CORONATION

FROM THE 8TH

TO THE 21ST CENTURY

ROY STRONG

TO

THE DEAN AND CHAPTER

OF

WESTMINSTER

FROM

THEIR

HIGH BAILIFF

AND

SEARCHER OF THE SANCTUARY

2005

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

PREFACE

Prologue 1953

1 The Lord’s Anointed

2 King and Priest

3 Kingship and Consent

4 Sacred Monarchy

5 Crown Imperial

6 From Divinity to Destruction

7 From Reaction to Revolution

8 Insubstantial Pageants

9 Imperial Epiphanies

Epilogue 2005

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

CHRONOLOGY

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE

This book is a direct consequence of having the honour of holding the post of High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. It is a position lost in the mists of the medieval past when its orbit of activity was practical. Today the post, along with that of High Steward, is purely an honorary one – but not without purpose, for it enables the Dean and Chapter to draw into the Abbey’s service those who might bear witness to the faith it upholds and the ideals of the nation that it has come to epitomise. This book is my contribution.

It is a remarkable fact that the history of the English Coronation, particularly in the modern period, remains such a neglected field of study. The pioneer work remains Percy Schramm’s still magisterial study published in English in 1937. To that we must add the recent monumental and definitive catalogue of the Crown Jewels in two vast volumes in a limited edition and hence inaccessible to the general public. The present book sets out to remedy that lack by providing both for the general and more specialised reader the first overall documented history of the Coronation in a single volume.

The need for such a publication is an urgent one as another Coronation will sooner or later take place. In researching and writing this book I have been struck by the widespread ignorance as to the nature of this ancient rite, au fond a foundation stone of the British state and a bulwark against its total secularisation. It is no empty pageant but one that, like so many other historic customs and institutions under attack today which some wish cheerfully to sweep away, has proved itself amazingly flexible over the centuries. Any nation calls for rites of passage and the Coronation, with its central concept of setting a single human being apart by dint of anointing with holy oil as the embodiment of both crown and nation, is the greatest of them all.

I began my scholarly life almost half a century ago working under the late Dame Frances Yates on Elizabethan court pageantry. At the time I confess to finding Coronations dull and, I thought, merely repetitious. How wrong I was! Researching this book has been one long revelation as the ceremonial inaugurating a new reign gradually revealed its ability to respond to and reflect every theological, political, social and cultural nuance over the centuries.

I do not claim to have written the last word on this subject. Who could? But I have opened up a topic that in some areas has already attracted fine scholarly contributions. My debt to those scholars, particularly those working on the early and medieval periods, I acknowledge with gratitude. One of the problems of working on this subject is the sheer quantity of the manuscript and printed material, so much that inevitably at some point a line firmly had to be drawn or else the book would never have been finished and the result would have been unwieldly. What is new is the attempt throughout to draw the camera’s lens back and place what can all too easily become an antiquarian account of a series of isolated pageants into the wider perspective of what those involved at the time were setting out to achieve.

Coronation could not have been written without recourse to manuscript material. In the case of the early, medieval and Tudor periods that has been fairly fully explored. It is the material for the modern period which has largely gone without investigation and it is that which in the main has preoccupied me. I cannot express my gratitude enough for the graciousness extended to me at all the archives explored to write this book: the College of Arms, the British Library, Westminster Abbey Muniments, Lambeth Palace Library, St John’s College, Cambridge and the Public Record Office. In the case of the last I am grateful to R. W. O’Hara who, under my direction, worked through the material there. From the outset, thanks to the enthusiastic support of Garter King of Arms, I was given unfettered access to the huge collections in the College. Robert Yorke, their librarian, saw that, each time I went, everything I asked for was to hand. Equally Dr Richard Mortimer and Dr Tony Trowles saw that I was fed with the plethora which exists in the Abbey. At St John’s College, Cambridge, I was looked after by Jonathan Harrison, the Special Collections Librarian.

The advent of the information technology revolution truly also facilitates far speedier research. The ability to consult the British Library catalogue online and so much of its manuscript holdings remains a constant source of wonder to me. What has also speeded research is that splendid British Library resource, Articles Direct, from their supply centre at Boston Spa.

I cannot list nor remember now everyone who has helped me on my way but I record my gratitude to the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Luce, who welcomed this project which meant that, with the gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen, I was given free access to all the material at the College of Arms, in particularly that connected with 1953. Amongst others who have assisted I record: Dr Andrew Hughes (University of Toronto), Dr Simon Thurley (English Heritage), John M. Burton (Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey), Professor David Sturdy (University of Ulster), Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig, Clare Browne (Victoria & Albert Museum), Dr Richard Barber, Daniel McDowell, The Hon. Lady Roberts (Royal Archives, Windsor Castle), and Anna Keay (English Heritage). Particular gratitude is owed to the Very Revd Dr Wesley Carr, Dean of Westminster, for reading the closing chapters and making several pertinent suggestions.

I am one of those authors who rather depends on an inspired and committed editor who is prepared, which is unusual, to read what I write as I go along. In Arabella Pike I had just that. Once finished a book passes into the hands of the publication team whom I would like also to thank, in particular the designer Vera Brice. She has had to cope with the decision, a welcome one, that this book should incorporate what in effect is the largest visual archive on the topic.

ROY STRONG

The Laskett

June 2005

PROLOGUE 1953

On my dressing table rests a small leather box with a lid embossed in gold with a stylised crown and below it the date 1953. The graphics are unmistakably of the period we associate with the Festival of Britain, which indeed opened only two years before. At the time I was coming up to being seventeen and in the sixth form of Edmonton County Grammar School sited on the fastnesses of the North Circular Road. The box was a gift to every boy in the school on the occasion of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In it we were to keep our shirt studs, a fact which immediately dates the object to a now vanished sartorial era. The object is as fresh as the day on which I received it and I keep it to hand to remind me of my earliest memory of real spectacle, as I was one of the two young people from my school selected to be bussed into central London on the great day to stand on the Victoria Embankment and watch the great procession make its way to Westminster Abbey. The date was 2 June 1953.

The fact that it was the forward and not the return procession that I saw turned out to be a stroke of luck, for it enabled me to return home in time to watch most of the coronation on television. The arrival of that in the sitting room of the north London terraced house in which I grew up was another major event. But to return to the morning. That I recall as being a grey one, but then at that age just about everything I could remember had been grey, for the coronation was just eight years on from the end of the war, one which had reduced the country to penury. The capital still visibly wore the monochrome robes of that conflict, enlivened on the day by the splashes of colour of the street decorations and by the tiny red, white and blue Union flags which we clutched and waved.

It was a long wait and, as I was not tall, my chances of seeing anything were not that great. Nonetheless, there was the thrill of anticipation as a military band was heard from afar and then the great procession unfolded. I do not think that I ever saw more than the top half of a horse and rider. No matter, for two images stick in mind, ones shared at the time by millions of others. The first was an open carriage over which the capacious figure of Queen Salote of Tonga presided, beaming and waving to everyone in a manner which won all hearts. The second, of course, was the encrusted golden coach in which the Queen rode with the Duke of Edinburgh. It must have been lit from within for the Queen’s smiling features and the glitter of her diamonds remain firmly fixed in my memory.

Subsequent to that there were the pictures on the tiny television screen, hypnotic, like some dream or apparition, certainly images enough to haunt a stage-struck and historically inclined youth for the rest of his life. But I add to that the subsequent film of the coronation, for there it was on the large screen in colour, never to be forgotten, glittering, glamorous, effulgent. This was the England I fell in love with, a country proud of its great traditions and springing to life again in a pageant that seemed to inaugurate a second Elizabethan age. This was a masque of hope, a vision to uplift the mind after years of drear deprivation.

In retrospect I had seen part of what is now recognised to have been the greatest public spectacle of the twentieth century. What I was not to know was that this impoverished child in his dreary navy-blue blazer, cheap grey flannel trousers and black and gold school tie was to stand, half a century on, resplendent in scarlet and black in my role as High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, along with the whole college, to welcome the Queen at the great service which commemorated her coronation.

It is now all so long ago that most readers may well ask what is a coronation? Where did such an extraordinary ceremonial come from? What formed and shaped it over the centuries? And how can such a pageant ever have any relevance to the Britain of the twenty-first century? When I last visited the crown jewels in the Tower of London, part of that display was a projection of the film of the coronation. Looking at it, I could not believe that such a thing had been staged in the second half of the twentieth century and, equally, I could not help wondering whether one would ever be staged again. But then that was a viewpoint which sprang from ignorance, unaware of the rich resonances of the ritual or its deep significance in terms of the committal of the monarch to the people. It was questions like these that prompted me to write this book, launching me on a voyage that proved to be one of constant surprise. Amongst many other things it was to reveal the coronation as the perfect microcosm of a country that has always opted for evolution and not revolution. But I must begin at the beginning, and that takes us back not just centuries but no less than a thousand years.

1 The Lord’s Anointed

THE EARLIEST ACCOUNT of an English Coronation comes in a life of St Oswald, Archbishop of York, by a monk of Ramsay, written about the year 1000.¹ He describes how, in the year 973, Edgar (959–75) ‘convoked all the archbishops, bishops, all great abbots and religious abbesses, all dukes, prefects and judges, and all who had claim to rank and dignity from east to west and north to south over wide lands’ to assemble in Bath. They gathered, we are told, not to expel or plot against the king ‘as the wretched Jews had once treated the kind Jesus’, but rather ‘that the most reverent bishops might bless, anoint, consecrate him, by Christ’s leave, from whom and by whom the blessed unction of highest blessing and holy religion has proceeded’. The text refers to the King as imperator, emperor, for by that date he was not only ruler of Mercia but also of Northumbria and of the West Saxons. Edgar had assumed the imperial style by 964, by which time his several kingdoms also included parts of Scandinavia and Ireland. This was a king who had come to the throne at the age of sixteen and was to die at 32. His reign was Anglo-Saxon England at its zenith, an age of peace and an era when, under the aegis of great churchmen, headed by Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, a radical reform of the Church was achieved. Bath, the Roman Aquae Sulis, the place chosen for the King’s Coronation, even in the tenth century and in spite of all the barbarian depredations, would still have been a city which retained overtones of its past imperial grandeur, a setting fit for its revival by a great Saxon King.

The day chosen for the event was Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Spirit. Edgar, crowned with a rich diadem and holding a sceptre, awaited the arrival of a huge ecclesiastical procession, all in white vestments: clergy, bishops, abbots, abbesses and nuns, along with those described as aged and reverend priests. The King was led by hand to the church by two bishops, probably ones representing the northern and southern extremities of his realm, the bishops of Chester-le-Street (later to become the mighty palatine see of Durham) and of Wells. In the church the great lay magnates were already assembled. As the splendid procession wound its way from exterior secular and into interior sacred space the anthem Firmetur manus tua was sung: ‘Let thy hand be strengthened, and thy right hand be exalted, Let justice and judgement be the preparation of thy seat, and mercy and truth go before thy face.’ Here in the open air had already begun that great series of incantations to the heavens to endue this man with the virtues necessary for the right exercise of kingship.

On entering the church Edgar doffed his crown and prostrated himself before the altar while the Archbishop of Canterbury, St Dunstan, perhaps the greatest figure in the history of the Anglo-Saxon church, intoned the Te Deum, that majestic hymn of praise to God in which ‘all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein’ and in which petition is made to ‘save thy people and bless thine heritage. Govern them and lift them up for ever.’ That prostration was an act of self-obliteration, for what was enacted before those assembled was the ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’ of a man who was to leave the church fully sanctified and endowed with grace by Holy Church as a king fit to rule. St Dunstan was so moved by the king’s action that he wept tears of joy at his humility. But such a rebirth is not bestowed without conditions, and so the great ceremonial opened with an action which was to set the English Coronation apart from any other and also account for its extraordinary longevity.

The promissio regis, the Coronation oath, consisted of what were known as the tria praecepta, three pledges by the King to God. First, ‘that the Church of God and all Christian people preserve peace at all times’, secondly, ‘that he forbid rapacity and all iniquities to all degrees’ and, finally, ‘that in all judgments he enjoin equity and mercy …’ These came in the form of a written document, whether in Latin or the vernacular is unknown, which was delivered to the King by Dunstan and then placed on the altar. The archbishop then administered the oath to the King seated. We do not know whether the oath was sworn aloud by the King to the assembled clergy and lay magnates. Logic would suggest that this happened. The placing of the tria praecepta at the opening of the Coronation service remained through the centuries one of the defining documents as to the nature of the monarchy. Monarchy in England never became, as it did in France, absolute. It always remained conditional upon being faithful to the three pledges given in the oath, to maintain peace, administer justice and exercise equity and mercy.²

That done, the action moved on to the bestowal of unction, the anointing of the King’s head by the bishops (whose identities are not given, but presumably were the Archbishops of Canterbury and York) with holy oil, chrism, a fragrant mixture of oil and balsam, poured from an animal’s horn. In this ritual occurred the sacred moment of rebirth, one accompanied by a succession of prayers invoking the Kings of the Old Testament as exemplars of the virtues to be granted through this action, recalling also those kings, prophets and priests who had been similarly anointed and calling upon the Holy Spirit to descend and sanctify Edgar in the same way. Following this, the most solemn moment of the whole Coronation service, came the anthem Unxerunt Solomonem: ‘Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King; and they blew the trumpets, and piped the pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth rent with the sound of them; and they said, “God save King Solomon. Long live the King, may the King live for ever.”’ All of this, for over a thousand years, has been re-enacted at every Coronation, although ennobled since the eighteenth century by Handel’s radiant and triumphant music. It is extraordinary to grasp that its roots lie as far back as the last quarter of the tenth century. Nor has the ritual of investiture which followed changed that much. Upon Edgar were bestowed the following regalia: the ring, ‘the seal of holy faith’; the sword by which to vanquish his enemies, the foes of Holy Church, and protect the realm; the ‘crown of glory and righteousness’; the sceptre, ‘the sign of kingly power, the rod of the kingdom, the rod of virtue’; and the staff or baculus ‘of virtue and equity’. A Mass followed and, after the whole ceremony was over, those assembled moved again from sacred to secular space where a great feast was held. Edgar, wearing a crown of laurel entwined with roses, sat enthroned, flanked by the two archbishops, presiding over a banquet of the great magnates. Elsewhere his Queen held court over a parallel one for abbots and abbesses. This description in the life of St Oswald is detailed enough to establish that the text or ordo used was that known as the Second Recension, a consideration of which I will come to later in this chapter. That scholars have established this to be the case means that we can deduce that Edgar’s Queen must also have been crowned, although the Monk of Ramsay does not refer to the fact, for the ordo includes prayers for this which permit her to be anointed like her husband but only allow for investiture with two ornaments, a ring and a crown.

So much for what we do know about the 973 Coronation, but there is much that we do not. We do not know where the action was staged or anything about the gestures used, the vestments worn, the appearance of the regalia or the music sung. There is also the puzzling fact that, although Edgar had been a king since 957, he waited until 973 for his Coronation. Some scholars argue that he had undergone an earlier ceremony of blessing and unction and that this one was to mark his ascendancy to imperial status, while others maintain that his humility was such that he deliberately waited until he reached thirty, the canonical age a man could be made a bishop and also about the age when Christ was baptised and began his ministry (Luke 3: 23).

What is in no doubt, however, is that this spectacle was the apogee of his reign, designed to mark Edgar’s imperial status and blaze it abroad both in his own country and on the Continent. Shortly after that he received the homage of his subject kings, who symbolically rowed him from his palace to the church at Chester while he tended the prow. The Coronation was also an outward manifestation of Edgar’s commitment to the reform movement associated with Archbishop Dunstan, which introduced new rules to govern monastic life based on those used on the Continent at the great abbey of Cluny. So the Coronation ordo enshrined a vision of the English monarchy which reflected that role, one which owed its debt to continental exemplars, the king cast as rector et defensor ecclesiae. Time and again this ordo, the Second Recension, draws out, by means of symbolism and doxology, the parallel between kingship and episcopacy. This was emphasised in the choice of the day for the ceremony, one on which the Holy Spirit descended giving the Apostles the grace to carry out their task. What is astonishing to a modern reader is that here already at such a very early date are virtually all the elements of our present Coronation ceremony as it was last enacted in 1953 for Elizabeth II. The fact that these same elements could be used again and again through the centuries and continue to be responsive to the ideas and aspirations of far different eras is a gigantic index as to just how flexible the English Coronation ceremony continues to be. As a consequence, apart from the papacy, no other inauguration ritual can boast such longevity. Such rituals should not be lightly dismissed as so much insubstantial pageantry. They are powerful icons in which a society enshrines its identity and its continuity. The importance of them has been admirably summed up by Meyer Fortes:

The mysterious quality of continuity through time in its organisation and values, which is basic to the self-image of every society, modern, archaic, or primitive, is in some ways congealed in these installation ceremonies … Politics and law, rank and kinship, religious and philosophical concepts and values, the economics of display and hospitality, the aesthetics and symbolism of institutional representation, and last but not least the social psychology of popular participation, all are concentrated in them.³

When Edgar was crowned, such a rite of inauguration in some form had been in existence in Anglo-Saxon England for over a century. How did such a thing come about and whence did it come? To answer that I must widen our camera’s lens to take in the fate of Western Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise in its place of the barbarian kingdoms and the establishment as a consequence of the role of the Church as the bestower of legitimacy on dynasties by dint of the rite of unction.

THE IDEA OF UNCTION

What is unction and how did it come to occupy such a central position in king-making?⁴ The first question is a relatively simple one to answer, the second far more complex. Unction was the application to a modern ruler of a ritual recorded in the Old Testament, the anointing of a chosen leader with holy oil. In the First Book of Samuel the elders ask the prophet to choose a king for them who will act both as their judge and their leader in war. Samuel chose Saul. ‘Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?’ (I Samuel 10:1).

Later in the same book Samuel is led to choose Saul’s successor and the ritual is re-enacted: ‘Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward’ (I Samuel 16:13).

Even more important was the precedent set by David’s son, Solomon, always cast as the ideal king. In the First Book of Kings David summons Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet and Benaiah, the son of the chief priest, and orders them to mount his son, Solomon, on David’s own mule and bring him down to Gihon: ‘And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there King over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet, and say, God save King Solomon. Then ye shall come up after him, that he may come and sit upon my throne; for he shall be king in my stead’ (I Kings 1: 34–5).

They did what was commanded of them: ‘And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save King Solomon’ (I Kings 1: 39; I Chronicles 29: 22–3).

