Lindsay Hoyle – 2022 Address to HM King Charles III

The address made by Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, to King Charles III at Westminster Hall on 12 September 2022.

Your Majesty,

Let me repeat our welcome to You, and to Her Majesty, the Queen Consort, on this solemn occasion.

Members of both Houses of Parliament gather here to express our deep sympathy for the loss we have all sustained in the death of our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth.

We have seen that this is a loss felt around the world. It is a loss to the United Kingdom, the overseas territories, the crown dependencies and the many countries over which she reigned. It is a loss to the entire Commonwealth, which she did so much to nurture. It is a loss to all of us.

But we know most of all it is a loss to You, Your Majesty, and to the Royal Family.

Newspapers have been filled with photographs of Her late Majesty since the news broke. The most touching have been those glimpses into the family life which were most usually kept sheltered from public view.

Deep as our grief is, we know Yours is deeper, and we offer our heartfelt sympathy to You and all the Royal Family.

We know that there is nothing we can say in praise of our late Queen – Your mother – that You will not already know. Over the past days Members of the House have spoken of their encounters with Queen Elizabeth. They have spoken of her sense of duty, her wisdom, her kindness and her humour. How she touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of their constituents in her visits to every part of the country Their words have been heartfelt.

She sat in this historic Hall, as You sit now, on many occasions. Some of those occasions were to celebrate milestones in her own reign. The addresses to celebrate her Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees shared a common thread: that our constitutional monarchy is a symbol of stability in an ever-changing world.

As Speaker Boothroyd said, Queen Elizabeth’s “wisdom and grace, […] demonstrated for all to see the value of a constitutional monarchy in securing the liberties of our citizens and the fundamental unity of this Kingdom and the Commonwealth.”

On other occasions our late Queen was here to mark historic moments such as the fiftieth anniversary of the second world war, a war in which she herself served in the armed forces. And in 1988 we celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the Revolutions of 1688 to 1689.

It is perhaps very British to celebrate revolutions by presenting an Address to her Majesty. But those Revolutions led to our constitutional freedoms and set the foundation for a stable monarchy which protects liberty. In Your first address to the nation, You recognised Your life would change as a result of your new responsibilities. You pledged Yourself to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.

These are weighty responsibilities. As the late Queen’s namesake, the earlier Queen Elizabeth, said in her final speech to parliamentarians:
“To be a king and wear a crown, is a thing more glorious to them that see it, than it is pleasant to them that bear it”

We know you hold in the greatest respect the precious traditions, freedoms and responsibilities of our unique history and our system of parliamentary government.

We know that You will bear those responsibilities which fall to You with the fortitude and dignity demonstrated by Her late Majesty. When the House met after the Accession Council yesterday my first, symbolic, Act was to make the oath to be faithful and bear true allegiance to Your Majesty, King Charles.

And so it is my duty to present our Humble Address to You, our new King, to express both our sorrow at the loss of our Sovereign Lady, and our confidence in the future, in Your Reign:

Most Gracious Sovereign,

We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, express the deep sympathy felt by this House for the great sorrow which Your Majesty has sustained by the death of the late Queen, Your Majesty’s mother; extend to all the Royal Family the deep sympathy of this House in their grief, which is shared by all its Members; assure Your Majesty that Her late Majesty’s unstinting dedication over a reign of over seventy years to the service of our great country and its people, and to the service of the countries and peoples of the rest of the wider Commonwealth, will always be held in affectionate and grateful remembrance; and express to Your Majesty our loyalty to You and our conviction that You will strive to uphold the liberties and to promote the happiness of the people in all Your realms now and in the years to come.