THE Prince of Wales personally ordered that his wedding be postponed for 24 hours yesterday when both the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury indicated that they would have to go to Rome rather than attend the blessing.

The delay will permit the Prince to join Mr Blair and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, at the Pope’s funeral on Friday morning.

The decision to postpone the royal wedding came after a series of consultations between Clarence House, Lambeth Palace, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. The Prince, who was on a skiing holiday in Klosters, also spoke with Mrs Parker Bowles, who agreed to the delay.

Buckingham Palace said that the Prince would be representing the Queen at the Vatican. “That must take priority,” a Palace spokeswoman said.

It was always the Queen’s wish that the Prince would represent her at the Vatican.

A spokesman for the Prince said: “He wanted to be seen to be sensitive about this. He wanted to attend the funeral as he had been scheduled to do.”

The Times has learnt that Dr Williams would have been in great difficulty if he could not go to Rome, according to a senior church source.

He will be the first serving Archbishop of Canterbury to attend the funeral of a pope since the English Church split with Rome at the Reformation in Henry VIII’s reign.

Tony Blair’s official spokesman said: “I think Clarence House was well aware of the significance of the Pope’s funeral and therefore that was part of its decision-making process.”

Once the Vatican announced the timing of the funeral, Clarence House had to concede that events in Rome must take priority over a wedding that has already been fraught with difficulties.

In what was another tumultuous day for the House of Windsor, Mrs Parker Bowles accompanied the Prince, who was representing the Queen, to Vespers at Westminster Cathedral yesterday in memory of Pope John Paul II.

The civil wedding ceremony will now take place at Windsor Guildhall at 9.30am on Saturday. The blessing in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, is expected to take place in the afternoon, possibly clashing with the Grand National.

The latest hitch in the plans for the royal wedding makes it the most accident prone in the long and colourful history of the House of Windsor.

When the Prince of Wales rose for breakfast yesterday at the hotel Walserhof in Klosters he was already preparing to change his wedding plans, even though Clarence House was insisting that there was no possibility of changing the date of the nuptials.

The first indication of a change of plan came when the Prince flew home early from his extended “stag weekend” in Switzerland with his two sons and closest friends to attend Vespers at Westminster.

Clarence House had maintained earlier that the presence of the Prince at yesterday’s ceremony was a sufficient act of respect from the Prince, who met the Pope with the Princess of Wales in Rome in 1985.

It was as Prince William and Prince Harry prepared to go out skiing — their holiday was not being affected by events in Rome — that the news flashed through, only minutes before the public announcement, that the funeral was on the same day as the wedding. The Princes return from Klosters today.

Clarence House had assumed that reports from the Vatican that the funeral would be on Wednesday or Thursday were accurate.

When a Vatican spokesman was asked yesterday about what bearing the royal wedding had had on deliberations about the timing of the funeral, he replied: “What wedding?” Clarence House swung into operation and telephone calls were made to Downing Street and Lambeth Palace. The answer was uncompromising. The Prime Minister would choose Rome over Windsor, as would the Archbishop.

The Prince of Wales telephoned Mrs Parker Bowles who was at Clarence House before he set off for the shortflight back to RAF Brize Norton on the Queen’s Flight.

They discussed postponing the wedding to Saturday or leaving it until after the general election expected on May 5.

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