In these biblical passages virtually all the elements which were to constitute the early Coronation ceremonies are already there: the selection of a king, his anointing with holy oil by a priest, his acclamation by the people and his enthronement. The Old Testament was equally specific as to the effects of anointing. In the case of Saul, ‘And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man’ (I Samuel 10: 6).

In New Testament terms it was an outward action representing an inward descent upon the King of the Holy Spirit. Collectively it was from the application of these texts to the task of king-making in the seventh and eighth centuries that the earliest ordines were to emerge.

But there is a huge time lapse between those Old Testament rulers and the earliest application of unction to the barbarian kings. That bridge can be crossed by the continuing role played by sacred oils in the life of the Early Church. The Old Testament did not only provide precedents for the anointing of kings, it also gave ones for the anointing of priests as well as artefacts connected with worship. God commanded Moses to prepare the holy oil of anointing for hallowing the tabernacle, ark, table, vessels and altar for the ritual of worship and also for anointing Aaron and his sons as priests (Exodus 29:7–8; Leviticus 8:10–12). As a consequence holy oil was used at the consecration of churches and altars and in the ordination of both bishops and priests.

The most important of all the holy oils was chrism, a mixture of olive oil and balsam which was used in the Early Church in the rite of baptism and confirmation.⁵ The word chrism itself was a Greek rendering of the Hebrew word for the holy oil of anointing. The exotic fragrance and richness of chrism opened it up to early writers bestowing on it an allegorical significance as embodying the fullness of sacramental grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit with the sweetness of Christian virtue. Only the pope and the bishops could consecrate holy oils, an event which took place annually at the solemn Mass on Maundy Thursday from at least as early as the fifth century. One oil was without the addition of balsam. This was used for anointing the sick, for extreme unction and for other uses by the faithful. The other was chrism, used at baptism and confirmation. Both forms of oil are integral to the history of the Coronation, for although initially kings were to be anointed with chrism, gradually that right was withheld as the Schoolmen were to argue that chrism was a purely ecclesiastical institution whose use should be confined to the ordination of bishops and priests and not for royal unction.

One final fact. Although oil was native to the Mediterranean cultures, to the Northern barbarian tribes it was a luxury item, rare, costly and exotic. Within this context it is hardly surprising that oil became viewed as a potent substance capable of solving every difficuty. When the pope bestowed unction on the first Carolingian King Pepin in 751 it was done not only in the context of Old Testament exemplars, but also in the light of people’s knowledge of and confidence in the efficacy of holy oil in relation both to the sacraments and to bodily healing.

That a rite of anointing kings with holy oil emerged between the seventh and eighth centuries came directly out of the Christianisation of the barbarian kingdoms.⁶ With the final dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 there evolved in its place the imperium christianum presided over by the pope. That spiritual empire was to assume a temporal dimension thanks to the Donation of Constantine, a forgery datable to 752–7, a document which purported to declare Pope Sylvester I (314–5) and his successors rulers not only of Italy but of all the provinces which had once made up the Roman Empire in the West. This, in effect, cast the popes into the role of king-makers, one which they were able to exercise through the introduction of the rite of unction as barbarian kings converted and sought divine sanction for their kingship. As pagans they had claimed descent from the gods. Now they were endowed with a new kind of divinity as ‘the Lord’s anointed’ (I Samuel 26:11), a phrase which was rendered in the Vulgate version of the Bible as Christus Domini, employing the Greek word ‘christos’ meaning anointed, which, in the Middle Ages, was seen as the origin of the name of Christ.

The bestowal of unction was the prerogative of the Church which, although through its role it established a ruler as being sacred and set apart from ordinary mortals, simultaneously demonstrated that that could only be done thanks to their access to supernatural forces. In this way regnum was to be subject to sacerdotium in the medieval scheme of things. It was the pope and bishops who controlled and compiled the anointing rituals or ordines, filling them with prayers framing a vision of monarchy as they conceived it. That is vividly caught in the anointing prayer composed by Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims (c.806–82), Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, for the Coronation of Louis the Stammerer in 877, one which was to be incorporated into virtually every Coronation ordo thereafter: ‘Almighty eternal God … we ask thee to attend to the prayers of our humility and to establish this thy servant in the high rulership of the kingdom, and anoint him with the oil of the grace of thy Holy Spirit wherewith thou hast anointed those priests, kings, prophets, and martyrs who through faith conquered kingdoms, worked justice, and obtained thy promises.’⁷

In this Holy Church invoked the descent of the Holy Spirit on to the candidate for kingship, making him a new man, transmitting through anointing the divine grace by which alone he would be able to fulfil his royal ministerium as defender of the Church. In this manner kingship became an office within the Church without bestowing on it any priestly status, or at least not at the outset. Only as the rite of Coronation developed and spread would the theocratic priestly view of kingship threaten to shatter this relationship of Church and State.

All of this could be grafted with ease on to any secular ceremony of installation which already existed within the pagan tradition. So the earliest ordines progress without difficulty from unction to the handing over to the King of royal insignia, initially jointly by both principes and pontifices, but soon after by the latter only. These could include items which may well have been part of any pre-Christian installation ceremony, ones like a sceptre or a long rod or baculus. One certain link with the pagan past was the placing of a galea or helmet on the King’s head, which was only replaced by a crown in the tenth century. But the falling into place of all these elements into a common pattern was a gradual process involving several areas of Western Europe: Visigothic Spain, early Capetian France, Anglo-Saxon England and Celtic Ireland. It is to a consideration as to how these various strands eventually came together that we must now turn.

THE ADVENT OF CORONATIONS

One of the earliest references to royal unction comes in a life of the Celtic saint, Columba, written by Abbot Adoman of Iona (679–704).⁸ The monastery of Iona was the great centre of Celtic Christianity, a major seat of learning with daughter houses in Scotland and the north of England, so its influence spread wide. In his life of the saint the abbot recounts the story of Columba’s anointing of Aidan mac Gabrain as King of Dalriada in the late sixth century:

Concerning an angel of the Lord, who appeared in a vision to Saint Columba, then living in the island of Hinba; and who was sent to bid him ordain Aidan as king.

At one time, while the memorable man was living in the island of Hinba, he saw one night, in a trance of the mind, an angel of the Lord, who had been sent to him, and who had in his hand a glass book of the ordination of kings. And when the venerable man had received it from the hand of the angel, by the angel’s command he began to read it. But when he refused to ordain Aidan as king, according to what was commanded him in the book, because he loved Iogenan, Aidan’s brother, more, the angel suddenly stretched out his hand and struck the holy man with a scourge, the livid scar from which remained on his side all the days of his life. And the angel added these words, saying: ‘Know surely that I am sent to you by God, with the book of glass, in order that, according to what you have read in it, you shall ordain Aidan to the kingship. But if you refuse to obey this command, I shall strike you again.’

So when this angel of the Lord had appeared on three successive nights with the same book of glass in his hand, and had charged him with the same commands of the Lord, for the ordaining of the same king, the holy man submitted to the word of the Lord. He sailed over to the island of Io, and there, as he had been bidden, he ordained as King Aidan, who arrived about that time. And among the words of the ordination he prophesied future things of Aidan’s sons, and grandsons, and great-grandsons. And laying his hand upon Aidan’s head he ordained and blessed him.⁹

Scholarly debate concludes that such an anointing never actually took place, but, on the other hand, the text can be taken as sure evidence of a strong desire by the abbots of Iona that they should consecrate the Dalriada kings. And in order to achieve that St Columba was cast in retrospect as the reincarnation of the Old Testament prophet Samuel. The text would also indicate that by the close of the seventh century such a book with a rite for unction actually existed. As a whole the episode worked, too, from an important premise: the assertion that the Church had a key role to play in king-making.

Within the Celtic world the next appearance of royal unction is in the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis (c. 690–725), in which there is a chapter headed ‘De ordinatione regis’ with a text which implies that anointing was part of the action. The world of seventh-and eighth-century Ireland was a turbulent one with up to one hundred and fifty kings at any one time and no automatic right of succession. The introduction of unction fulfilled the twofold purpose of increasing the influence of the Church and, at the same time, stabilising disputes over succession.

Much the same motives prompted its introduction in Visigothic Spain in 672. In this case it was the further legitimisation of an elected ruler, Wamba, who received unction in the royal city of Toledo as a sign that his kingdom had been bestowed by God. But by far the most important anointing was that of Pepin, the first Carolingian king of West Francia, in 751. Pepin brought to an end the rule of the Merovingian kings, seeking sanction for his action from the pope. This was a step in terms of power politics both in the interests of the new dynasty and of the papacy during precisely the years when the Donation of Constantine was forged. Unction under the aegis of the pope not only enhanced the mystique of the new dynasty but, by implication, cast the Franks as Israel reborn, the chosen people of God.¹⁰

As a consequence the second half of the eighth century saw an ever-escalating interplay between the papacy and the Carolingians. In the winter of 753 Pope Stephen II (752–7) crossed the Alps to reanoint Pepin and anoint his two sons. Charlemagne’s sons were anointed in Rome in 781 and 800. In the former year Pope Adrian I (772–95) made two of Charlemagne’s sons, Carloman King of Italy and Louis King of Aquitaine. But more important than any of these was what took place in Rome on Christmas Day 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor by placing a crown on his head. With that act arrived the second central symbolic action of any Coronation, the bestowal of a crown.¹¹

Arguments about that Coronation and what it signified continue, but no one demurs from the fact that by crowning Charlemagne the pope was introducing a rite which was associated with the Byzantine emperors. It was also one, like anointing, with a firm biblical basis. In the Second Book of Samuel an Amalekite brings David the crown and bracelet of Saul: ‘and I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them hither unto my lord’ (II Samuel 1:10). Even more graphic is the account of the crowning of Joash by the chief priest: ‘And he brought forth the king’s son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony; and they made him king, and anointed him; and they clapped their hands, and said, God save the King’ (II Kings 11: 12).

Crowns had no role in barbarian installation ceremonies which could involve instead, as did the Anglo-Saxon ritual, the placing of a galea or helmet on the elected ruler’s head. In the Eastern Empire, however, the crown had been adopted as early as the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century as a symbol of his regality and vice-regency of Christ on earth. The first Byzantine emperor to be crowned by a patriarch was Leo I in 457 and the first to be crowned in a church was Phocas (602–10), but only from the second half of the seventh century did all this come to rest in the great church of Hagia Sophia.¹² In 800, therefore, the pope did what had become the norm for the patriarch, crown an emperor, only this time one of the West. The people present all acclaimed Charlemagne as ‘Augustus, crowned by God, Emperor of the Romans’. Thereafter crowns, in the case of the Holy Roman Emperors as often as not donated by the popes themselves, ousted helmets as Kings in the West opted for the style a Deo coronatus. In 816 yet another pope crossed the Alps, this time to crown Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, emperor in a ceremony which, for the very first time, brought together unction and crowning within a single ritual.

All of this represented the redefinition in the West of kingship as an office, one whose remit was defined by the Christian Church and its clergy. It was they who composed the rituals which turned king-making into a liturgical rite in which the central act was anointing, preceded by an agreement of conditions formulated in an oath and followed by investiture with regalia and enthronement. That this development gained momentum was due to two factors. One was that primogeniture was unknown at that date. The most suitable candidate for ruler was chosen from within a royal family by a process of election by the principes. This secular side of king-making did not suddenly vanish with the advent of Coronation rites. Each Coronation was always prefaced by certain rituals which took place in secular space, generally in the palace. It usually involved election and an enthronement. We know little about such happenings because, unlike the Coronation in church, there was no tradition of compiling an ordo. The second reason why clerics came to play such a key role was that it was precisely during this period that they began to occupy a major part in the running of any state. In England, for instance, from as early as the reign of Athelstan (924–39) the king’s council had at its core a group of bishops who were in constant attendance on the king and were crucial players in both the legislative and administrative process.

It was inevitable that sooner or later these new king-making ceremonies would call for being codified in written form. Special ordines first emerge during the eighth century in West Francia, the result of two personalities, Charles the Bald (823–77), King of West Francia and subsequently Holy Roman Emperor, and Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims (845–82), his principal councillor. The latter is generally acknowledged as being responsible for the compilation of the four earliest ordines, including those for the 13-year-old Judith on her marriage to Æthelwulf, King of Wessex, in 856 and for Charles’s son Louis the Stammerer as King of Lotharingia in 869. These Frankish ordines were to be heavily drawn upon by those who compiled the ones for the Anglo-Saxon kings.

ANGLO-SAXON CORONATIONS

The Anglo-Saxons were made up of a mixture of tribes who came from an area of the Continent stretching from between the mouths of the rivers Rhine and Elbe. They began first to attack England from the third century on and then, by the middle of the fifth, decided to settle. By the close of the following century they had carved the country up into a series of petty kingdoms, each with its own royal family. The Anglo-Saxons were pagan, but during the seventh century were Christianised in the aftermath of Pope Gregory the Great’s mission of 597 to Kent. A golden age of Christian civilisation followed, which was only disrupted by a fresh wave of invasions in the form of the Vikings. It was those which precipitated the rise to dominance of the royal house of Wessex, first under Alfred and then under his descendants throughout the tenth century. They were the first kings of a united England and it is with Alfred’s descendants that we arrive for the first time on firmer ground that they inaugurated their reigns with the rite of unction.

In common with the other Germanic tribes, kingship was central to the Anglo-Saxons. A ruler was elected from among the members of a royal race or dynasty, the stirps regia, who were descendants of the god, Woden. The making of a new king involved some kind of enthronement, investiture with weapons or regalia, the mounting of an ancestral burial mound, even a symbolic marriage with the earth-goddess. Such installation rites would certainly have included a feast and conceivably also, after the election but before any form of enthronement, some kind of ancestor of the Coronation oath. Insignia included a pagan spear or long staff (baculus), a helmet (galea) and a standard or banner, all three items connected with leadership in battle. To these customs the Vikings were to add, in the ninth century, an early form of throne, a stone or high seat, to which the king was conducted to the acclamation of the people.”¹³

None of these presented any problems when the ceremony was Christianised, the only victim being the standard or banner. Otherwise everything was taken over into the Christian rite, even the helmet which only gave way to a crown in the tenth century. The earliest representation of a King of England wearing a crown is on the charter of the New Minster at Winchester, dated 966, which depicts Edgar wearing one adorned with fleurons. In 1052 Edward the Confessor was to order an imperial crown and he is depicted, as indeed is Harold, the last Saxon King, wearing one with fleurons in the Bayeux Tapestry. The spear or long staff was easily accommodated within the Christian scheme of things by references to the Rod of Aaron and that of Moses, descendants of the wooden staffs borne by kings and judges in ancient civilisations.¹⁴

All of these items from the pagan past were redeployed in what was a Christian liturgy. What little we know about early Coronation ceremonies stems in the main from the surviving liturgical texts known as ordines or recensions. There are four major ones in the history of the English Coronation. The first two pre-date the Norman Conquest in 1066 and together form perhaps the most complicated documents in the entire history of the ceremony. Amongst both medievalists and liturgical scholars they have been and still remain subjects of lively debate, often of a highly complex and technical nature. In what follows I have attempted to superimpose some degree of clarity and, inevitably, simplification upon what is a highly contentious field of study, bearing in mind, too, that most people’s knowledge of liturgy in the twenty-first century tends to be minimal. An ordo comprises a liturgical sequence of prayers and blessings by which various actions are given sacramental significance, in particular by invoking divine sanction, blessings and the descent of the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the person chosen as king. The fact that such rituals could only be performed by clergy, bishops in fact, means that the ordines for them came to appear in the service books of cathedrals, especially in what are called pontificals, that is a body of texts for ceremonies which can only be performed by a bishop. In many ways what these texts provide the reader with is something akin to the words of a Shakespeare play minus any stage directions or, to use ecclesiastical parlance, rubrics. If the latter existed at all – and it is likely that they did – they would have been in a separate book which would have told those involved what they should do. As a consequence of their absence we know nothing of the arrangement of the setting, the form taken by symbolic gestures like prostration and genuflection, the details of the dress worn or the music sung.

None of the surviving texts of these first two recensions can be dated as having been written before the year 900. What is certain is that, although they were written down much later, they record the format of rituals as they were performed at much earlier dates. Much scholarly attention has been focused upon the interconnexion of these texts and, although everyone agrees that they go back to earlier lost texts, there is little agreement as to exactly how much earlier. The issue is further clouded by the fact that what does survive can only be a fragment of what once existed, items which have defied the hand of time and wanton destruction. Nonetheless as documents they tell us a great deal about the nature of kingship in pre-Conquest England and about the relationship of Church and State.¹⁵

The First Recension exists in three manuscripts, of which the earliest is the Leofric Missal, written about the year 900 at the Abbey of St Vaast near Arras and brought to England about 1042 by Bishop Leofric of Exeter. Views at to what this text is range from it never having actually been used at all to being the normal rite used for the inauguration of the Kings of West Sussex from before 856, perhaps for the Coronation of Egbert in 839 or even earlier, at the close of the eighth century. In the academic argument over that, much hangs upon whether the ordo drawn up by Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, in 856 for the marriage of the West Frankish princess, Judith, to the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelwulf was a wholly West Frankish compilation of his own or whether Hincmar was merely adapting his rite from what was an ancient Anglo-Saxon norm. If the latter is the case then the First Recension is a very old rite indeed.¹⁶

The two other manuscripts of the First Recension contain rubrics pointing to a date not earlier than the tenth century. The texts they contain are identical to the one in the Leofric Missal, except for the addition of two prayers from the ordo for Judith. The two manuscripts are the Pontifical of Egbert, Archbishop of York, datable to around 1000, and the ‘Lanalet’ Pontifical, which has been variously dated from the late tenth century to the 1030s.

Putting all of these together we emerge with a Coronation service which was in use a long time before 900, but, as I indicated, just how long before and for whom it was used is open to debate. The texts are headed ‘Blessings on a newly elected king’ and ‘The Mass for kings on the day of their hallowing’. In the case of the various recensions I propose to present them in list form with the intention of giving the reader a clear idea of each ceremony’s exact structure and sequence:

1 The service opens with an anthem: ‘Righteous art thou, O Lord, and true is thy judgement’ (Psalm 119: 137) and a psalm: ‘Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way’ (Psalm 119:1).

2 A prayer that the King ‘may with wisdom foster his power and might …’

3 An Old Testament reading from Leviticus (26: 6–9) with God’s promise of peace, the defeat of enemies and the multiplication of people.

