page_title: Levee (ceremony)
section_title: Great Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Levee (ceremony) / History / Great Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of the Queen's Levee Room at St James's Palace. The aquatint engraving of this picture was published as plate 72 of W.H. Pyne (1819) The History of the Royal Residences
context_page_description: The levee was traditionally a daily moment of intimacy and accessibility to a monarch or leader. It started out as a royal custom, but, in British America, it later came to refer to a reception by the king’s representatives and, even later, by the president.
context_section_description: When the court of Charles II of England adopted the custom, first noted as an English usage in 1672, it was called a levée. In the 18th century, as the fashionable dinner hour was incrementally moved later into the afternoon, the morning reception of the British monarch, attended only by gentlemen, was shifted back towards noon.
  The practice of holding court levées was continued by the British Monarchy until 1939. These took the form of a formal reception at St James's Palace at which officials, diplomats, and military officers of all three armed services, were presented individually to the sovereign. Full dress uniform or court dress was worn by all participants, who formed a queue in the Throne Room before stepping forward when their names and ranks were called. Each then bowed to the king who was seated on a dais with male members of his family, officials of the Royal Household and senior officers behind him.
caption: Charles Wild (1816) St James's Palace, Queen's Levee Room
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