private City of London School, where they receive a choral scholarship.
• Welby will invite the abbey’s congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer in their own preferred language, a moment likely to prove one of the more colourful in the service.
•Female clergy will also take part in the coronation. The Right Rev Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, will read from the Gospel of St Luke. Two other female bishops will assist Welby in administering communion to the newly crowned King and Queen.
• The archbishop will deliver a sermon midway through the service, the first time in more than 100 years that a sermon will be heard at a coronation. Welby, who has forged a close relationship with Charles, giving spiritual guidance before the coronation, is expected to address the theme of “loving service”. There was no sermon at the 1902 coronation of Edward VII, at the 1937 service for King George VI or at the coronation of the late Queen.
• Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first Hindu Prime Minister, will read from the Bible.
• In a final gesture that will reflect the religious diversity of Charles’s 15 realms, the ceremony will include a spoken greeting to the King, delivered in unison by faith leaders from Jewish (Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis), Hindu (Radha Mohan das), Sikh (Lord Singh of Wimbledon), Muslim (Aliya Azam) and Buddhist (the Most Venerable Bogoda Seelawimala) communities.