4 The gradual from Psalm 86: 2: ‘Save thy servant’ and the versicle ‘Ponder my words, O Lord’ (Psalm 5:1). The Alleluia. ‘The King shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord)’ (Psalm 21: 1) or ‘Thou has set a crown of pure gold’ (Psalm 21: 3).

5 Gospel reading from Matthew (22: 15–22) with the passage in which Christ calls for them to show him the tribute money and says: ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’

6 Three prayers invoking the attributes God should bestow on the King: the grace of truth, goodness, the spirit of wisdom and government and, finally: ‘In his days let justice and equity arise … that … he may show to the whole people a pattern of life well-pleasing to thee … And so joining prudence with counsel, may he find with peace and wisdom means to rule his people …’

7 ‘Here shall the bishop pour oil from the horn over the King’s head with this anthem: ‘Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet …’ (I Kings 1: 45) and the psalm ‘The King shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord’ (Psalm 21:1). Unction is accompanied by a collect recalling ‘thy servant Aaron a priest, by the anointing of oil and afterwards by the effusion of oil, didst make the Kings and prophets to govern thy people Israel …’

8 The investiture: ‘Here all the bishops, with the nobles give the sceptre into his hand’, an action followed by a long series of short prayers calling down blessings and regal attributes. Then, ‘Here shall the staff [baculus] be given into his hand’, followed by a further prayer invoking the descent of blessings. Finally, ‘Here all the bishops shall take the helmet and put it on the King’s head’ with a last invocation of blessings. After this ‘All the people shall say three times with the bishops and priests, May King N. live for ever. Amen. Amen. Amen. Then shall the whole people come to kiss the prince and be strengthened with a blessing.’

9 The Mass.

10 At the conclusion comes the promissio regis in the form of the tria praecepta: ‘that the Church of God and all Christian people preserve the peace at all times’, ‘that he forbid rapacity and all iniquities to all degrees’ and, lastly, ‘that in all judgements he enjoin equity and mercy …’

We have no idea when and for whom this ordo was used. The earliest reference to unction being administered is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle quite suddenly under the year 787 when it states that Ecgferth, the son of Offa, King of Mercia, was ‘consecrated king’.¹⁷ Presumably this was a means to ensure his succession to the throne. Then follows a complete silence until 4 September 925 when Athelstan was anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Athelstan, along with Edward the Elder and Edgar, was one of the three great tenth-century Anglo-Saxon kings. In 937, he would rout an alliance of the Danes and rebel subject princes at the battle of Brunanburh. The location for his Coronation was Kingston upon Thames and it was followed by a great feast:

With festive treat the court abounds; Foams the brisk wine, the hall resounds: The pages run, the servants haste, And food and verse regale the taste. The minstrels sing, the guests commend, While in praise to Christ contend. ¹⁸

Kingston first appears in 835 or 836 as a meeting place for Egbert and Coelnorth, Archbishop of Canterbury. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred, and likewise a warrior who laid low the Danes, was crowned there in 901. Athelstan’s brother, Edmund, was also crowned at Kingston in 940 and his brother, Eadred, in 946 and Edmund’s son, Eadwig, in 955 or 956.¹⁹ Once again we get an unexpected glimpse of what could be the reality of such an occasion. Eadwig is recorded as getting up during the Coronation feast and going to his chamber. Dunstan, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Lichfield were sent to fetch him back. What they saw was the unedifying sight of the new King with two women, Athelgifu and her daughter, Elfgifu, to whom the King was uncanonically married, and the crown, ‘which shone with the various glitter of gold, silver and precious stones’, tossed on to the floor. Unsavoury though the episode was it provides the earliest evidence that we have that the Kings now wore crowns.²⁰

With the mention of Dunstan we can move on to a consideration of that other vexed document, the Second Recension. Everyone agrees that it was used under Dunstan’s aegis for the great Coronation of Edgar in 973 and also that it was still in use in 1101. As it refers to a king crowned ‘of the Angles and the Saxons’ and to the person concerned as a successor to a glorious father, that could only mean Edward the Elder crowned on 8 June 901 or Athelstan, his son, crowned on 4 September 925. That at least provides some options for possible dating. What is also certain is that this ordo represents a revision of the First Recension, bringing it into line with developments on the Continent.²¹

There are at least five versions of this text, of which the most important is that known as the Claudius Pontifical, which evidence indicates was written for and at Christ Church, Canterbury. The ordo is a fusion of insular with continental elements drawing on the Leofric and Egbert versions of the First Recension and marrying into them items drawn from Hincmar of Reims’ ordo of Metz (869), the West Frankish ordo of c.900 (the Erdmann ordo) and what was called the ordo of Stavelot (the ordo of the Seven Forms). The resulting recension surpasses all of those upon which it was based in terms of clarity, structure and power of expression and language.

Although there are variations between the surviving manuscripts, once again I present the recension as a list, pointing up what had changed. The Second Recension, thanks to the inclusion of rubrics, paints a far fuller picture of the action than the first:

1 The ordo opens with the King discovered amidst his seniores, the ealdormen who have elected him.

2 Two bishops lead the King to the church while the choir chants the anthem, Firmetur manus tua: ‘Let thy hand be strengthened, and thy right hand be exulted …’, invoking the regal qualities of strength, justice, mercy and truth.

3 ‘When the King is come to the church, he shall lie prostrate before the altar: and then shall the hymn Te Deum laudamus be sung to the end.’

4 ‘After which he shall arise from the ground: and the King chosen by the bishops and people shall promise to observe these three things.’ Then follow the tria praecepta as in the First Recension.

5 Prayers follow, including a long one invoking in plenitude biblical precedents, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David and Solomon, as exemplars of truth, mildness, courage, humility and wisdom. It petitions that the King may serve God, walk in the way of justice, and cherish the Church and his people, protecting both from their enemies. It calls for him to triumph over his enemies protected by the helmet of God’s protection and His invincible shield. It asks that the King reign with honour and be anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

6 The anointing, during which is sung in some versions Unxerunt Salomonem (‘Zadok the Priest’) as the anthem and in others a special anthem with the text: ‘O people of England, thou hast not been forgotten in the sight of the Lord: for in thee may the King that rules the English people of God be exulted, may he be anointed with the oil of gladness and confirmed by God’s strength.’

7 Investiture by the bishops with a multiplication of regalia: the ring, the sword, the crown, the sceptre and the rod. Each item is presented with prayers outlining their symbolic significance as I have already described at Edgar’s Coronation. Some versions add to these a red regal mantle, ‘the garment of chiefest honour, the mantle of royal dignity’.

8 A series of blessings calls upon God, the Virgin Mary, the saints and angels to guard and watch over the King.

9 He is then enthroned with the prayer Sta et retine: ‘Stand and hold fast from henceforth that place whereof hitherto thou hast been heir, by the succession of thy forefathers, being now delivered unto thee by the authority of Almighty God, and by the hand of us, and all the bishops and servants of God …’

10 A series of further blessings.

11 The Queen is then consecrated and anointed and ‘she must be adorned with the ring for the integrity of her faith, and with a crown for the glory of eternity’.

12 The Mass.

In what way does this ordo differ from its predecessor? In the first place it is the first one with clear sections: election, oath, consecration, unction, investiture and blessing. In the second, the role of the laity is reduced, the delivery of the regalia no longer being at the hands of both principes and pontifices but of the pontifices only. In short, anything which suggests that power might have been conferred from below has been eliminated. There is no act of allegiance or indeed of acclamation. This is an ordo whose fundamental driving force is theological, represented in the opening act of prostration by the candidate on entering the church. Prostration in early liturgies was an expression beyond that of mere humility, contrition and supplication. What it signalled was an annihilation of the initiate’s former self in preparation for a ‘rebirth’ into a new status. That rebirth was, however, to be conditional upon the promissio regis, now significantly moved to the front from its place in the First Recension at the very end. This new siting had huge constitutional repercussions. In it were spelt out the obligations of late Anglo-Saxon kingship: ‘The duty of a hallowed king is that he judge no man unrighteously, and that he defend and protect widows and orphans and strangers, that he forbid thefts … feed the needy with alms, and have old and wise men for counsellors, and set righteous men for stewards …’²²

The Second Recension recast the nature, context and function of kingship. Much of that is caught in the new items of regalia. The ring, which makes its first appearance in the ordination of bishops, is given as a symbol of faith. The sword, for which there is also no pagan precedent, is girded upon the king for the defence of both the Church and his own people.²³ The recension also integrates the Queen into the Coronation ritual, casting her in the role of a virtuous helpmate. She, too, was anointed with chrism, an index of high status and that her role was seen as important and not subsidiary to that of the king.²⁴

Apart from the unusually full account of the Second Recension in action for Edgar in 973 little if anything is known about the Coronations of later kings. Indeed, it is not known whether Canute, the Danish king who succeeded to England by conquest, was even crowned at all. Chaos followed his demise in 1035 until, seven years later in 1042, Canute’s stepson, Edward the Confessor, succeeded. By that date the place of crowning was still not fixed, for Edward’s took place at Winchester in 1043. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides us with a crumb about that event, one which shows that the importance of the promissio regis was fully understood, for we are told that Eadsige, Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘gave him [Edward] good instruction before all the people, and admonished him well for his own sake and for the sake of all the people’.²⁵ If the Second Recension was a perfect mirror of ideal Anglo-Saxon kingship, what replaced it after the Norman Conquest was to reflect a far more assertive and controversial vision of the monarchy in what was to be an age of conflict between Church and State. There is a striking representation of the last Saxon Coronation in the Bayeux Tapestry. On 6 January 1066 Harold was crowned King in Edward the Confessor’s new Abbey Church of Westminster, which had been consecrated only nine days before. His claim to the throne was tenuous, his mother being a Norse princess and his sister, the Confessor’s Queen. The Coronation took place the day after the Confessor’s death, so that any preparations must have been minimal. The tapestry is accepted as having been made in England in about 1075 and its English origins mean that the scene is as it would have been envisaged by those within the native tradition. But the storyline is that of the Norman conquerors, for what is depicted is what, in their eyes, was a usurpation and, although no doubt both the archbishops of Canterbury and York took part following the Second Recension ordo, York is omitted in favour of including the tainted Stigand of Canterbury, already under a cloud and deposed from the see in 1070.

Such an image is, of course, not reportage but symbolic. Nonetheless it evokes more vividly than the dead texts of the ordines something of the atmosphere of such an event as well as giving an indication of the visual spectacle. It suggests that the royal throne had advanced from the primitive bench on which Edward the Confessor sits in the tapestry to being something more akin to an elevated seat or chair with an approach by way of steps. Harold wears the familiar late Anglo-Saxon crown with fleurons on his head and also sports a royal mantle, suggesting, perhaps, as some versions of the ordines say, that this may have been part of the regalia by 1066. To his right there are two principes, one of whom lifts high what may be the sword with which the king was girded during the ceremony. In his right hand he supports a long foliated rod, a baculus, and, in his left, something new, an orb surmounted by a cross. The orb is an imperial attribute, first certainly adopted by the Holy Roman Emperors very early in the eleventh century and appropriated shortly after by the Dane Canute (1016–35). An orb and sceptre appear on Edward the Confessor’s seal, lifted unchanged from the Ottonian rulers of Germany. Perhaps an orb also, by the year of the Conquest, had become part of the coronation regalia. In this tableau we have brought together for the first time a coronation and what was to become its immemorial setting, Westminster Abbey, along with the potent memory of its founder, the man who was to further sanctify the royal family, this time as heirs and descendants of a saint.²⁶

2 King and Priest

IN THE AFTERMATH of the battle of Hastings the defeated Anglo-Saxon magnates came to make their submission to Duke William of Normandy at Berkhamsted. This was succession not by election but by force of arms, for William was only Edward the Confessor’s second cousin once removed. Although he was later to embroider on to the train of events that Edward had promised him the crown, the truth of the matter is that England was the victim of the explosive vitality of the Normans, a vitality which was also to conquer southern Italy and Sicily and, during the First Crusade, much of the Holy Land.

The Anglo-Saxon magnates had little choice in the autumn of 1066, therefore, other than to petition him to accept the crown of England on the grounds that they were accustomed to a king as their lord. Many of the Normans spoke against William accepting, fully conscious of the duke’s consequent elevation in status that such an acceptance would bestow and the implication of it for them. But the duke was not slow to realise the advantage of being seen to be the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor claiming his kingdom. In this manner what was conquest could be dressed up in the robes of legitimacy. And, although William had wished to wait for the arrival of his wife, the urgency was such, after this decision, that the Coronation took place on Christmas Day 1066.¹

Over this Coronation more academic ink has been spilt than almost any other, excepting that of Edward II in 1308. And, as in the case of Anglo-Saxon Coronations, we are up against paucity of material and the fact that what evidence we do have is patchy and not always compatible. With the Conquest we also enter the age of the chronicles, but what they produced can range from eyewitness accounts to something secondhand or, even worse, fabricated. What can be pieced together about Christmas Day 1066, therefore, is a synthesis of the evidence from the chroniclers together with the one unique eyewitness account by a Norman cleric, Guy, Bishop of Amiens. He wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings, the Carmen de Hastingae proelio, which culminates with the Coronation. The poem was written almost certainly to celebrate William’s triumphant home-coming to Normandy in Lent 1067, literally weeks after the event.

Everyone agrees that the 1066 Coronation was different, but the problem centres around the degree of difference. In recent years it has been argued that this was the occasion on which a new ordo was introduced, the one we know as the Third Recension. It was probably composed, they argue, by Ealdred, the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of York, in response to the quite unique set of circumstances which surrounded 1066. It has also been suggested that it was composed even earlier at the behest of Edward the Confessor and had been already used for Harold II. There is no way of settling that debate. What this new ordo does reflect are imperial aspirations of a kind that we know both the Confessor and equally William I had. Ealdred was uniquely qualified to provide an ordo with imperial overtones, for he had been present at the Coronation of the German King Henry IV in 1056 and would have known the continental ordines upon which the Third Recension drew. Edward the Confessor’s vision of imperial status for the kings of England is reflected in the imagery of his coinage, his use of the Byzantine imperial style of basileus and, even more spectacularly, in the construction of Westminster Abbey, which was a building of European status designed to rival the great imperial churches of the Rhineland at Mainz and Speyer. There are equally imperial echoes around the Conqueror, whose crown at the Coronation Guy of Amiens records was ‘Greece inspired’, that is, it was modelled on that of the Byzantine Emperors which had pendologues, detachable strings of pearls alongside the cheeks. It was also studded with twelve precious or semi-precious stones. These related, in terms of biblical symbolism, to the breastplate of the High Priest and appear also as the foundation stones of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation. And his choice of Christmas Day for his Coronation would have been made in the full knowledge that both the Byzantine Emperors and the Western Holy Roman Emperors had also chosen it for theirs.²

An opposing case, however, continues to be maintained for the use of the Second Recension, albeit with revisions and additions, on the grounds that it was still in use and that William would not have wished to introduce something new but, rather, use an existing rite to emphasise continuity in his role as the rightful heir to Anglo-Saxon England. That argument depends, of course, on what was used at the Coronation of Harold II. None of this, as I have said, seems to be solvable and it is impossible to do more than piece together what can be gleaned to have happened, highlighting innovations, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. Those who opt for the use of the Second Recension in 1066 favour the introduction of the Third Recension during the second quarter of the twelfth century. What is certain is that Harold II’s Coronation was a rushed affair following immediately after Edward the Confessor’s death, allowing no time for preparation, but William I’s had a lead of three months allowing ample time to prepare what was a formidable spectacle.

Both Harold II’s and William I’s Coronations mark the advent of a spacial configuration for royal ceremonial which has lasted down until today, that of the Palace of Westminster and the adjacent Abbey. It is likely that we owe that to Edward the Confessor. Both the economic expansion of the eleventh century and the growing mercantile traffic across the North Sea rendered a royal presence in London highly desirable. Such political and economic practicalities went hand in hand with a dynastic one, a desire to emulate the example of the French monarchy which already had its royal Coronation church of St Denis. Up until Edward the Confessor the royal palace had been in the City of London. Now a new residence was built on the island of Thorney close to a Benedictine Abbey dedicated to St Peter, the guardian of the keys of heaven, for whom the king had a special devotion. Nothing is known about Edward’s palace, but a great deal is known about the Abbey which he embarked on to replace the one he found there.³

This was built to the east of the existing foundation and, by 1066, thanks to his benefactions, Westminster was to be among the richest religious houses in the country. What arose was grander than any church in England and in a new style, the Romanesque as it was practised in Normandy, but far exceeding both in size and splendour any church there. When complete it was to be 320 feet long. By 1066 the east end and transepts must have been up, although the nave and the twin west towers were not to be completed before the middle of the 1080s at the earliest. This was one of the great buildings of early medieval Europe. William’s decision to be crowned there must have been conditioned by a desire to cancel out Harold II’s Coronation and also to be seen to be crowned in the burial church of the Confessor as his rightful heir. It was a precedent which, once established, proved permanent.

There is much in William’s Coronation with which we will be familiar as well as much which could be innovative. It opened, as in the case of Edgar’s at Bath, with a great procession. However, this time it was not only of monks and other clergy headed by a crucifer, but went on to include the great magnates of the realm and the future king led by the two archbishops. That was different from 973 when Edgar was led by the bishops of Durham and of Bath and Wells, an arrangement which was to reappear later. ‘In this manner,’ runs the Carmen, ‘to the chanting of the Laudes, the king sought the church and was conducted to the royal chair.’ What were the Laudes?

The Laudes are a set of jubilant acclamations which invoke God as an all-conquering and victorious commander.⁴ They open with the resounding salute ‘Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat’, and continue in a splendid descent through the celestial and thence through the terrestrial hierarchy. In these chants the serried ranks of heaven and earth are presented as mirror images of each other, each terrestrial rank being linked to a heavenly intercessor. The ruler, as Christus Domini, the anointed of the Lord, has as his intercessor a group of angelic and archangelic powers. To the queen is assigned a choir of virgins who intercede on her behalf. In sum the Laudes were a unique form of litany addressed solely and triumphantly to the victorious Christ in his divinity as the king of heaven and earth, and the prime exemplar and guarantor of power and prosperity to all rulers who safeguarded the fabric of Christian society. The act of unction, which was shortly to follow this procession, was to turn the Duke of Normandy into a type of Christ on earth and the embodiment of theocratic kingship.

