By Frances Stebbins
{Frances Stebbins has been covering events in Western Virginia, especially those relating to faith communities, since 1953. Her column now appears monthly.}
Queen Elizabeth II has been gone from her throne now for a month, but the full TV coverage of the places she loved took me back 30 years to the five trips late husband Charlie and I made to her island kingdom.
We made these journeys over a 15-year period between Thanksgiving 1985 and the summer of 1999. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Charlie would not fly overseas; we satisfied our retirement years traveling by taking bus and a cross-nation train trip to various parts of the United States, touching all, I think, except Alaska.
Though we never went to Ireland, we saw the sights of London, rode east on the Thames River to Canterbury Cathedral , and on another excursion had a week in Aberdeen, Scotland. There we attended a morning service at the Scottish Episcopal Church.
{Though Scots are associated with Presbyterians, there are parishes affiliated with the Anglican Communion. Earlier we had worshiped at a Church of England service in London where we found the ritual only slightly different from that used by our Episcopal parish in Salem.}
As the British royal family escorted the late Queen from the Scottish estate where she died back to the official residence in London after the farewell ceremonies at St. Giles Cathedral, I recalled walking in Edinburgh what is known as “the Royal Mile.” I was reminded of my own heritage, for my great-grandmother, Jane Muir, had come from Scotland to Alexandria, Virginia, in the early years of the Nineteenth Century.
The man who became her husband, James Green, was a cabinet maker from Sheffield, England, who settled in Alexandria. Some 35 years ago with a cousin I visited the historic house where they raised a family.
My ancestral roots go deep and have made me an Anglophile, as was the mother who reared me, to love the island.
On our 1992 trip to Aberdeen, Scotland, I remember the heartfelt thrill I felt as our bus crossed over the border between England and Scotland.
On that same three-week visit to the United Kingdom, Charlie and I experienced a walk on Hadrian’s Wall, a futile effort by one of the later Roman emperors to shut out from the southern part of the country the folk who lived in the mountainous area of the Highlands and were regarded as un-Christian savages.
Seeing the small mountains and valleys of the Scottish Highlands, touched me too as the countryside looked so similar to our familiar mountain-valley landscape. It must have made those Eighteenth Century settlers in the New World feel much at home.
We took one 48-hour trip in January because our local air service at the time had a rock-bottom special on since the weather was cold and tourists were fewer. It was a novel experience being in England in winter with its infamous dampness and chill. We had time for only a small amount of sightseeing, but we took a suburban bus out to Canterbury Cathedral where I recall seeing the threshold worn down by centuries of pilgrims’ feet.
I recalled from my study of English history and literature that pilgrims have been making their way out to the great old church because it contains a shrine to a Medieval churchman who opposed his king. In those days more than 1,000 years ago such opposition could bring swift punishment, and soon Thomas Becket lost his life. The murder occurred in the cathedral.
The great poet of Medieval England, Geoffrey Chaucer, penned in verse an account of a group of pilgrims walking in spring to honor the martyred Thomas.
On my office wall hangs a small picture of a group of Canterbury pilgrims; I bought it on the winter trip.
On another trip, this one lasting a week and sponsored by one of the Episcopal seminaries, we visited a dozen “holy places.” They ranged from the huge stone pillars known as Stonehenge to the simple shrine of St. Julian of Norwich near the Scottish border.
We saw cathedrals like Winchester and St. Paul’s and historic churches such as Westminster Abbey that have been associated with the coronations and funerals of sovereigns for hundreds of years.
Though many events have left their mark on me in the ensuing decades, the pomp and circumstance of recent weeks has brought it all back.
