Having thus spoken, the Queen desired that some of them would take the crown from off her head, but none would do it; she then called to Grave Tott and the Baron Steinberg, expressly commanding them to do it, but they refused, till again earnestly commanded by her; they then took the crown from off her Majesty’s head, and laid it down upon the fifth cushion on the table.  After that was done, some others, by her command, took off the royal robes with which she was clothed and laid them down upon the table.  Then the Queen, having thus divested herself of these ensigns of royalty and resigned her crown, being now in her private habit, made courtesy to the Prince and to the rest of the company, and retired into her own chamber,—­an act of a strange constancy and fixedness of resolution, going through with this great work of her own abdication without the least outward show of reluctancy for what she had done, but with the same behaviour and confidence as at all other times in her particular and private affairs.[314]

For this act of the Queen’s resignation they had no precedent; for the solemnity of the King’s coronation they had many; and the same is at large, with all the circumstances and ceremonies thereof, set down by one of their authors, Wexionius (Epit.  Descriptionis Sueciae, lib. v. c. 6), from which the ceremonies of this Coronation were not much different, and thus shortly related unto Whitelocke.

[SN:  Ceremony of the King’s coronation.]

After the Queen was withdrawn to her private chamber, the Ricks-officers and senators humbly desired the Prince that he would be pleased to walk to the Cathedral Church, where the Archbishop and other prelates were ready to attend his Royal Highness, and to perform the solemnities of his coronation.  The whole company went thither in this order.  The officers and servants of the Court went first in a very great number, together with many officers of the army and other gentlemen.  After them came the nobility, the gentlemen, barons, and earls, members of the Ricksdag; then followed the Ricks-Senators, two and two, in rank.  After them came the five Ricks-officers:  first, the Ricks-Schatzmaster, or High Treasurer, who carried the keys; next to him, the Ricks-Chancellor, who carried the globe; after him came the Ricks-Admiral, who carried the sceptre; then one in the place of the Feldherr, or General, who carried the sword; and lastly the Ricks-Droitset, or Chief Justice, who carried the crown.  After the Chief Justice came the King himself, in his ordinary habit, with a huge troop following him, and the windows and streets crowded with multitudes of people.  The guards and soldiers stood in their arms as the company passed by.