Britain said farewell to Queen Elizabeth II on Monday at a historic state funeral attended by world leaders, before a last ceremonial journey through London streets packed with sorrowful mourners. Huge crowds gathered to watch as the queen’s flag-draped coffin, topped with the Imperial State Crown, her orb and sceptre, was carried slowly to a gun carriage from parliament’s Westminster Hall where it had lain in state since Wednesday. To the tune of pipes and drums, the gun carriage — used at every state funeral since Queen Victoria’s in 1901 — was then drawn by 142 junior enlisted sailors in the Royal Navy to Westminster Abbey. The thousand-year-old church’s tenor bell tolled 96 times at one-minute intervals — one for every year of her life — and stopped a minute before the service began at 11:00 am (1000 GMT). In his funeral sermon, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby praised the queen’s life of duty and service to the UK and Commonwealth. “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer,” he told the 2,000 guests, who included US President Joe Biden and Japan’s Emperor Naruhito. The coffin was then borne, to the rhythmic strains of funeral marches, towards the queen’s final resting place at Windsor Castle, west of London. All along the route, a sea of arms were raised aloft, clutching mobile phones, to record the choreographed display of military precision. The last chants of “God save the queen” were heard as onlookers scattered flowers on the road, and muffled church bells rang in the distance. The queen — the longest-serving monarch in British history — died at Balmoral, her Scottish Highland retreat, on September 8 after a year of declining health. Her eldest son and successor, King Charles III, dressed in ceremonial military uniform, followed the solemn processions, alongside his three siblings. Charles’s eldest son Prince William accompanied them alongside William’s estranged brother, Prince Harry, and other senior royals. William’s two eldest children, George, aged nine, and Charlotte, aged seven, who are next in line to the throne, also followed behind the coffin in the abbey. Late Sunday, Charles, 73, and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla, 75, said they had been “deeply touched” by the public’s flood of messages. “I wanted simply to take this opportunity to say thank you,” he said. Britain, a country much changed since the queen’s coronation in the same abbey in 1953, has dug deep into its centuries of tradition to honour the only monarch that most of its people have ever known. “It’s once in a lifetime,” said student Naomi Thompson, 22, camped out in the crowds at London’s Hyde Park. “It’s a moment of history… She’s everyone’s granny,” said engineer Alice Garret, 28. John MacKinnon, a 49-year-old insurance broker from London, added: “I’m very glad that I was here. It’s wonderful to see how many people made it today. “The ceremony was perfect in every way,” he said. “Very spectacular, as it should be for a great queen.” Others unable to be in London gathered in cinemas and churches around England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to watch the service and procession on big screens. Auto engineer Jamie Page, a 41-year-old former soldier, stood on Whitehall to observe the funeral procession, wearing his military medals from service in the Iraq war. “Sixteen years old, I swore an oath of allegiance to the queen. She’s been my boss. She means everything, she was like a gift from God,” he said. But on Charles, the oldest person yet to ascend the British throne, Page added: “Who knows, time will tell.”