It was customary to chant the Laudes at the great festivals of the Church, including Christmas (which it was), but here, in this procession, we already have a potent statement as to the nature of post-Conquest kingship. They were also to be sung at the solemn Mass which marked the ceremonial crown-wearings that were to become a feature of Norman and Angevin court life, when the magnates of the realm gathered at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost to attend on the king and queen and take part in the service and also in the great feast which followed it. As in the case of the debate over which ordo was used, so it has been argued that crown-wearings pre-date the Conquest. Whether they did or not, the evidence shows a sharp elevation of the monarch to almost semi-divine status.

In this manner William I was conducted to the new Abbey. On entering it there was yet a further deviation from the Second Recension. That opened with the king in the midst of the magnates of the realm who had acclaimed him. This action was now moved into the sacred precincts of the Abbey church, taking place on what the Carmen refers to as a pulpitum. This would appear to mark the first appearance of some kind of stage or elevated dais which lifted some of the action aloft and apart from the assembled dignitaries. If we turn to the reconstructed ground plan of the Abbey, it must have been erected at the crossing beneath the central tower. Its advent in 1066 would surely have been prompted by the need to give emphasis and prominence to an action in which the duke was seen to be ‘elected’ by both the indigenous Anglo-Saxons and the occupying Normans. It began with Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, addressing the latter in French, asking them: ‘If the king presented please you, declare it to us, for it is fitting that this be done by your free choice.’ In response came applause. The action was repeated for the Anglo-Saxons in their own language by Ealdred of York.

The rite which followed took place in an arena which was to remain unchanged until the Coronation of Edward I. The high altar stood where the present one does. It was sited in an apse which was 26 feet 8 inches wide and with an approach to the altar measuring 14 feet 9 inches. The flanking north and south aisles had upper and lower chapels to which access was had by way of turret staircases. Such staircases may have led up to viewing points for the ceremonial, a feature which was to be repeated in Henry III’s rebuilding in the thirteenth century. The monks’ choir stalls were beneath the tower, so presumably the purpose of the pulpitum was also to lift part of the proceedings above them so that they could be seen.

This innovatory but politically necessary acclamation was to have an unfortunate consequence, for the roar of approval was such that one chronicler records: ‘the armed and mounted men who had been stationed around the Abbey to guard it hearing the tremendous shouting in a language they could not understand, thought that something had gone wrong, and under this misapprehension they set fire to the environs of the city’.⁵

While events outside the Abbey had taken a nasty turn, those within it went on with the accustomed opening prostration before the altar and thence to the administration of unction with chrism by the Archbishop of York (Canterbury, although present, was tainted and under an ecclesiastical cloud). There was, however, yet another major departure from the Edgar ordo. William took the Coronation oath after and not before he had been anointed. One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records: ‘And he [William] promised Ealdred on Christ’s book and swore moreover (before Ealdred would place the crown on his head) that he would rule all this people as well as the best of kings before him, if they would be loyal to him.’⁶

The changed placing must have been designed to reinforce the sanctity of the king’s oath, for it was made by William as a man who had just been sanctified and endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thereafter the ceremony follows what has been argued to be compatible with either the Second or the Third Recensions: investiture with the regalia, enthronement and the Mass.

THE THIRD RECENSION

The Conqueror’s Coronation has provided material for a lively and unresolved academic debate as to when the Third Recension came into use. That debate equally hovers around any consideration of the seven Coronations between 1066 and 1200. The best approach to these is a collective one. The Coronations are:

William I | Christmas Day 1066
William II | Sunday, 26 September 1087
Henry I | Sunday, 5 August 1100
Stephen | Sunday, 22 December 1135
Henry II | Sunday,19 December 1154
Richard I | Sunday, 3 September 1189
John | Ascension Day, 27 May 1199

To these we can add the Coronation of Henry II’s son, Henry the Younger, on 14 June 1170. That is a salutary reminder that the monarchy was still in theory an elective one, albeit from members of the ruling dynasty. The Coronation of Henry the Younger, who was to die before his father, was an attempt to settle the succession in terms of primogeniture during his father’s lifetime.⁷

The century and a half during which these Coronations happened witnessed huge changes as the Norman Conquest created a new ruling class of those who came over with the Conqueror. That was structured in what we know as the feudal system, a mode of land tenure stretching downwards from the king via the great lay and ecclesiastical magnates who held their estates in return for knight service to the crown. This restructuring of society, in which the oath of fealty of one man was to another as his liege lord, was to have reprecussions on the Coronation, moving, as we shall see, the Coronation oath centre stage. In the case of the ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief it would have even greater repercussions, for the papacy was to assert the superiority of clerical over lay authority and forbid a ceremony in which a priest was seen to be subservient to royal authority. That, too, would affect the Coronation.

At some date, either before or after 1066 and almost certainly by the Coronation of Stephen in 1135, the Third Recension came into use.⁸ What this represented was a rejection of all but the most important Anglo-Saxon forms in favour of the parallel parts of the great continental Coronation ordo. This was the German one used for the consecration of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Pontificale romanogermanicutn, which was compiled at the Abbey of St Alban’s, Mainz, about the year 961. The introduction of the Third Recension brought insular Anglo-Saxon traditions in line with continental custom, a development typical of the years after 1066. It has been, as I have indicated, attributed to Ealdred, Archbishop of York (d. 1069). It has equally been seen as the work of William’s great reforming Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc (1070–93), and also of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (1085–1117), the friend and ally of Lanfranc’s successor, Anselm. One certain fact is that this ordo was to remain in use until the Coronation of Edward II in 1308.

The Third Recension is found in seven manuscripts, one of which is French, all the others being English. Out of the six English manuscripts three derive from a pontifical compiled in the great monastery at Christ Church, Canterbury. Some of these manuscripts can be at least approximately dated. The earliest versions cut out the anointing of the king’s head with chrism, indicating a date after the initial clash of Church and State between Henry I and Archbishop Anselm in the years 1100 to 1107, one which included the withdrawal of the use of chrism. Another indicator is the preoccupation with crowns. That probably goes back to Henry I’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, wife of the Emperor Henry V, who was widowed in 1125 and who returned to England bearing the imperial crown of her husband. Henry II was crowned with it in 1154.

There are variations between these manuscripts but, as in the case of the previous two recensions, I present the reader with the overall contents in simple list form:

1 The king is led by two bishops ‘from the assembly of faithful elders’ to the church while the choir sings Firmetur manus tua.

2 The king prostrates himself with the bishops alongside him in front of the altar before which have been spread carpets and cloths.

3 The litany is then sung, after which the bishops arise and raise the king.

4 The king takes the triple oath, to preserve both Church and people in true peace, to forbid all rapacity and iniquity to men of every degree and to ordain the practice of justice and mercy in all matters of judgement.

5 The recognitio. A bishop asks the assembled people whether they are willing ‘to submit themselves to this man as their prince and ruler, and obey his command’. Both clergy and people reply affirming their willingness.

6 The consecration. This opens with prayers recalling exemplars from the Old Testament and calling down blessings. The Archbishop of Canterbury begins by anointing the king’s hands with holy oil ‘that thou mayest be blessed and set up as king in this kingdom over our people that the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern’. Then he anoints his head, breast, shoulders and elbows, with further prayers while the choir sings: ‘Fear God.’

7 The delivery of the regalia. The king is invested by the bishops with the sword, bracelets (armils) and mantle, each with a prayer. The crown is then blessed and placed on the king’s head. Then follows investiture with the ring, sceptre and rod.

8 The king is blessed, after which he kisses the bishops, who lead him to his throne while the choir sings the Te Deum.

9 That finished, the archbishop says the prayer Sta et retine.

10 Then follows the consecration and Coronation of the queen. On entering the church she is greeted by a prayer asking that she ‘may obtain the crown that is next unto virginity’. The consecration opens with a blessing after which, with appropriate prayers, she is anointed with holy oil and then invested with a ring. Her crown is then blessed and she is crowned.

11 The Mass follows.

What does this new Recension mean and why was it necessary? The possible political circumstances that prompted it have already been touched upon, but they need to be placed within a far broader ideological perspective. In one respect there is no doubt that the Third Recension embodies a reaction to the eleventh-century reform movement which found its test case in the rejection of the lay investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries. On their appointment they were presented by the king with a staff or crozier and a ring, symbols of their office. This act was followed by one of homage in which they received their lands as one of the king’s tenants-in-chief. Although this practice of the lay investiture of clerics had gone unchallenged under William I, it was not to do so under his immediate successors. From the last years of the eleventh century onwards there was a fierce struggle between Church and State, known as the Investiture Contest, during which archbishops of Canterbury were sent into exile and England was laid under interdict by the pope. It was only to be resolved when, on 29 December 1170, Henry II’s Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his own cathedral. The Church emerged as victor.

What the reformed papacy was attempting to achieve was a reversal of what the introduction of the rite of unction had led to, a race of priest-kings who were viewed as being somehow almost semi-divine. The Christianisation of the barbarian monarchies which had followed the conversion of the pagan tribes of Northern Europe had exalted rulers, through the bestowal of unction, into beings akin to priest-kings. The use of chrism to consecrate the ruler, which was also used in the ordination of a priest, meant that the two were increasingly viewed as variants of something very similar. The biblical precedent was Melchizedek, who was both priest and king, and rulers were cast as Christus Domini, representatives of God on earth, and mediators, because of their apparent dual nature, between clergy and people.

The papacy, realising the threat this embodied, in the eleventh century began to draw back from the endorsement of theocratic kingship. The sacraments were codified and reduced to being seven in number, with royal unction not among them. The whole pressure was to downgrade the very idea of the priest-king, and early versions of the Third Recension record the withdrawal of the use of chrism for the anointing of the king’s head, replacing it with the anointing of several parts of his body with ordinary holy oil. Chrism was in fact to creep back into use later, but its removal for a period was significant.⁹

The Third Recension is, therefore, a crucial document in which the Church redrew the boundaries that differentiated the laity from the clergy. The battle which ensued centred, as I have said, on the removal of the king’s right to invest his ecclesiastical dignitaries with office and was to dominate the twelfth century. Under Henry I, one of the most powerful of the Angevin kings, Archbishop Anselm was driven into exile and so, even more famously, was Thomas Becket under the first Plantagenet, Henry II. The struggle between him and the king was to produce the most extreme claims for theocratic kingship, ones which based the royal control of the Church on the anointment of the king with chrism. The significance of that was caught in the royal style. Before the Coronation the king was only Dominus. After, at least from the reign of William II, he was ‘King by the Grace of God’.

The author known as Anonymous of York but probably William Bonne-Ame, later Archbishop of Rouen, who wrote what is referred to as Tract 24a, succinctly sums up how the supporters of the king as Christus Domini saw the monarchy:

kings are consecrated in God’s church before the sacred altar and are anointed with holy oil [he means chrism here] and sacred benediction to exercise ruling power over Christians, the Lord’s people … the Holy Church of God … as one who has been made God and Christ through grace … wherefore he is not called a layman, since he is the anointed of the Lord [Christus Domini] and through grace he is God. He is the supreme-ruler, the chief shepherd, master, defender and instructor of the Holy Church, lord over his brethren and worthy to be ‘adored’ by all, since he is the chief and supreme prelate.¹⁰

Such were the breathtaking claims made on behalf of Henry II, stemming from what was enacted at his Coronation as performed according to the Second Recension. This was an appeal back to the mystique and magic of the old pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon monarchy. By the time that this tract was being written theocratic kingship was, in fact, in retreat and Becket’s murder had dealt the final blow.

The investiture controversy and the redefinition of the lay and clerical spheres provide the backcloth prompting the Third Recension. That incorporated several other changes. One was the enhanced status accorded the crown, which was blessed, a ritual derived from one used at the Coronation of the Byzantine emperors. There was also a multiplication of robes and regalia. Armils or bracelets, which had an Old Testament precedent, appear together with a royal mantle whose four corners signify the four corners of the world subject to God. The mantle does appear, in fact, in a late manuscript of the Second Recension but it is universal in the third. In the latter the investiture with the ring and crown is reversed and there are some notable enhancements to the ritual, with the king being blessed after crowning and then solemnly enthroned in state to the splendour of the Te Deum being sung.

There is also a notable enhancement of the status of the queen, delineating clearly the nature of medieval queenship.¹¹ This is the first ordo which works from the premise that her Coronation is an action directly parallel with that of her husband. The queen is twice blessed, first on entering the church and again at the altar. The prayer said over her was taken almost word for word from that said over a newly ordained abbess. Here she is cast as an exemplar of female chastity, as the mistress of the royal household and, as signified in her investiture with a ring as a symbol of faith, a support to the Church, a patron of missionaries and a leader of her household’s spirituality.

The only full account of a Coronation definitely using this ordo before 1200 is that of Richard I in 1189. Of the seven others, including that of Henry the Younger, we know little, although it is clear that the twelfth century saw enormous change and development. When, at last, we do get a full-length eyewitness account it is of a major spectacle of state, which leaves one wondering how far what is described happened earlier during that century. The twelfth century, after all, was one of the greatest eras in the history of the country, and the increasing power and grandeur which surrounded the monarchy is likely to have been reflected in the rite of Coronation. The brilliant if hot-headed Henry II ruled over a vast continental empire, the greatest in Western Europe since Charlemagne. And even though his two sons, Richard I, the crusading troubadour king who was only in England five months out of a ten-year reign, and the feckless John, who opened a chasm between himself and the magnates, threw this inheritance away, there is no doubt that the English monarchy was still regarded as one of the grandest in Western Europe.

CHANGE AND INNOVATION

We can trace that progressive rise in grandeur in several different ways. One is in the development of Westminster as a royal enclosure or preserve. The elements of this were already in place in 1066 but they were to be consolidated during the century and a half which followed.¹² Although nothing is known of Edward the Confessor’s palace, in 1097 work was underway on a new great hall for William II, who was to hold his first court there in 1099. That vast hall is still there, exactly the same in size as it was when first built, 240 feet long and 67 feet 6 inches wide, by far the largest hall in England and, probably, in Western Europe at the time. If the Abbey was seen to reflect imperial aspirations surely this was its secular counterpart. It was built deliberately to house the great feasts which followed the Coronation and as the setting for the ritual crown-wearings which punctuated the court year, in which the ruler displayed himself as the image of Christ on earth to his magnates.

Recent research has pointed out that one of the ordo’s prayers of blessing, opening with the word Prospice, includes the following words: ‘Grant that the glorious dignity of the royal hall [palatium] may shine before the eyes of all with greatest splendour of kingly power and that it may seem to glow with the brightest rays and to glitter as if suffused by illumination of the utmost brilliance.’

From the outset this was not a hall of the usual Norman type, for the main entrance was placed at the northern end in order to establish a processional route which was directly to the enthroned monarch at the opposite side. The upper walls were lighted by Romanesque windows set into an arcaded wall gallery. The vast size of this structure demonstrated at a stroke that this was to be the secular ceremonial centre of the Anglo-Norman kingdom. The palace itself continued to expand. In 1167 there is reference to a ‘new hall’, a small one for domestic purposes sited roughly in line with the great one but further east. Jutting out at right angles from that was the great chamber which already, by the twelfth century, was for the king’s private use. The Norman and the Angevin kings contrived to be migratory through their vast English and French domains and it was only gradually that their Westminster palace began to establish its primacy. All through the reign of Henry II the various organs of government, as they became ever more complex, began to find a permanent home amidst this ever-expanding palace. The Court of Audit held its biennial sessions here, and under John the royal treasury ceased to be at Winchester. For over four centuries the palace was to combine the demands of a royal residence with those of the major offices of state. Only in 1512 was this to change when Henry VIII left Westminster eventually for Whitehall.

The Abbey’s rise was to be far slower.¹³ Although kings were crowned there, royal interest thereafter ceased, preferring to favour their own foundations and choosing also to be buried elsewhere. In the years immediately after 1066 there was no attempt by the monks to exploit their connexion with the vanquished Anglo-Saxon royal house. That only came to be of advantage at the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth century. Henry I’s Coronation charter placed voluntary restraints on his use of the royal prerogative, citing in three clauses the laws of Edward the Confessor, by which was meant the whole body of Anglo-Saxon law before the Conquest. In doing this Henry was exploiting what the monks of Westminster Abbey had already embarked upon, capitalising on its role as the resting place of a king on his way to beatification. That can be traced in the series of lives of Edward the Confessor which record the steady upward curve to canonisation: the Vita Ædwardi Regis by an anonymous writer about 1067; the Prior Osbert de Clare’s Vita Beati Ædwardi Regis Anglorum, completed by 1138 to accompany the first petition to the pope for his canonisation; and, finally, Ailred de Rievaulx’s Vita Sancti Edwardi Regis, written after the king’s canonisation in 1161 and in time for the translation of his body to a new shrine in 1163.

The driving force behind this came not initially from the crown but the Abbey, setting out to defend its territorial rights by upping its royal associations. In this they were helped by Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds (1065–97), a monk from St Denis, who was all too familiar with how to exploit such a royal foundation. That was achieved through a whole series of forged charters by a monk, Guerno of St Augustine’s, Canterbury. St Augustine’s had remained a bulwark of pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon Christianity and is the most likely source of the design of the Bayeux Tapestry in which Edward the Confessor is depicted as a saintly bearded patriarch.

The key figure in the canonisation campaign was Prior Osbert de Clare during whose time a whole series of forged charters was produced, including ones in the names of Popes Nicholas II and Paschal II confirming the Abbey’s claim to be both the permanent setting for the Coronation and also the place where St Edward’s regalia (to which I will come) were kept. By the twelfth century the papacy claimed the sole right to proclaim saints, and in 1139 Innocent II declined Westminster’s petition to canonise the king on the grounds of insufficient support within the realm. Otherwise the moment was propitious, the prior being the king’s illegitimate kinsman and having the endorsement of the king, Stephen, and his brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester. The real reason for the pope’s refusal was probably the king’s arrest of the Bishop of Salisbury in the same year. After this failure royal interest in the Abbey went into abeyance until Henry II, who made much of his Anglo-Saxon ancestry, saw the potential of having a royal saint in his battle with the Church. On this occasion it worked. Edward was canonised and his remains translated amidst splendour on 13 October 1163 in a ceremony designed to impress the pope, just as the battle against Becket was about to reach its zenith. For Henry II, St Edward the Confessor enhanced the charismatic character of his kingly rule and the sacred nature of English kingship. Neither of his successors, Richard I or John, were to take any interest in the new royal saint and his cult was not to go into the ascendant again until the reign of Henry III.

