A Royal Return to Jamestown

In 1957, the queen and her husband came to the United States in mid-October. They visited Williamsburg and Jamestown -- the 350th anniversary of the 1607 landing was being celebrated -- Oct. 16.

In Washington, they were greeted by a million well-wishers who lined Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues in the rain and were hosted at the White House by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and first lady Mamie Eisenhower for four days.

They had lunch with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, went to a University of Maryland football game and visited a supermarket in West Hyattsville.

In New York, they were greeted by a million more people and a ticker tape parade Oct. 21.

Elizabeth had been queen for five years, since the death of her father, King George VI, on Feb. 6, 1952.

She was traveling in Africa when she learned the news: At 25, she had become the latest ruling descendant of Egbert, King of Wessex, and 40th English monarch since William the Conqueror.

But she was already well known from the years of World War II, when she and her family stayed in London during the Nazis' bombing blitz.

"She had this sort of image as a sweet young woman who did her duty," said Elisabeth Cawthon, an associate professor and expert in British constitutional history at the University of Texas at Arlington. "She and her parents had this image with the British public as sticking with them . . . [which] has remained in the British memory."

Elizabeth's coronation, as much fantasy as tradition, took place June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey. She signed her royal oath with a golden pen. She was anointed with the oil of musk and ambergris, scented with jasmine and cinnamon. She was given a ring of rubies and sapphires and a scepter set with a 500-carat diamond.

She rode with her husband in the four-ton, 192-year-old carriage.

Four years later, more confident, as the newspapers said, but still seeming so young for a queen, she chose Jamestown as her first stop on her first state visit to the United States as monarch.

She knew better than most, the British Embassy suggested last week, that the founding of the ragged outpost had proved as vital to Britain as to the United States.