First female Archbishop of Canterbury pays homage to King Charles in historic Buckingham Palace ceremony

Charles received the oath of allegiance from Dame Sarah Mullally on Wednesday, in which she acknowledged the King as the supreme governor of the Church of England.

Dame Sarah is the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church's history, after it was left vacant for about a year when Justin Welby announced he was to resign over failures in handling an abuse scandal.

She was confirmed in the post last month at a service in St Paul's Cathedral, and the royal ceremony comes ahead of her installation, or enthronement, at Canterbury Cathedral next month.

The King was pictured shaking hands with Dame Sarah before the oath was made.

Also present for the Homage to the Crown were the Lord Chancellor David Lammy and the Bishop of Hereford the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, who is the King's Clerk of the Closet.

As part of the private ceremony in the Chinese Dining Room, Dame Sarah will have knelt before the King and placed her hands together as if in prayer.

The King then takes her hands between his own. The Archbishop repeats, after the Lord Chancellor, the words of the Homage.

The King then directs the Lord Chancellor to issue the necessary Letters and Writs.

While the King is head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior bishop and the spiritual leader of the Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Dame Sarah said last month that she has had "encouraging" conversations with the King and that he is a "great supporter" of the institution and was "keen to hear from me about my vision".

She was pictured speaking to Charles at the end of January, after she delivered a Sunday sermon at a service on his Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

Before the St Paul's service, Dame Sarah said she hoped to lead with "calmness, consistency and compassion", in what she described as "times of division and uncertainty for our fractured world".

She was Bishop of London for almost a decade, and is also a former chief nursing officer for England, and was officially named in October as the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Clerk of the Closet, a role which dates back to the 1430s, is the head of the royal Ecclesiastical Household, with responsibility for 30 royal chaplains and whose duty it is to introduce new diocesan bishops to the monarch.

The job has an annual nominal salary of just £7.