The fact that the Abbey cast itself as the custodian of St Edward’s regalia means that items recognised as constituting them must have existed. The early history of the regalia is shrouded in mystery, not helped by the fact that they were all deliberately destroyed under the Commonwealth. Recent scholarship, however, has come down in favour of a nucleus of royal ornaments which can be argued to have been deposited by Edward the Confessor either for safekeeping or indeed as regalia to be used by the future kings of England.¹⁴ If the latter was, indeed, the case they constituted what was the earliest set of royal regalia in Western Europe. These items were always royal property and the Abbey’s role was never other than as custodian.

By about 1200, of what did these regalia consist? There was St Edward’s Crown, which evidence indicates is likely to have been the work of a Byzantine craftsman working in England. It was a circlet with four fleurons and possibly four crosses arising from it, above which rose a double arch, on the crossing of which there was a cross with bells that tinkled when the wearer moved. The indications are that Edward, with his pretensions as Basileus Anglorum, abandoned the earlier open crown of the late Anglo-Saxon kings in favour of one modelled on that worn by Eastern Emperors. To the crown can be added two sceptres and what was known as St Edward’s staff. One of the sceptres again betrayed Byzantine influence, having four pendant pearls and a gold cross at the top. The second one was made of iron with a fleur-de-lys at the summit. The use of iron was probably due to a biblical precedent, Psalm 2, which speaks of the awaited Messiah as coming to rule with a rod of iron (virga ferrea). Sceptres such as these were symbols of command, but St Edward’s staff was topped with a dove, the emblem of peace, and spoke of a king’s pastoral care for his people. It had a spike at the other end. Finally come liturgical items. One was the crux natans, said to have been rescued by the Confessor from the sea on what would have been his return journey to England in 1041, and therefore likely to have been acquired by him in Normandy. The descriptions indicate a wooden cross covered at the front with gold plate set with jewels in mounts on which there was a figure of the crucified Christ, probably in ivory. Inventory descriptions of St Edward’s chalice, later known as the regal, indicate that it was a large and richly carved late antique cup, of a type eagerly sought after in the tenth and eleventh centuries, to which gold mounts had been added. The gold paten which accompanied it was of enamelled Anglo-Saxon work. An ivory comb, also assigned to St Edward, could be Anglo-Saxon, but its use is uncertain. When it came to vestments everything is far more problematic, although it is possible that a mantle and possibly a supertunic could have been part of the original regalia. The mantle was adorned with golden eagles and was of a type worn by the Eastern emperors.

William of Sudbury, a learned monk of Westminster, wrote a tract for Richard II on the regalia arguing that they were even older, that they had been the gift of Pope Leo to Alfred the Great on the occasion of his ‘Coronation’ in Rome. That at least can be dismissed as later embroidery, but it is likely that these items do go back to the Confessor. Indeed, the earliest reference to what could be items of regalia comes in 1138 when the monks threatened to sell off his ornaments. None of them as described by later medieval inventories are likely to be items removed from the saint’s grave at any of successive openings. The only occasion when that happened was in 1163 at the translation. The prior recorded as having taken from the tomb cloth to be made into embroidered copes along with the ring which, according to legend, was the one recovered from John the Evangelist in paradise.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries kingly robes, in response to the role of Christus Domini, were deliberately priestly in character, although not Mass vestments. Royal robes looked to those worn by bishops, and both in turn looked to those recorded in the Old Testament as having been worn by priests and kings. In this way the tunicle, the dalmatic and the cope became regal robes.¹⁵ In such robes and vestments, especially those in which a king received unction, monarchs began to be buried. Henry the Younger was buried at Rouen in 1183 and both Matthew Paris and Ralph de Diceto record that he lay upon the bier attired in the linen vestments in which he was anointed and still showing traces of chrism. It was during this period that the custom arose of putting a linen coif on the anointed’s head which was only removed at a later date (the details we learn from later Coronations). Such interment in the Coronation robes was probably a twelfth-century innovation, fully reflective of claims to theocratic kingship. It was certainly done in the case of Richard I, and the fact that tomb effigies of both Henry II and John depict them in their Coronation robes suggest that they too were buried wearing them. The tradition continued into the first quarter of the fourteenth century.¹⁶

In the twelfth century the items called for by the Coronation ritual were not only housed in the Abbey but also in the king’s Jewel House. Each king had his own items of personal regalia quite separate from what became regarded as sacred relics in the Abbey. Such personal regalia included crowns and sceptres and ceremonial swords. By 1200 the number of swords used in the ceremony had multiplied and the king was also invested with golden spurs. All of this indicates that we have arrived at the age of chivalry, the spurs being an artefact which formed an integral part of the ritual of knighthood. From the mid-twelfth century onwards the ceremony of knighting became the pivotal moment in a knight’s life. It could be a relatively simple affair and it could equally be staged as a grand spectacle. The girding on of a sword was already part of the action in the Second Recension, one which would have had far greater resonances in the era of chivalry. The Church during this period attempted to adopt knighthood as an order of a quasi-religious nature, assigning it a role as the secular arm of Holy Church, for its protection and for the defence of the weak. The addition of spurs to the regalia emphasised the knightly ideal of kingship even more forcefully in a period enlivened by the Crusades. It is to be recalled that Richard I was England’s crusading king.¹⁷

The sword was an intensely personal item of equipment, one which symbolised a man’s ability to demonstrate his physical strength and skill. In the Coronation ceremony, to the king as defender of the Church and the country’s leader in war was now added the vision of him as the personification of ideal knighthood. The sword quite early on came to symbolise the royal presence, and sword-bearing before the monarch became a mark of signal honour. As early as 1099 the King of Scotland carried the sword before William Rufus when he held court in London. At the Coronation of Richard I in 1189 no fewer than three swords were borne before him suggesting that by that date chivalrous romance was impinging upon reality. The twelfth century was the golden age of Arthurian legend for which the Angevin kings had a passion. King Arthur’s grave was even ‘discovered’ at Glastonbury in 1190 and swords believed to have been used by the Knights of the Round Table became collector’s items. The swords in the chansons de geste became almost personalities in their own right, bearing names and being endowed with quasi-magical powers. King John, for instance, had the sword of Tristram. This had been Ogier’s sword which had been shortened in his fight with Morhaut, champion of Ireland. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, a myth-laden history of Britain written in the reign of Stephen, four swords were carried before King Arthur, each one representing one of his kingdoms. Could the three which preceded Richard I in 1189 have stood for England, Anjou and Normandy over which he ruled?

While the historic mise-en-scène as well as the ornaments became increasingly grander and more complex, other aspects of the Coronation at the same time began to assume a pattern which we would recognise today. It was, for example, only in the twelfth century that the Archbishop of Canterbury finally attained his role as the chief officiant.¹⁸ That, too, was an offshoot of the investiture struggle. Although the archbishops of Canterbury had crowned the Anglo-Saxon kings, the situation was a far from immutable one. Stigand did not crown William I, and Henry I was crowned by the Bishop of London (albeit as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘vicar’). The resolution in favour of Canterbury only came in 1170 when Henry II wanted his son crowned within his own lifetime.

A letter had been sent from Pope Alexander III to the king as long ago as 1161 saying that the young prince could be crowned by any of the bishops. Five years later the pope, under pressure from the exiled Becket, rescinded his decision. In two letters the claim of Canterbury was spelt out, the first stating ‘it has come to our hearing that the Coronation and anointing of the kings of the English belongs to the Archbishop of Canterbury by the ancient custom and dignity of his church …’ The second reiterates ‘this dignity and privilege of old’. To add to the king’s difficulties, the Archbishop of York was specifically forbidden by the pope to crown anyone.

All of this worked in the long run in favour of Canterbury, but in the meantime it had a fatal flaw as the pope failed to inform Henry II that he had revoked his letter of 1161. In Becket’s eyes Canterbury’s right of bestowing unction gave any archbishop control over who succeeded to the throne. The result was that in spite of the existence of the pope’s letters of revocation Henry II went ahead and had his son crowned by the Archbishop of York. In retaliation Becket got the pope not only to excommunicate the bishops who had taken part but to lay England under an interdict. However, before news of the papal actions had reached England Henry II offered to make peace with his troublesome archbishop. That happened on 22 July 1170, a settlement which included provision for the younger Henry and his wife to be recrowned by Becket. In this way the six-year exile of the archbishop was brought to its end.

Just before Becket set sail for England he excommunicated, on apostolic authority, the Archbishop of York together with the bishops of London and Salisbury, who had taken part in the Coronation. The bishops bitterly protested and Becket offered to absolve them, but added that only the pope could exculpate the Archbishop of York. The bishops complained to the king who, in his anger, is said to have cried, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ Four knights responded to Henry’s plea and murdered Becket in his own cathedral. The supremacy of Canterbury was now sealed by the shedding of a martyr’s blood in the cause of Holy Church.

Becket was right in that the role of the archbishop in the king-making process was an important one. In the period before primogeniture he took a leading part in the formal election of a new king by the assembled magnates. William I had nominated his second son, William Rufus. On his death the crown passed to his younger brother, Henry I, and from thence to his cousin, Stephen of Blois, after which it descended to Henry II, son of Henry I’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, by Geoffrey of Anjou. By Henry’s death primogeniture was taking over, reflected in the king’s crowning of his eldest son, who was, in fact, to predecease him. In the event, the crown was to pass to the younger brothers, first Richard I and then John. Few of these successions were entirely automatic, involving anything from a coup d’état to a civil war.

The Archbishop of Canterbury played a crucial role not only as one of the greatest magnates in the realm but also as the man who could bestow unction, transforming a candidate from being merely Dominus to being Rex Dei Gratia. He also played a crucial role in the recognitio which remained of importance even as late as 1199. Matthew Paris provides a vivid picture of what happened on that occasion. Before the archbishop, Hubert Walter, proceeded to the anointing of John he addressed the assembled bishops, earls and barons: ‘Hear, all of you, and be it known that no one has an antecedent right to succeed another in the kingdom, unless he shall have been unanimously elected, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.’

The archbishop went on to remind them of the example of Saul, ‘the first anointed king’, pointing out that if anyone else of the royal dynasty excelled John ‘in merit’ he should be elected instead. Later in the reign Hubert Walter was asked why he had acted in such a manner: ‘he replied that he knew John would one day or other bring the kingdom into great confusion, wherefore he determined that he should owe his elevation to election and not to hereditary right’.¹⁹

In this episode we also catch something else, that it is one thing to follow a recension as it appears on the page of a pontifical and quite another to square it with what could happen on the day.

The archbishop was also the person who administered to the new king the Coronation oath, and that was to assume a place of major importance in defining the role and duties of the medieval English king.²⁰ The oath was not an empty ritual to be gone through, for its contents were studied both by the clerics and by the great magnates involved in the king-making process. The oath was a sacred contract administered by the archbishop with the assistance of the clergy in the presence of the lay magnates of the kingdom. In feudal society it formed the linchpin by which that society was held together. It assumed a place of even greater significance after 1066 than before it.

Although our information about the actual wording of the oaths taken by eleventh-and twelfth-century kings is scanty, there is no doubting their importance, as we have already seen in the Coronation of 1066. An account of the Coronation of Henry the Younger in 1170 describes him swearing with both his hands on the altar, on which lay not only the Gospels but relics of the saints. On that occasion, in the light of the struggle with Becket, he swore to maintain the liberty and the dignity of the Church. The oath which had begun its life under the Anglo-Saxon kings as the promissio regis, under the Normans and Angevins developed into a sacred pledge. Oaths in a feudal society were inviolate.

So the oath moved centre stage, its centrality reflected in the custom of issuing, after the Coronation, what were in effect its contents in the form of a charter.²⁰ The first of these came from Henry I, who had added to the second of his three promises a vow to rectify the injustices perpetrated during the reign of his brother, William Rufus. That charter, which took out to the country the pledge made in the Coronation oath, was to be evoked by successive generations as a guarantee of the rights of English men and women in respect of the crown. It was confirmed and reissued by Stephen in 1135 or 1136, by Henry II in 1154 and, most famously, in 1215 when Archbishop Stephen Langton cited it as the precedent and model for Magna Carta. The charter’s message was ‘I restore to you the law of King Edward’, that is, the Norman and Angevin kings confirmed the validity of the totality of Anglo-Saxon law as it was in the time of Edward the Confessor.²¹

That oath was the obverse side of which the reverse was the act of fealty by both clerical and lay magnates. As yet it formed no part of the proceedings in church but, at this period, was a separate event enacted in the great hall of the palace when prelates and nobles rendered homage and fealty to the new ruler. Only in the case of Richard I and John do we know when this was done, in the instance of the former on the second day following the Coronation, and of the latter on the next day.²² Much the same in terms of information applies to the Coronation feast, of which we only gain some kind of picture for that of Richard I.

During this period the Coronation was not the only occasion on which the monarch appeared crowned.²³ Circumstances could precipitate second Coronations (but not unctions), particularly on the occasion of a king marrying. In 1141 Stephen was crowned a second time at Canterbury with his wife, Matilda of Boulogne. In 1194 Richard I was crowned again on returning from the Crusade and from his years of imprisonment in Austria. In both those cases a special form of service was drawn up, initially for the crowning of 1141. The king attended by his nobles waited in his chamber for the arrival of the ecclesiastical procession. He then knelt and had the crown placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury while a prayer was said. After this there was a procession to the church, during which an anthem was sung. Prayers were said and the king was led to his throne, after which a Mass was sung and the king communicated. There was a second procession back, in which the magnates carried candles, and a banquet followed.

To these rare events can be added the more regular crown-wearings at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost when the king held court. On those occasions the king and queen were escorted in a great procession to the church, where they sat crowned and enthroned. An elaborate votive Mass was sung by the archbishop during which the Laudes were chanted. Afterwards there was the usual feast, with the magnates assuming the roles of servants such as the butler or pantler or steward.

By the year 1200 the Coronation had become an essential rite of passage whereby someone was made king. That person remained Dominus Anglorum and his queen Domina Anglorum until unction was bestowed, after which they became Rex et Regina Anglorum. The transition was emphasised in the development of the procession in which the royal regalia was now carried to the church by the great nobles. That solemn transportation of crown, sceptre, orb, vestments, chalice and paten was an emphatic statement that he who walked behind them was not yet king. He became so only by a sacred initiation to be gone through at the hands of the clergy in the presence of the magnates. No document captures more vividly this huge transformation since 1066 than the description of the Coronation of Richard I in 1189.

THE CORONATION AND CHIVALRY: RICHARD I

The chronicler Roger of Wendover provides us with what is the fullest description yet of a Coronation, so much so that I quote it in full:

Then the Duke came to London, where had assembled the Archbishops, Bishops, earls and barons, and a large number of knights to meet him; and by whose advice and consent the Duke was consecrated and crowned king of England, at Westminster, on the third of September, being Sunday, the feast of the ordination of Pope St Gregory …

First came the bishops and abbots and many clerks vested in silken copes, with the cross, torch bearers, censers, and holy water going before them, up to the door of the king’s inner chamber; and there they received the said Duke Richard, who was to be crowned, and led him to the high altar of the church of Westminster with an ordered procession and triumphal chanting: and the whole way by which they went, from the door of the king’s chamber to the altar, was covered with woollen cloths.

Now the order of the procession was as follows: at the head came the clerks in vestments carrying holy water, crosses, torches and censers. Then came the priors, then the abbots; next came the bishops and in the midst of them went four barons carrying four golden candlesticks. Then came Godfrey de Lucy carrying the king’s coif, and John Marshal by him carrying two great and weighty golden spurs. Next came William Marshal, Earl of Strigul, carrying the royal sceptre, on the top of which was a golden cross, and William de Patyrick, Earl of Salisbury, by his side, bearing a golden rod with a golden dove on the top. Then came David, brother to the king of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon, and John, Earl of Moreton, brother of the Duke, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, carrying three royal swords taken from the king’s treasury, and their scabbards were wholly covered with gold: and the Earl of Moreton went in the midst. Then came six earls and barons carrying on their shoulders a very large board on which were placed the royal ensigns and vestments. Then came William de Mandeville, Earl of Albemarle, carrying a golden crown great and heavy, and adorned on all sides with precious stones. Then came Richard, Duke of Normandy, and Hugh, Bishop of Durham, went on his right hand, and Reginald, Bishop of Bath, on his left: and four barons carried over them a silken canopy on four tall lances: and the whole crowd of earls, barons, knights and others, clerk and lay, followed up to the door of the church, and they came and were brought with the Duke into the choir.

Now when the Duke came to the altar he swore in the presence of the Archbishops, Bishops, clergy and people, on his knees before the altar, and the most holy gospels laid thereon, and the relics of any saints, that he would keep peace, honour and duty towards God and holy church and her customs all the days of his life. Secondly, he swore that he would exercise right justice and equity among the people committed to his charge. Thirdly, he swore that he would annul any evil laws and customs that might have been introduced into the realm and make good laws and keep them without fraud or evil intent. Then they stripped him altogether, except his shirt and breeches, and his shirt was torn apart at the shoulders. Then they shod him with buskins worked with gold. Then Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, poured the holy oil on his head and, with prayers appointed for this purpose, anointed him king in three places, to wit, his head, his breast, and his arms, which signifies glory, courage and knowledge.

Next the Archbishops placed on his consecrated head a linen cloth, and above it the coif which Godfrey de Lucy had carried. Then they clothed him with the royal vestments: first, that is, with the tunic, then with the dalmatic; then the Archbishop gave him the sword of the realm wherewith he was to repress the evildoers against the church. Then two earls put upon him the spurs which John Marshal had carried. Then he was vested with the mantle. After that he was led to the altar, and there the said Archbishop forbad him by Almighty God to take this great office upon him, unless he intended to keep inviolate the oaths above mentioned and the vows he had made. And he replied that by the help of God he would keep all the above without deceit.

Then he himself took the crown from the altar, and gave it to the Archbishop, and the Archbishop set it on his head, and two earls held it up on account of its weight.

Then the Archbishop put the royal sceptre into his right hand and the royal rod into his left, and thus crowned the king was led to his seat, by the aforesaid Bishops of Durham and Bath, preceded by torch bearers and the said three swords.

