The slow, hammer strike of Great Tom called the congregation to the cathedral to mourn.

Queen Elizabeth II’s was, Bishop Dr Steven Croft told the mourners, a reign that would be remembered for generations to come.

Preaching at a service of memorial and thanksgiving for the late monarch on Sunday, the bishop described Elizabeth II as having ‘carried our sense of national identity’.

“We know we have come to the end of this great Elizabethan age,” he said.

Earlier, as he welcomed the hundreds who packed the cathedral’s transepts, crossing, choir and nave, sub dean Richard Peers described the 800-year-old building as a place where life and death had passed for centuries.

The University’s Chancellor Lord Patten joined Marjorie Glasgow, the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, High Sheriff Mark Beard and the city’s Lord Mayor in a celebration of the late Queen’s reign.

Six faith leaders read poet laureate Simon Armitage’s poem, Floral Tribute, written to mark the monarch’s death. “Evening will come, however determined the late afternoon,” they began.

But it was the words of the Nunc Dimittis that Bishop Steven took as his text for his own tribute to Queen Elizabeth. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” he started.

He turned to the words of Philip Larkin who for her silver jubilee in 1977 described the then 51-year-old Queen as the ‘one constant good’.

The bishop said: “That stability remained as silver turned to gold and then to diamond and then, remarkably and uniquely, to platinum.

“Stability mingled with humility and courage and warmth and welcome and a beautiful smile and a keen sense of humour in this reign which will be remembered through many generations to come.”

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As the service ended, the voices of Christ Church’s cathedral choir – reunited after their long summer vacation - pressed against the whale bone-like vaulting of the historic cathedral.

Their rendition of God Save the King could be heard from outside the cathedral itself, competing only with the thump of Great Tom tolling the hour.

An hour earlier, the sound of the same bell had died away into a respectful silence.

Members of the Oxford Society of Change Ringers had taken shifts at pulling the cream-coloured rope to sound the six-and-a-quarter tonne bell.

The society’s Jonathan Cresshull said of ringing the famous bell: “It’s just a privilege. This is something that doesn’t happen that often.” On a clear day, the bell can be heard from as far away as Headington.

Members of the group had earlier taken on the feat of ringing a peal of Grandsire Triples at Merton College. The haunting sound of the fully muffled bells, rung with the clear tenor bell open every other stroke, lasted three-and-a-half hours.