Queen Elizabeth II’s Coffin Arrives in London After Farewell in Scotland

The king and his wife, Camilla, the queen consort, visited Hillsborough Castle, the royal residence in Northern Ireland, and met with the leaders of the five main local political parties and British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris. They also attended a memorial service for the queen at St. Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast.

King Charles said he would follow his late mother’s example in her constant prayer for peace in a part of the U.K. that was long plagued by sectarian strife and today has an uneasy peace. The royal family was directly affected by the violence when the Irish Republican Army killed King Charles’s great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in a bomb attack in 1979.

“My mother felt deeply, I know, the significance of the role she herself played in bringing together those whom history had separated, and in extending a hand to make possible the healing of long-held hurts,” he said.

In his first days as monarch, King Charles has been visible and engaged. As he did a few days earlier at Buckingham Palace, he greeted well-wishers and shook hands outside Hillsborough Castle. Those kinds of gestures, a well as public sympathy over his mother’s death and blanket media coverage of the new king, have given him a boost in public opinion. A YouGov poll showed 63% of Britons saying he would make a good king, a big bump from 32% in May.

The queen’s coffin was flown to London and taken to Buckingham Palace later on Tuesday, as tens of thousands of people jammed the streets nearby. On Wednesday, the coffin will be taken atop a gun carriage to Westminster Hall, where the queen will lie in state for four days to give Britons and tourists alike a chance to say farewell to the nation’s longest-serving monarch.

Already, some in London were lining up outside Westminster on Tuesday to witness their share of history. U.K. officials warned that the lines could extend for miles and take up to 24 hours to make their way through. Train services said they would keep trains running overnight from other parts of the country to allow those living in other cities a chance to arrive in London. A state funeral planned for Monday is expected to draw a million people.

Some mourners in Scotland spent five hours or longer waiting in line and in some cases overnight to see the queen’s coffin. The line, in some cases seven or eight people wide, stretched for more than a mile in an event local officials said had no precedent. At dawn, the line was still an hour long.

Guards outside the cathedral told visitors that no food or drink was allowed inside. “Anyone want a pork pie?” asked one woman. Anything not eaten was put into overflowing trash cans. Guards also reprimanded people for taking out phones.

But as if with the snap of a finger, the frenzied mix of Scots and tourists muted themselves the moment they stepped into the ornate, warmly lighted cathedral where the queen’s body lay in rest.

People shuffled down both sides of the closed coffin. During one moment, two church officials in red vestments said a prayer that ended with “God bless the Queen.”

The coffin itself was elevated on a table or pedestal in the middle of the church, standing about 6 feet above the floor. It was draped in the mostly red-and-gold royal banner of Scotland. On top of the coffin sat a floral wreath, as well as the jeweled crown of Scotland.

In addition to the police officers that lined the aisles, four members of the Royal Company of Archers, the British monarch’s ceremonial bodyguards in Scotland, guarded the coffin. Each stood at a corner of the coffin, their heads slightly tilted toward the longbows they held in front of them, arrows tucked into the right side of their dark green tunics.

The crowd gazed at the coffin as they inched forward. One security guard on Monday night gently asked a woman who had stopped walking to move forward.

After hours of waiting, people spent perhaps three minutes in the cathedral. Once outside again, many of them did what they couldn’t do inside: They took out their phones and took a selfie.

—Max Colchester contributed to this article.

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com