Then was the Mass of Sunday begun; and when they came to the offertory the aforesaid Bishops led him to the altar, and he offered a mark of the purest gold (for this is the offering which a king must make at every one of his Coronations) and the same Bishops led him back again to his seat.

Now when the Mass had been celebrated and everything duly finished the same two Bishops, one on the right and the other on the left, led him back crowned and carrying the sceptre in his right hand and the rod in his left, from the church to his chamber, with the ordered procession going before them as above.

Then the procession returned to the choir, and the lord king laid aside his royal crown and royal vestments, and put on lighter crowns and vestments, and so crowned he came to breakfast. And the Archbishops and Bishops sat with him at table each according to his degree and rank; and the earls and barons served in the king’s house as their ranks demanded. And the citizens of London served in the butlery, and the citizens of Winchester in the kitchen … Now the second day after his Coronation, Richard, King of England, received the homage and fealty of the Bishops, earls and barons of England …²⁴

What can be added? Other sources tell us that the Coronation was followed by three days of festival and that the king bestowed lavish gifts on the magnates. It was also the occasion when there were Jews in the crowd, some of whom tried to enter the Abbey, triggering a riot during which houses were set on fire. When the king was told about this at the feast he sent Ranulf de Glanville to quell it. But so far out of hand had it got that he was driven back into the feast by threats.²⁵ This is also the first feast about which we know any details. It called for at least 5, 050 dishes, 1, 770 pitchers and 900 cups on and in which to serve the food and drink. To this can be added the first piece of music likely to have been composed for the occasion in honour of a monarch. The words are in Latin but in translation they read:

The age of gold returns The world’s reform draws nigh The rich man new cast down The pauper raised on high. ²⁶

The chronicle account catches to the full the magnificence of a Coronation by that date, its sense of unfolding spectacle, its choreography, its richness in terms of robes and artefacts, its use of contrasting passages of speech with chant. Much is already familiar but there is also so much that is new. The ecclesiastical procession now fetches the king-elect, or duke as he is resolutely referred to, from his royal chamber. In the procession various dignitaries are assigned roles bearing everything from items of regalia to candlesticks (these never reappear). The royal robes are carried on the board used in the exchequer and the king now proceeds beneath a canopy. Later, after his crowning, he doffs his regalian robes and ornaments, putting on lighter ones along with a lighter crown. As another chronicler so rightly put it, all was done ‘cum pompa magnifica’. Everything was firmly in place for the major transformation which was to occur under the aegis of Henry III.

But there is a wider context to which this Coronation belongs, for it was the prelude to the king’s departure on the Third Crusade. It was staged in the midst of all the fervour leading up to such an event, when the chivalry of Christendom rallied to rescue and preserve the Holy Land and the Holy Places from the Infidel. When Richard at last set sail a few months later in December he took with him King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, which he was later to present to Tancred, King of Sicily.²⁷ But the fact that he took it at all indicates some notion of self-identification with the king of legend whose court was the pattern of chivalry. Can it at least be suggested that the Coronation of Richard was in a sense that of Arthur revived? The suggestion, although unprovable, is at least worth the making and a number of factors suggest that this could well have been in the mind of whoever put together the secular ceremonial in 1189.

I have already referred earlier to the account of the Coronation of King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s seminal Historia Regum Britanniae, compiled during the first half of the twelfth century. The two chapters on Arthur’s Coronation festivities would have been incentive enough to escalate regal spectacle.²⁸ Arthur is conducted to the church by two archbishops with four knights bearing golden swords before him. We are told that there was wonderful music during the procession and at the actual church service, which is not recounted. As they leave for the banquet both Arthur and his queen take off their heavy crowns and put on ‘lighter ornaments’, just as Richard did before the feast. There were, in fact, two banquets, one for the men and the other for the ladies. The English Coronation banquet was also a male preserve like the Arthurian. ‘For the Britons,’ writes Geoffrey, ‘still observed the ancient custom of Troy by which men and women used to celebrate their festivals apart.’ There followed three days of festival with tournaments, archery and other competitive sports and, after this, on the fourth day, ‘all who, upon account of their titles, bore any kind of office at this solemnity, were called upon to receive honours and preferments …’ The scenario for 1189 was exactly the same. Was this an attempt to emulate King Arthur? This was a Coronation staged at precisely the period when the Arthurian romances of chivalry under the aegis of that great innovator of the genre, Chrétien de Troyes, took off as a new ideal of courtly life. Indeed Chrétien’s greatest patron was Richard I’s brother-in-law, Henry of Champagne.²⁹ Was the Coronation of 1189 an attempt to revive the world of Arthur, ‘For at that time Britain had arrived at such a pitch of grandeur, luxury of ornaments, and politeness of inhabitants, it far surpassed all other kingdoms’? It is an hypothesis that is worth the making. What is clear is that we have travelled already a vast distance from the feudal testimony of 1066 and entered the new world of Camelot.

3 Kingship and Consent

IN THE SAME YEAR ‘the lord king, inspired by his devotion to St Edward, ordered the church of St Peter at Westminster to be enlarged.’ With these words the chronicler, Matthew Paris, records Henry III’s decision not so much to ‘enlarge’ as to demolish and rebuild the Coronation church.’¹ This was a building project on a scale unparalleled anywhere else in Western Europe at the time. It was not only, however, driven on by the king’s commitment to the cult of his saintly forebear, but equally by a desire to outshine the French king, Louis IX, the builder of the Sainte-Chapelle. In St Edward the Confessor Henry III saw an ideal pattern for his own kingship, one which he set out to imitate and emulate.² The very fact that he was to eclipse the saint by rebuilding his church on an even grander scale is evidence enough of that. Although its role as a royal valhalla and as a meeting place for both the King’s Council and the nascent House of Commons has long since gone, it still retains its place at the heart of the nation as a royal church, what is called a royal peculiar, one which is exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and as the setting for a proliferation of royal events, of which over seven centuries later the Coronation still remains the greatest.

The contribution of Henry III to the history of the Coronation, therefore, cannot be overestimated. He was to provide it with its mise-en-scène, a supremely graceful, soaring, many-pinnacled glasshouse, rivalling, if not surpassing, the greatest of the French Gothic cathedrals, which indeed inspired it. In Henry III’s mind Westminster Abbey had above all to eclipse in splendour the French Coronation church of Reims. To achieve that the king employed for the task a man well versed about all that was happening in France, Henry de Reyns. The Gothic style was still relatively new to England when the Abbey arose with a speed which must have astonished contemporaries. Twenty-five years before, the monks had also, it seems likely, taken the decision to rebuild. They began with a Lady chapel sited beyond the existing east end, a project to which Henry III contributed the golden spurs with which he was invested at his Coronation there in 1220. Lack of funds meant that the scheme stagnated until the king suddenly embarked on his own massive project, lavishing on it the equivalent of the crown’s total revenues for two years. In just twenty-four years the east end, transepts, choir and part of the nave were already up, enough for the church to be formally dedicated on 13 October 1269. This was a church built by a man who had a highly elevated concept of the office of kingship. By 1245 the Abbey had established itself as the immutable setting for the crowning of the kings of England. It was, therefore, custom-built from the outset with that ceremony in mind. Henry III had been crowned in haste as a child of nine in Gloucester cathedral with a gold circlet because London was in the hands of the French. But the central role of the Abbey in his eyes is reflected in the fact that he obtained a papal dispensation to be not only crowned but also anointed a second time in the Abbey in 1220. Both Coronations would have been according to the Third Recension.³ But the new dynastic church by its very scale and concept would seem to call for a ceremony to match (although it has been equally argued that it prompted no such development). And, indeed, that is precisely what happened, for sometime towards the end of the thirteenth century a new ordo was compiled, the Fourth Recension. This, we know, was certainly used for the Coronation of Edward II in 1308, but there is no way of proving one way or the other that it was used for his father, Edward I, in 1274. As a document (to which I will come shortly), it is difficult not to believe that Henry III had some hand in it. Why else the grand ceremonial north entrance through which the great processions passed, the pushing back of the choir westwards to leave a large clear space at the crossing on which to erect a stage, or the deeply symbolic cosmic pavement in the sacrarium? And that is to name but a few of the features which must have been conceived with the action of the Coronation in mind.

Henry III left an indelible legacy in this church. He lies buried on the site of the former tomb of the Confessor, hard by the new shrine which he built, on which he lavished gold and precious stones and around which he accumulated relics of the Holy Blood, a nail from the Cross, the Virgin’s girdle and the stone on which Christ had stood at his Ascension.⁴ To these his son, Edward I, was to add more, and one in particular to which we must turn our attention and which was to play a major role in the history of the Coronation, the Stone of Scone. Although Edward was overlord of both the Welsh princes and the kings of Scotland, his ambition was to totally subjugate them and bring the entire island under his rule. In the case of Wales and the erection of a network of castles he would be successful. In that of Scotland he would fail.

The Stone of Scone upon which Alexander III, King of Scotland, had sat in 1249 when he was crowned, was taken by Edward I in 1296 during his Scottish campaign and presented, along with the Scottish crown and sceptre, to the shrine of the Confessor. It remained in the Abbey ever since until a Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, at the very close of the twentieth century returned it by diktat to Scotland on the back of devolution. By this act a unique medieval artefact was vandalised.

What in fact is the Coronation chair and when did it enter the Coronation story? Modern scholarship has shed a mass of new light on this intriguing object.⁵ We know that the Stone was acquired in the summer of 1296 and that Edward I had decreed that a chair cast in bronze was to be made to receive it and that it was to be placed next to the altar at the west end of the shrine of St Edward. To make that bronze chair a wooden mould or pattern had to be made. That is likely to have been designed by the king’s master-mason, Michael of Canterbury, who was used to designing thrones, and carried out by the king’s painter, Walter of Durham. In the summer of 1297 all of that was abandoned due to the expense of the war in Flanders. Instead, a wooden chair was made and installed on a low painted step or dais next to the shrine’s altar. This had a canopy or cover over it, which Richard II was later to restore or repair. The existing chair is, therefore, not earlier than the summer of 1297 and not later than March 1300. Its initial decoration was not very complex, with only gilding over a lead white base.

There is no connexion with the Coronation, explicable in the sense that for the next thirty years any reference to the Stone is always to it as a sign of victory. It is significant that the Coronations of both Edward II and Edward III pass by with no reference to its use, nor, which is more to the point, is there any reference in the two sets of negotiations for the Stone’s return to Scotland in 1324 and 1328. If it had been used for the Coronation of an English king it would certainly have been pointed out on one or both of those occasions, but then the kings of England never officially styled themselves as kings of Scotland. It is from 1300 onwards, after the Stone had come to England, that the earliest legendary histories of the Stone surface, different in both countries. According to Scottish myth the Stone was brought to Scotland by Pharaoh’s daughter Scota and it arrived via Ireland. In the English version it was the stone on which the patriarch Jacob had laid his head at Bethel and dreamt of a ladder of angels stretching from earth to heaven (Genesis 28: 10–22). In both sets of negotiations it figured as an artefact attached to the shrine of St Edward and as a sign to the English of a great victory. Nothing came of the 1324 request for its return, but in 1328 Edward III actually ordered the Abbey to send it north. The abbot, in fact, refused. It is precisely around this time that the Jacob legend appears, and it would seem likely that a far more elaborate programme of gilded and pounced decoration was applied to the chair in its newly enhanced status. Although in an inventory of 1300 it is referred to ‘in order that the Kings of England and Scotland might sit on it on the day of their Coronation’ the line is, in fact, crossed. Its earliest certain use was to be in 1399 for Henry IV, but little is known about it for most of the fourteenth century, although its use at Coronations during this period cannot be ruled out. Thomas of Walsingham, when describing the form and manner of an English Coronation, writes that details are to be found in books in the Abbey and with the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the enthronement of the king upon the royal seat above the Stone.⁶

Westminster Palace also underwent a building programme under the aegis of Henry III, particularly in terms of interior decoration and elaborate wallpainting.⁷ It, too, both internally and externally, was the setting for much of the Coronation, providing the secular space through which the processions moved and where the feast was staged. With the loss of the continental empire under John the monarchy ceased even more to be migratory, and Westminster became the administrative centre of Plantagenet government. To the exchequer and treasury, which had arrived in the twelfth century, were to be added the Court of Common Pleas in the thirteenth and the Court of the King’s Bench in the fourteenth. But it was the palace as a royal residence which was to expand and develop in regal splendour, reflecting accurately all the aspirations of Henry III. Of these developments the most significant was the Painted Chamber.

In all probability this existed in the twelfth century before Henry III’s radical transformation of it into one of the most splendid rooms in the palace.⁸ The Painted Chamber, which was the king’s own principal apartment and bed chamber, was 26 feet wide, over 80 feet long and 30 feet high. It was in this room that the kings of England, according to the Fourth Recension, passed their Coronation vigil. During the second half of the thirteenth century it was redecorated with a series of wallpaintings of Old Testament scenes, representations of Triumphant Virtues and, above the royal bed, the Coronation of St Edward with attendant scenes telling the story of the Confessor, St John and the ring. This story first appears in the life written by St Ailred of Rievaulx in 1163. It tells how the king was approached by St John the Evangelist in disguise as a beggar, and the Confessor, his purse empty, gave him as alms a ring. Several years later two English pilgrims encountered St John in the Holy Land, this time disguised as a handsome old man. He gave them the ring with the instruction that they should deliver it back to the king and tell him that he, too, would shortly join the company of saints.

What we are witnessing here is the king’s identification of himself with the Confessor, manifested in a programme of decoration in the inner sanctum of royal secular power. Palace and Abbey were linked by the same imagery, but it is striking that the main scene chosen to be depicted in the wallpainting was not the moment of unction, when the Holy Spirit descended, but instead the king enthroned, holding in his right hand the rod with the dove and with his crown supported by the archbishops of Canterbury and York. I shall return to the significance of that, along with other early representations of Coronations, at the close of this chapter.

Henry III’s obsession with St Edward gradually permeates outwards to sanctify virtually anything of any age connected with the rite of Coronation. The king inherited his crown from his father and we have no notion as to its age or appearance, but Henry III saw it as the crown of St Edward. In 1267, when there was a great sale of royal jewels, it was exempted on the grounds of it being the ‘diadem of the most sainted King Edward’. So it attained the status of a hallowed relic and was left as such by Henry III to be used at the Coronations of successive kings of England. The ancient chalice or regal together with its paten are referred to at the Coronation of Henry’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, in 1236, as those of St Edward and, in the words of Matthew Paris, as being ‘from the regalia of the kings of old’. He, on that occasion, equally describes the sword Curtana as being the saint’s, and six years later St Edward’s sceptre makes its appearance. To all of these we can add a ring which had been taken from the tomb when the saint’s body was translated.⁹

Sometime about 1245 the queen was presented with La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei, a highly mythologising account of the Confessor’s life and miracles which has as its subtext a parallel between Edward and her husband. In it the Saxon king has a vision of a royal Coronation church:

And then let the king be consecrated Enthroned and crowned, And there be the regalia preserved In sure and certain protection. ¹⁰

This life epitomised what was to be the courtly cult of the royal saint, for it never took off in terms of popular appeal. And what happens during the thirteenth century is a wish fulfilment of precisely these verses. The Fourth Recension works from the premise of the existence of sacred saintly relics in the safe keeping of the Abbey, the ‘royal ornaments of St Edward’, relics so precious that the king must be divested of most of them before he leaves the church after his Coronation. If he retains some of the items at his feast then they must be returned immediately after to the abbot who holds them ‘as of right’. The result of this was that by the middle of the fourteenth century a motley and confusing collection of crowns, sceptres, rods and assorted royal vestments was assigned to St Edward. These were to be deliberately destroyed by the Parliamentarians in the middle of the seventeenth century. All later antiquarians have been able to do since is to try to make sense out of what the various inventories list, and match the descriptions to any surviving pictorial evidence. The results of this exercise so far cannot be described as anything other than unsatisfactory.

What adds to the confused history of the old regalia is that there would always have been two sets, one the royal ornaments of St Edward and the other personal to the king. Out of the former the only item to survive today is a late twelfth-century spoon, silver gilt with four pearls, later additions, inset into the broadest part of its handle, its bowl engraved with elegant arabesques. This is listed among the secular regalia in 1349 as ‘Item i coclear antique forme’ (Item, one spoon of ancient form). It has the unique feature of a double-lobed bowl and is probably the work of a major late Romanesque goldsmith working in London. Such a spoon was made for a specific ceremonial purpose, the double bowl sustaining the notion that it was used for the holy oil during unction, the archbishop dipping two of his fingers into it. Medieval depictions of regal unction, however, cannot support its use in this way, for spoons only appear either in connexion with incense boats or as chalice spoons for mixing a little water with the communion wine. If it was used for either of these purposes, that had been forgotten by the middle of the fourteenth century when it was listed with the secular plate as not for liturgical use. Nonetheless what has survived is an object made for Henry II, Richard I or even John and the only piece of goldsmith’s work executed for an English royal patron to come down to us from the twelfth century.”¹¹

The personal regalia of both the king and the queen were kept in the Tower and only add to the complications. Edward II, for example, had no fewer than ten crowns, and we might well puzzle over the origin and exact status of another crown which appears in the wardrobe accounts of his father, Edward I, in 1279: ‘a great crown of gold with square balas-rubies (or spinels), emeralds, eastern sapphires, rubies and great eastern pearls … which is appointed to be carried over the head of the Kings of England when they go from the church to the banquet on the day of their Coronation’.¹²

All of this is deeply reflective of a new richness, an expansiveness of a kind we have already seen anticipated in the description of Richard I’s Coronation. The symbolic overtones implicit in that were to develop and flourish in the two centuries that followed. But in order to do so it demanded a new ordo in tune with what were in effect new concepts of kingship and new notions as to the relationship of a ruler to his people. To accommodate the changed nuances called for a vastly expanded ceremonial, one which simultaneously elevated the wearer of the crown and, at the same time, spelt out his new obligations. The success of the Fourth Recension in meeting these demands can be measured by the fact that it has provided a framework for every Coronation since.

THE FOURTH RECENSION

What is extraordinary about the Fourth Recension is that no one seems able exactly to pinpoint the date of its compilation.¹³ In that respect it shares an attribute of its predecessors over whose dating and first use generations of scholars have argued and still argue. What everyone does accept is that it was used in 1308 for Edward II and that, although it was certainly modified for the event, the ordo was already in existence. So it pre-dates 1308, but by how much? The discovery of a mid-thirteenth-century fragmentary rubric for a Coronation related to the Fourth Recension texts in a manuscript by one William de Hasele (d. 1283) is a strong pointer that the fourth ordo may go back quite a way.¹⁴ What the rubric spells out is not a particular Coronation but one in abstract, describing but not naming the various officers present and their role at some future event. This memorandum is likely to have been inserted into this manuscript shortly after 1266, which should mean that some version of the Fourth Recension was in existence by that date.

