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Britain says last farewell to Queen Elizabeth II and ‘end of an era’

The hourlong event inside Westminster Abbey, attended by 2,000 people, followed 11 days of national mourning and highly choreographed public ceremonies. Afterward, the queen's coffin, topped by symbols of state, made its slow procession through the streets of London on its way to Windsor for smaller ceremonies and interment later Monday.

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Her casket, which had lain in state in the Houses of Parliament for more than four days for hundreds of thousands of mourners to file past, was drawn on a gun carriage by an honor guard to the abbey, the ancient church where Elizabeth was married in 1947 and crowned in 1953. Among those walking behind the carriage were Charles, his sister and two brothers, and his two sons, Harry and William, who is now first in line to the throne. Eight pallbearers from the Queen's Company 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards took the coffin inside for the service, which began at exactly 11 a.m. when David Hoyle, the dean of the abbey, exhorted congregants to pray in "a church where remembrance and hope are sacred duties."