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THE ANCESTOR 223 rather say of 1838, for one cannot venture to guess at the condition in which the service will emerge, after being ground in the episcopal mill through which it is said to be passing. With all due respect be it said, recent efforts of Convocation in liturgical work are not such as to give us any confidence that the service will be improved. Mr. Eeles has produced an excellent and accurate handbook, which all should study who desire to know something about the coronation service. The first thing that strikes the future reader about Mr. Macleane's book is the beauty of the binding. Mr. Daven- port, in his note on the binding, says it is an accurate repro- duction of the original cover of George IV. 's letter in which he ' presented ' his father's library to the nation. The royal arms however have been altered and the royal initials have not been reproduced. But the gold border and the blue morocco make the volume look very handsome. Mr. Macleane has reprinted Queen Victoria's coronation and Queen Adelaide's, with notes ; and he has brought together in a very pleasant way much information on picturesque details at the different coro- nations, especially those of the eighteenth and nineteeth cen- turies. As to his account of the regalia we notice in one case that Mr. Macleane has been misled, probably by the tickets attached to the regalia at the Tower. On page 150 Mr. Macleane says that the ' ivory rod with the dove ' of the queen consort 'was lost for generations, but discovered in 18 14.' Now Taylor in his Glory of Regality (p. 67) and Mr. Daven- port in his English Regalia (s.v, the queen's sceptre with the dove) both say that it was not the ivory rod but the gold rod with the dove made for Queen Mary II. that was discovered in 1 8 14. This new rod had to be made because Queen Mary II. was not a queen-consort but a queen-regnant, and consequently the ivory rod of the queen-consort was not suit- able for her. As the queen-consort is a subject, and therefore in a position of inferiority to the sovereign, she has not hitherto sat on the same level or received the same ornaments as the king. To mark this difference the queen-consort, though she receives a crown and sceptre, is invested with no special robes, and has an ivory, not a gold, rod with a dove. The ivory rod, which is labelled at the Tower ' Queen Mary of Modena's,' as if it had only been used at her coronation in 1685, has, in fact, been used at the coronations not only of Queen Mary of Modena, but of Queens Caroline, Charlotte, and Adelaide. p