It is difficult surely to accept that Henry III could have rebuilt Westminster Abbey without having something in his mind concerning the Coronation, particularly when one is aware of his keen interest in the activities of the French monarchy, and that so much of the fourth ordo echoes what was done at the French Coronation. The king was now to be anointed in five places like his French counterpart, and two anthems and three benedictions of the sword and ring were inserted, these last lifted virtually verbatim from the French Coronation ordo. In both we see the ruler cast as hero undergoing a rite of passage in which there is a careful balance struck between the actions of the monarch and those of the clergy, of royal as against ecclesiastical power.¹⁵ There is moreover in the English ordo a carefully observed balance between the parts played by the monarch and the magnates as embodiments of royal power and of its limitations. In that there is a parting of the ways, for the focus of the French Coronation was always to be on the sacre, the basis of absolutist rule and one which was to end in disaster in 1789. In sharp contrast, in England, where checks and limitations on the power of the crown were emerging fast during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the focus was on the oath which spelt out the boundaries of royal power. In this way the Coronation was already by the mid-fourteenth century flexible enough to be accommodated within the terms of a constitutional monarchy. In the Fourth Recension there is this enhancement of the monarchy in terms of its splendour and magnificence simultaneously with the ruler swearing an oath in which his power is limited. That curtailment is also vividly reflected in the pre-Coronation meeting of the king-to-be with the magnates in order to discuss the Coronation, and also in the reintroduction of the formal acclamation of the ruler from the earlier ordines.

Although the age of the theocratic priest-kings had long gone, unction was still seen to bestow the quasi-magical power on the king of being able to touch for the King’s Evil, the healing of scrofula.¹⁶ That Henry I was the first king of England to exercise this power is hardly surprising, locked as he was into a battle with the Church. He based his powers to heal on the cure of a scrofulous woman recorded in ancient lives of St Edward. The Plantagenets enjoyed huge prestige for their healing powers. Edward I, for example, touched 1,736 individuals during the eighteenth year of his reign. A chaplain of Edward III and a future Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine, writes of the ‘miracles’ performed by the king which could be testified to ‘by sick persons who had been cured, by those present when the cures took place, or who had seen the results of them, by the people of many nations, and by their universal renown’.¹⁷ In its very early days, when the Gregorian reform was at its height, the royal claim to heal was denounced as a falsehood, but thereafter a silence fell upon ecclesiastical writers, who were content not to refer to something of which they disapproved but not to openly attack it. But this did not erode in any way its popular appeal.

Whoever compiled the Fourth Recension (one scholar suggests Walter of Wenlock, Abbot of Westminster) must have been acutely aware of all these irreconcilabilities. Only when the monarch was enthroned aloft on a raised stage, kissed by the officiating clergy and rendered fealty to by the supporting magnates was he seen as having sovereignty over both. The peers stretched forth their hands to touch the crown, offering it both loyalty and support. In that dramatic moment both lay and ecclesiastical representatives came together in what was a rebuttal of Pope Boniface VIII’s bull, Unam Sanctam (1302), which relegated the secular power of princes to a lower order subject to the universal pontiff.

In what way does the Fourth Recension differ from its predecessors? In the first place, items which had been part of the First and Second Recensions but which had been dropped in the Third reappear. Fifteen texts in all have been added, hugely increasing its length. The longest addition was the special order of the Mass, for which were provided the introit, two collects, the epistle, gradual, tract, gospel, gospel offertory verse, two special orations, two secrets, a preface, a special benediction and two post-communion prayers. This is the first time, also, when an ordo has substantial rubrics with precise directions. These can vary quite considerably from one manuscript to another. Indeed, an indication as to just how complicated the ceremony had become is reflected in a description of the action at the Coronation of Edward III in 1327, the Corounement du Nouel Rei, which only includes the incipits for the prayers. This account enabled an onlooker to follow the action at which they were present.¹⁸

There are a considerable number of manuscript copies of this ordo and, as in the case of its predecessors, they vary. Some, in addition, provide notation for the chants, enabling us for the first time to recreate the music. The manuscripts fall into three groups. One pre-dates 1308, of which one, written in a large clear script, may have been used at the Coronation of Edward II, possibly carried by the king’s monk. A second group, it has been suggested, pre-dates Edward Ill’s Coronation and yet a third, and by far the largest group, has a text which may precede or follow the Coronation of Richard II in 1377.

Two of the key manuscripts are fortunately virtually identical and both are in the muniment room of Westminster Abbey. One is the Lytlington or Westminster Missal, compiled by Abbot Lytlington (1362–86), which can be dated to 1383–4, and the other is the Liber Regalis, which recent art historical research dates to the 1390s. As the Liber Regalis was to be the text which those putting together the Coronation of James I in 1603 turned to, I give a synopsis of the action as it appears in that manuscript.¹⁹

1 A stage is to be erected at the crossing in Westminster Abbey with a flight of steps from the west side for the king to ascend and a further flight on the eastern side for him to descend and approach the high altar.

2 On the stage a ‘lofty throne’ is to be sited so that the king may ‘be clearly seen by all the people’.

3 If the Archbishop of Canterbury be incapacitated he shall choose one of his suffragans to perform the ceremony.

4 On the day before his coronation the king is to ride bare-headed to the Palace of Westminster ‘to be seen by the people’.

5 The Coronation is to be on a Sunday or a holy day.

6 The king is to spend the night before in prayer and contemplation, seeking the virtues needful for a ruler.

7 The Abbot of Westminster is to instruct the king about the Coronation. If he for some reason is unavailable, the prior and convent shall choose another.

8 On the day of the Coronation the prelates and nobles of the realm should assemble at the palace ‘to consider about the consecration and election of the new king, and also about confirming and surely establishing the laws and customs of the realm’.

9 The king is bathed ‘as is the custom’ and attired in ‘spotless apparel’, not wearing shoes but socks only. The effect must be that his body ‘glistens by the actual washing and the beauty of the vestments’. In the great hall he is lifted ‘with all gentleness and reverence’ on to a throne covered with cloth of gold.

10 From the Abbey a clerical procession consisting of members of the episcopacy and of the convent shall make its way to the great hall. They return in procession with the king to the Abbey chanting and singing anthems.

11 The royal almoner supervises a path laid with ray (striped) cloth from the palace to the Abbey. After the event the cloth within the Abbey is the perquisite of the sacrist and that outside is distributed by the almoner to the poor.

12 The stage and steps within the Abbey are to be covered with carpets by the royal ushers and cloth of gold is to be hung around the top of the stage.

13 Royal chamberlains must see that the throne is adorned ‘with silken and most precious coverings’.

14 There then follow details of the procession. The king is to be preceded by the prelates and monks and himself led by the hand by the bishops of Durham and Bath ‘in accordance with ancient custom’. Immediately before the king the chancellor, if he be a bishop, with the chalice of St Edward. Before him also the treasurer, again if he be a bishop or abbot, bearing the paten. Both are to be in pontificalibus. After the chalice and paten follow dukes or earls, ‘especially who by kinship are nearly related to the king’, who bear the sceptre with the cross and the golden rod with the dove. All of these items of regalia should be delivered from the Abbey to the palace by the abbot. After the regalia come three earls bearing swords, Curtana carried by the Earl of Chester and the two others by the earls of Huntingdon and Warwick. Then follows a noble appointed by the king carrying the spurs. The king and the queen (if there be one) are each under canopies of purple silk carried on four silver lances topped with silver-gilt bells. Each canopy is carried by sixteen Barons of the Cinque Ports, four to a lance supporting it in rota. The fabric afterwards is a perquisite of the barons, the lances and bells of the Abbey, as, in addition, are all the carpets, silken cloths and cushions placed in the church. This was ‘in accordance with ancient custom’.

15 When the king is seated on the stage the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to consecrate him, addresses the assembled people at each of the four sides, ‘inquiring their will and consent’. As he does this the king stands and turns to face each side in turn. The people give their assent shouting ‘So be it’ and ‘Long live the king’ and ‘uttering with great joy’ his name.

16 The choir sings the anthem Firmetur manus tua.

17 The archbishop who is to celebrate Mass revests himself at the altar ‘on account of the crowd that is come together, lest he should be hindered by it’.

18 The bishops of Durham and Bath shall support the king on either side and together with the other bishops shall lead him down the steps to the high altar. The abbot is always to be in attendance acting as a prompt to the king ‘so that everything may be done right’.

19 The king makes an offering of a pound of gold and then prostrates himself upon the carpets and cushions which have been laid by the ushers. The archbishop says a prayer over him.

20 One of the bishops makes a short sermon to the people while the archbishop sits in a chair before the altar, the king sitting opposite him.

21 Then the archbishop administers the Coronation oath followed by an admonition on behalf of the bishops, to which the king also responds. He then confirms all that he has agreed to by swearing at the altar.

22 The king prostrates himself again before the altar while the archbishop kneels and intones the Veni creator Spiritus. A prayer follows and then two bishops or singers intone the litany. While this is sung the archbishop and all the other bishops prostrate themselves alongside the king and privately recite the seven penitential psalms.

23 More prayers and responses follow, after which the king sits again in his chair and then goes to the altar and divests himself of his robes, except his tunic and shirt ‘which are open at the breast, and between the shoulders, and on the shoulders, and also at the elbow …’ The silver loops sealing the openings are undone by the archbishop, the king kneeling beneath a canopy. The archbishop anoints the king with holy oil on his hands, breast, between the shoulders, on the shoulders, on both elbows and on the head in the form of a cross. Then his head is anointed a second time with chrism. The holy oil is to be in a silver phial and the chrism in one of gilt. After this the silver loops are fastened. During this action the anthem Unxerunt Salomonem is sung.

24 The first phase of vesting then follows, opening with a linen coif for the head, then the colobium sindonis cut like a dalmatic. The coif the king is to wear for seven days and on the eighth a bishop is to say a Mass of the Trinity in the Chapel Royal, after which he is to wash the king’s hair in hot water, dry it and ‘reverently arrange’ it and put on it a golden circlet which the king shall wear the whole day.

25 The archbishop blesses the royal ornaments and the king is vested in them by the abbot; first a long tunic reaching to his feet ‘wrought with golden figures before and behind’, then buskins, sandals and spurs. The sword is blessed and delivered by the bishops. The king is girded with it and then vested with the armils which ‘shall hang like a stole round his neck, from both shoulders to the elbows, and shall be bound to the elbows by silken knots…’ Then comes the mantle, ‘which is square and worked all over with golden eagles’. The crown is blessed and placed on the king’s head, after which follows a blessing and the delivery of the ring. The king takes off the sword and offers it at the altar, from which it is redeemed by the earl ‘who is the greatest of those present’. Gloves are put on the king’s hands and then the sceptre with the cross put into his right hand and the gold rod with the dove in his left. All of these actions are accompanied by prayers. The regalia, it stipulates, must be laid ready on the altar by the sacrist from the outset, ‘that everything may be done without hindrance from the very great concourse of people’.

26 The king then kisses the bishops and, together with ‘the nobles of the realm’, he is led back up the steps to the throne on the stage while the Te Deum is sung. When ended, the archbishop says the prayer Sta et retine and the king is enthroned, and ‘the peers of the realm shall stand around the king and stretch forth their hands as a sign of fealty, and offer themselves to support the king and the crown’.

27 The Mass then follows. The gospel is carried to the king to kiss and he then descends to present to the archbishop the bread and wine and also an offering of a mark of gold. When the archbishop has given the kiss of peace to the bishop who took the gospel to the king, the same bishop takes the pax to him. When the peace has been given the king descends and receives communion in both kinds.

28 The Mass ended, the king descends to the high altar and a procession of clergy and nobles forms to the shrine of St Edward. The Great Chamberlain divests the king of his regalia and vestments, which are laid on the altar by the abbot. The Great Chamberlain then revests the king in robes of state and the archbishop puts on him another crown but returns to him the regalia sceptres. Then follows a procession back through the church ‘with great glory’.

29 The Abbey of Westminster is to receive on the day a hundred bushels of corn and a ‘modius’ of wine and of fish.

30 The sceptres are to be returned to the Abbey immediately after the feast to join the rest of the regalia there, ‘the repository of the royal ensigns for ever, by papal bulls, kings’ charters, and old custom always observed’. A list then follows of the principal officers at the feast.

The text also contains provision for the Coronation of a queen either with a king or on her own. It stipulates that she is to be attired in crimson devoid of embroidery and that her hair should be worn loose and held by a jewelled circlet. When she is crowned on her own she is anointed only on the head and given a sceptre in addition to a ring and a crown. When she is crowned with her husband she is anointed also on the breast and receives in addition a rod. All these indicate that the crowning on her own of a queen is an earlier rite elaborated in the joint Coronation ordo, which elevates queenship on to a level comparable to that of the king.²⁰

Even the full text, of which I have given only a synopsis, does not provide for every contingency as any attempt to restage even in the mind’s eye a Coronation quickly reveals. Full though the rubrics are, they are still not full enough and the ordo remains a play text awaiting its director and designer. Anyone who has been involved with elaborate royal ceremonial knows (I speak from experience) that much can be improvised for a particular event and not even written down, so that the gap between the text of the Fourth Recension and what actually happened on the day could well have been substantial. Between 1216 and 1327 there are only six Coronations: Henry III (1216 and 1220), Eleanor of Provence (1236), Edward I (1274), Edward II (1308) and Edward III (1327).²¹ Our knowledge of these is fuller for some than for others, but it is a fragmentary story rather like a jigsaw puzzle from which some of the most important pieces are missing and, moreover, are likely to remain so. Collectively, however, they take the story forward. In particular, they mirror the power struggles at the heart of this century and a half of Plantagenet rule.

KINGSHIP UNDER SIEGE

In order to understand the change in focus in the Coronation during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we need to reconnoitre back in time to the disastrous reign of Henry III’s father, John, when relationships between the king and his magnates totally collapsed. John had not only broken rules of conduct which feudal society had regarded as sacrosanct, but lost England’s continental empire to France and been locked into a seven-year struggle with the pope over the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, leading to the country being laid under an interdict. Peace was made with the pope, by which the kingdom was received as a papal fief, only to be followed by a disastrous war with France. In May 1215 the king was forced to put his seal to the Great Charter or Magna Carta.

This document set the agenda for the centuries to follow, a foundation stone which saw the king as someone no longer answerable to God alone but also to the law. No fewer than sixty clauses put into writing an agreed body of laws covering every aspect of government and of the relationship of the king to his subjects. The importance of Magna Carta only grew with time, but in a single document we see embodied a change of focus which was to radically affect the Coronation.

The fifty-six-year rule of Henry III was about the maintenance of some constraints on a king who still sought a continental empire, who was arrogant, extravagant and obstinate and whose aim was to be absolute. Both the new Abbey and the transformation of Westminster Palace were visual manifestations of his mania for majesty on the grand scale. His reign was punctuated by conflicts with the barons. For almost a decade, between 1257 and 1265, king and barons were locked in a power struggle over the control of central government. The magnates attempted to force the king to rule according to a Council of Fifteen of their own choosing. Civil war resulted, the king winning when the barons were defeated at the battle of Evesham and their leader, Simon de Montfort, was slain. During this strife the vehicle for reconciliation became the Great Council to which, as the reign progressed, came not only the magnates but knights of the shires and burgesses representing the towns. These began to be called ‘parliaments’, parleys between the king and his subjects about affairs of state. Parliament was an emergent institution which was destined to play a major role in the Coronation’s history. By the fourteenth century Parliament invariably followed every Coronation.

Although there were periodic clashes between the king and the barons, for the majority of the time they worked together in harmony governing the state. That depended, however, on the king observing the rules, the key one of which was to keep a check on patronage, his distribution of rewards and benefits. Neither Henry III nor his warrior son, Edward I, the conqueror of Wales, could be faulted on that score, but in 1307 there came to the throne a king who ushered on to the scene a new phenomenon, the royal favourite. The wayward Edward II’s passion for Piers Gaveston upset the balance dramatically, so much so that it was to precipitate a major change in the Coronation oath.

As in so much about the early history of the Coronation we are hampered in the case of the oath by uneven evidence.²² It is generally accepted that Richard I’s oath was different from the standard tria praecepta. What had been the second promise was replaced by the third one and a new third promise was introduced, in which the monarch guaranteed the observation of good laws and customs and the abolition of evil. The old clause two, which prohibited rapacities and iniquities, was dropped. According to the chronicler Matthew Paris, John swore a different oath again and the young Henry III made that taken by Richard I. Nothing is known about the oath taken at the Coronation of Edward I, although we do know that he swore an additional fourth clause prohibiting the alienation of the rights of the Crown. This we discover through papal letters, and it certainly went back to Henry III, although whether it was tacked on to the king’s Coronation oath or to an oath of fealty whereby he recognised papal overlordship is unknown. What this embodied was the development of the notion of the crown in connexion with the idea of the inalienability of royal rights and possessions by whoever temporarily might be wearing it. The concept of the crown as an abstract entity was common in England since the twelfth century, but in the course of the thirteenth century the impersonal crown also gained constitutional importance.

None of all this could ever have anticipated the revolutionary oath which the wayward Edward II was forced to accept in 1308. This time the whole format was recast. The third promise was turned into an introduction, the two promises which followed it remained the same, but the fourth was dramatically new. In it the king bound himself to observe the future laws made by the community of the realm. The fact that so many copies of this oath exist is an index as to just how significant it was regarded in retrospect. Both the Latin and the Anglo-Norman text (which was the one the king used) therefore survive. In the former, Edward swore to keep the just laws quas vulgus elegerit. In the latter, ‘les quels la communaute de vostre roialme aura eslu’. The word vulgus is not exactly the same as la communaute de vostre roialme, though at the time they must have regarded it as equivalent. By 1308 the magnates were increasingly calling upon the populus, vulgus or the ‘people’ in support of their opposition to the king. What the oath brought centre stage at the Coronation was the king’s relationship with his own people and the rules which should circumscribe it.

What precipitated this? When the king met the magnates to discuss the Coronation the subject of Piers Gaveston came up. He had just been created Earl of Cornwall. In the Coronation he eclipsed everyone by wearing purple velvet embroidered with pearls; he was assigned the place of greatest honour in the procession, carrying the crown. In the service itself it was Gaveston who redeemed the sword and carried it before the king. Worse, he flaunted himself at the feast afterwards as marshal. No fewer than nine chroniclers record the quarrel between Edward and the magnates on this occasion. The Annales Paulini record that he was forced to promise ‘that he would do whatever they demanded in the next parliament, so long as the Coronation was not put off. It was, in fact, delayed from 18 to 25 February, and in the ‘parliamentum’ which immediately followed Gaveston was sent into exile.

What began its life as a mechanism to get rid of a royal favourite was to become the ideological linchpin from which flowed the events of the reign. It forced Edward to accept the Ordinances of 1311, submitting himself to the dictates of the magnates. His attempt to reverse this eleven years later and destroy clause four ended in failure. The Statute of York moved from the premise that a king could not alienate part of his sovereignty to the barons. The governance of the realm was the joint task of the king and the communitas regni, redefining parliament as not merely consisting of the barons acting on behalf of the communitas but actually including them in their own right. In the end, in 1327, Edward was deposed and subsequently murdered. Every king since has sworn that oath.

The catastrophic reign of Edward neatly demonstrates that the ideological bargains struck at Coronations belong to the heart of medieval history. They also explain what happened at the Coronation of the young Edward III, which, as a consequence of his father’s behaviour, was to represent a high tide of radicalism. Two manuscripts record that at this Coronation the Anglo-Saxon election was revived. In one version four earls ex parte populi report the election of the king to those assembled in the Abbey.²³ They ask that the prince, thus elected ab omni populo, be received and consecrated by the clergy. The Archbishop of Canterbury then selects four bishops and four abbots to inquire ad populum in the church if the latter will testify to the truth of the earls’ report. If the answer from those assembled is positive, both envoys and clergy give thanks to God and the elected king is led into the Abbey. What all this means is that Edward III was not presented as king by hereditary right, but because he was elected by the magnates and the ‘people’. The Fourth Recension in its final form is not so extreme as here, but it does preserve the presentation to the people at the opening of the action, ‘inquiring their will and consent’.

Although all of this would seem to lead to some diminution in regal status, everything, in fact, was pushed very much in the opposite direction. Thirty years after his Coronation Henry III asked the great theologian, Robert Grosseteste, in what way was he different as a consequence of unction.²⁴ The bishop replied circumspectly, making a clear distinction between the sacerdotal and royal offices. He stated that the king receives through this act the spiritual benefits and graces necessary for the virtues he requires to meet his royal obligations. The reply cannot have pleased the king. Other thirteenth-century theologians, however, are far less cautious and speak of the effect of anointing with chrism as meaning the reception by the king of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is not known at which Coronation chrism was reintroduced. The chroniclers refer to it being used in 1170 for Henry the Younger and it is also noted as having been used for Edward I, who had a golden eagle made for the event, the earliest reference to an object that could be the ampulla for the holy oil which became part of the regalia. One thing is certain: the Fourth Recension is absolutely specific that the king is anointed in all in eight places with holy oil and on the head with chrism.²⁵

The question which Henry III addressed to Grosseteste, and its answer, had their effect, for the king decided not to be buried in the apparel he wore when he was anointed but in his robes of majesty. For his burial in 1272 there was delivered: ‘one royal rod, one dalmatic of red samite with orphreys and stones, one mantle of red samite most splendidly adorned with orphreys and precious stones, a gold brooch, a pair of stockings of red samite with orphreys, one pair of shoes of red samite …’ When the tomb of Edward I was opened in 1774 he was found to be similarly clothed in ‘a dalmatic … of red silk damask’ over which there was ‘the royal mantle, or pall, of rich crimson satin, fastened on the left shoulder [i.e. his right] with a magnificent fibula of metal gilt with gold’. In his left hand he held a rod topped with a white enamelled dove and in his left a sceptre. Only Edward II was buried wearing the tunic, shirt, cap, coif and gloves ‘in which the king was anointed on the day of his Coronation’, although for the funeral the body was further dressed in royal robes including a mantle, a dalmatic, hose, shoes and spurs, all items which had been worn at his Coronation, but which were returned after the event to the Royal Wardrobe.²⁶

What we catch here is that henceforth emphasis was to be placed on the elaboration of the secular presentation of the monarchy in what was a highly symbolic age accustomed to think and look in terms of signs and symbols. In its new setting and with this in mind the Coronation was to fully respond to the opportunities offered to enhance the magnificence of the wearer of the crown. Every aspect was to be explored: ceremonial, dress, gesture, music, poetry and decoration together with the lavishness of the entertainments which gradually began to frame such an event.

SYMBOLIC SHOW

So much connected with a Coronation depended on moveables. The Abbey with its soaring architecture, its army of statuary, its wall-paintings, stained glass and bejewelled shrine was, when it came to staging a late medieval Coronation, like a theatre awaiting the arrival of the scenery, props and costumes, not to mention the actors and musicians. Only at the beginning of the fourteenth century do we begin to learn something about items like the great stage which was erected at the crossing and just how extraordinary it was. An entry in the accounts of the royal Office of Works for 1307–11 reads as follows: ‘Concerning the royal seat ordained and made in the monks’ church in the midst of the choir in which the king and queen were crowned: note these seats were wainscoted all round and so high that men at arms, namely earls, barons, knights and other nobles could ride beneath them.’²⁷

This matter-of-fact entry conjures up an astonishing picture, that the stage occupying the crossing must have been at least thirteen feet high and probably more to enable those on horseback to ride beneath it as though it were some kind of bridge. The arrangement was the reverse of that of a modern Coronation where tiered seats are erected in the transepts to look down on the action at the crossing.

The medieval Coronation stage was one both looked up to and down upon. Those at floor level gazed up, glimpsing the king as he was presented to each side at the opening of the ceremony. Later in the proceedings they could surely see the king enthroned above them as the throne, at least later, was approached by a flight of steps and therefore must have been very high. But onlookers could also look down on the action. In the corners of each terminal wall of the transepts there are newel staircases leading to the galleries in the triforium. The Liber Regalis constantly refers to the great concourse of people who could hinder the action and, indeed, these events could be densely crowded, so much so that in 1308 the king was forced to enter the Abbey another way and a wall was pushed over, killing a knight.²⁸ These must have been occasions when the whole medieval establishment came together, producing a crush, which made it essential for the regalia to be already on the high altar at the opening or otherwise there was no way of getting it there.

Once the stage was established as a feature the Royal Works would have stuck more or less to a formula. We have, in fact, to wait until the Household Ordinances of Henry VII (1494) to get a far fuller description of one of these Coronation stages, a structure which had to support one if not two thrones, plus a throng of officiating clergy and nobility. Then it is described as being railed and covered in red cloth with, at ground level, part if not all of it walled in, creating a room beneath which housed drink for the king and to which access could only be had by doors guarded by the royal ushers. This would suggest that by the late fifteenth century it had ceased to be a bridge-like construction. We learn far more, too, about the staircase approaches, both of which seem to have been as wide as the stage itself, approaching from the west and descending towards the high altar from the east.²⁹ Considerable improvisation as to the decoration of these stages must have occurred for on to them could be bestowed the riches of the Royal Wardrobe. Even though barely a week elapsed between Edward II’s deposition and his son’s Coronation, the stage was not only erected but hung around with 21 tapestries, 6 pieces of cloth of gold having diaper work of silk and 22 pieces of cloth of gold on linen, and the whole floor covered with lawn cloth on to which was laid the same ray cloth as lined the path from the palace. The throne on this occasion was covered in cloth of gold, with five cushions acting as a footrest, and above it there was a canopy.³⁰

Much of the drama of the ritual must have lain in the choreographed descent and ascent of the king with attendants both down and up the great staircase leading to the sanctuary and the high altar. There, too, in 1327 both the king’s chair and that for the archbishop were covered with cloth of gold. These stood on the celebrated Cosmati pavement which was probably the gift of the pope and for which Abbot Richard de Ware had brought from Rome both the craftsmen and some of the materials. It is an abstract spelt out in Purbeck marble, porphry, onyx, various limestones, alabaster and opaque glasses in a kaleidoscope of sophisticated colours: purple, green, golden yellow, blue, turquoise, white and red. What is depicted is an image of the cosmos in terms of the Greek Platonic tradition in which geometry and pure number linked the tangible world of the senses and the divine world approached through the intellect.³¹

The inscription on it ends with these words: ‘Here is the perfectly rounded sphere which reveals the eternal pattern of the universe.’ In it are mapped out the three levels of existence ascending up and through the sensible and intelligible worlds to the spiritual sphere symbolised in the single round stone at the centre as the eternal archetype. It is difficult not to believe that this sacred space with its complex cosmic imagery on which the kings of England were henceforth to be anointed was laid out with the Coronation in mind. For that of Edward I it was covered with a rich cloth, and yet the pavement’s schema in one sense is only completed when the king has been anointed and crowned as an image of the ninth sphere, the boundary between the created universe and the divine reality beyond. Indeed, every argument for kingship through into the seventeenth century works from this premise, that a king rules over the hierarchy of his subjects as God rules over the hierarchy of the universe. The one is a mirror-image of the other.

Such an image would conjure up, too, the music of the spheres, for in that scheme of things the cosmos was constructed according to the proportions of the musical scale. Terrestrial music was but an earthly counterpart of the celestial music of the spheres. Music played a major part in the Coronation rite which moved from speech to chant, not forgetting the important part which silence could play in such great rituals. For the first time, in 1308, we are able to shed some light on the role played by music in Coronations. On that occasion there were significant changes to what was used. The antiphon Confortare, for instance, was deliberately moved in order to highlight the act of crowning, but even more significant was the alteration of the antiphon Unxerunt Salomonem which traditionally accompanied the anointing. For that there was composed a totally new tune which borrowed part of the melody of the Magnificat antiphon for the feast of St Edmund, king and martyr. In doing this those present would have been reminded of Edward II’s descent from a second Anglo-Saxon royal saint. The new composition drew on pre-Advent antiphons in which Christ is described as ascending his throne and which also celebrated his baptism. The parallel offered is between Christ’s baptism and the king’s reception of unction. To further elevate the monarchy the Coronation Mass borrowed music from that used for the Coronation of a pope.³²

If the Abbey’s interior was transformed for the occasion so, too, was the palace. The Coronation of Edward II had a six-month lead time and the palace, which was in a run-down state, was completely cleaned and put in order. As winter drew on and the evenings darkened candles were supplied so that the work would not be impeded. There is mention also of the construction of a temporary second great hall, the duplicate of the one in stone. This was over five hundred feet long and in it was staged the prefatory secular enthronement of the king. Above the throne, in an arch, stood a gilded copper statue of a king. The first occasion on which such a temporary hall went up that we know about was in 1274 for Edward I. In addition, in 1308, there was a fountain in the lesser domestic hall which spouted red and white wine and a spiced drink called pimento.³³

There was a similar rush to spruce up things in 1327. This time the great chamber was hung with tapestries adorned with shields with the royal arms, the bench coverings were patterned with coats of arms and the royal seat was covered with cloth of gold and provided with cushions. Westminster Hall itself was adorned with hangings and its floor covered with linen cloth. The king’s seat glittered with the usual cloth of gold and Turkey silk.³⁴

What all of this tells us is that the guest list must have run into thousands, and inevitably not all of the guests had London residences. In 1308 there were fourteen lesser halls built parallel to the temporary great hall. The Coronation now consisted not only of the rite itself and the feast which followed, but went on to include several days of tilts, tourneys and further feasting. Edward I’s festivities lasted for fourteen days in emulation of Solomon. In the case of Edward II we know that 40 ovens had to be built, calling for a small army of cooks, not to mention vast quantities of fuel.³⁵ In the case of Edward I we get a glimpse of the huge quantities of provisions sent for from all over the kingdom. In February 1274 orders went out to the county of Gloucestershire alone to provide 60 oxen and cows, 60 swine, 2 fat boars, 40 pigs and 3,000 capons and hens. Bishops, abbots and priors were asked to procure as many swans, peacocks, cranes, rabbits and kids as they could.³⁶

In these fragmentary pieces of information we witness the Coronation expanding as an event far beyond what happened in the Abbey. In fact, a Coronation had become the greatest festivity of any reign. While in the Abbey the Church might reign triumphant as lay deferred to clerical power, outside a deliberate riposte was staged in which the whole pyramid of medieval feudal society was displayed in witness to a revival of royal power. By the middle of the fourteenth century the secular aspect had developed into a massive display of rank and power, one which inevitably, as happened in 1308 over Piers Gaveston, led to clashes of interest and conflicting claims among the king and his assembled magnates.

CORONATION OFFICES

The Red Book of the Exchequer suddenly records in 1236 the Coronation of Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence.³⁷ The reason for this was that ‘Great disputes arose about the services of the officers of the king’s household, and about the rights belonging to their offices.’ This was eventually to lead to the establishment at each Coronation of a Court of Claims whose role was to sort out and pronounce upon the bids by rival contenders to perform this or that service for the king on the day. The earliest records that we have for one of these courts in action are for the Coronation of Richard II in 1377, but it is possible that they existed earlier.

The emergence of such a court must have been the eventual consequence of the clashes and claims which caused someone to put pen to paper in 1236. On that occasion Earl Warenne claimed the right to carry the sword ‘Curtana’. The Earl of Chester and Huntingdon claimed that right as his own on the grounds that it was a service which descended with the earldom of Chester. In that case the king intervened and we are told ‘the strife subsided’. The two sceptres were carried by two knights ‘because that service does not fall to any one by right, but only those to whom the king is pleased to entrust it’. The list runs through claims as varied as the right to be steward at the feast for the day to being the person who presented the king with his napkin. In every instance those who petitioned did so on the basis that it was ‘his of old’, ‘comes from old time’ or ‘by old-established right’.

The truth of the matter was that the grounds for these claims were often flimsy, and ‘old’ could mean little more than a generation back.³⁸ The links argued on precedent and from association with land tenure could be dubious in the extreme, but they were fought hard and often became fact. For those who won there was not only the glamour of the occasion and the opportunity to be in proximity to the king, but perks to be had ranging from pieces of plate to cloths of estate. Some, like the queen’s chamberlain in 1236, could do extremely well out of such an event, for he left the richer by the queen’s bed as well as basins and other items. Most of this had begun to be systematised by the middle of the thirteenth century, when the grant of a particular piece of land was made in return for a certain Coronation service, a transaction known as serjeanty. The earliest traceable instance of this comes in 1212 and was for holding the queen’s towel at her Coronation. Already by the twelfth century many of the nobles acted on state occasions such as Coronations and crown-wearings as almoner, steward, marshal, seneschal, butler and chamberlain. Some of these posts were less onerous than others. The almoner, for example, distributed the leftovers from the feast to the poor and exercised jurisdiction over all comers, settling the disputes which could arise at such distributions. The marshal had to maintain order within the palace and also arrange hostelry for the small army of guests. In return he claimed a saddled palfrey from every earl and baron knighted on the day. Bearing in mind the hordes of guests, he will have earned them.

Such services drew in not only the aristocratic and knightly classes but also townspeople. The Cinque Ports sent canopy bearers for the king and queen, sixteen in all, four to each stave.³⁹ They first appear in 1189 at the Coronation of Richard I quod de consuetudine antiqua in coronationis regis habuerunt. The ports involved were Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich, to which were later added Winchelsea and Rye. Together they occupied a crucial geographical position in terms of the defence of the realm, as well as in those of trade and commerce. Each year they supplied the crown with 57 ships. The canopy bearers were barons for the day and their perquisite was the fabric of the canopy itself, which was generally sold off and the money divided between the towns involved. Although the Cinque Ports had already ceased to be of any importance by 1500, they were to continue to render this service until the reign of George IV. It was William IV who, disgusted at the extravagance of his predecessor, abolished it. Nevertheless, the barons were to resurface in 1901 before a Court of Claims and attain a place as standard bearers at the Coronation of Edward VII.

Of all of these offices the most legendary is that of King’s Champion. That office was certainly in existence by 1327 and was attached to the manor of Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire. The terms of the land tenure or serjeanty specified that the tenant should at each Coronation proffer: ‘to defend with his body against any man who may assert that the king is not rightful king, that he speak not good nor truth, and for the execution of this proffer our Lord the King shall give him the best charger he has save one and his best armour save one’.⁴⁰

This office may well have originally been held by the Marmion family, lords of Tamworth Castle and Scrivelsby, whose last co-heir died about 1292, after which Scrivelsby passed to the Dymokes. In 1377 this office was further defined. The Champion was to ride ahead of the procession and if anyone actually challenged him he would get both the horse and the armour which the king provided, otherwise not. On that occasion he turned up at the north door of the Abbey and was sent away and told to perform his challenge at the feast, which he did. Challenges were a feature of late medieval feasts, and so there it stayed until the last occasion when this was enacted, the Coronation of George IV. Under William IV the Champion went the same way as the Cinque Ports canopy bearers, but also returned in a banner-bearing guise in 1902.⁴¹

The rivalry over Coronation services is a keen index of a highly stratified society where rank was measured in both the duty performed and proximity to the monarch. In spite of so many posts being assigned by descent, either through land tenure or title, there was always at any Coronation a large pool of patronage at the king’s disposal. The choice of this or that person to bear a sceptre or a crown or to fasten on the spurs or redeem the sword was looked upon as a benchmark in terms of royal favour. In 1308 Edward II’s decision that the crown, in the words of the Annales Paulini, was ‘to be carried in the filthy hands of Piers Gaveston’ added fuel to fires already burning brightly enough in the minds of the assembled magnates.⁴² In the makeup of the chivalrous mind such marks of favour were of signal importance. In a feudal society such events should be public manifestations of the immutable ordo of society, and not be soiled by upstarts.

Thirteen hundred and eight is interesting for another reason in this context, for the magnates made a bid to carry articles of the regalia of St Edward, items which, in the words of the same chronicler, ‘they ought not to have touched, for they are relics; only the king’s own [i.e. personal] Coronation regalia, in which he will return to the palace after the mass and then sit at the feast do they have the right to bear’.⁴³ The magnates, in fact, got their way on that occasion, for only the chalice and paten were borne by clerics.

These great processions, increasingly spectacular to watch, took the Coronation out to a wider public. They moved in and out of the great internal spaces of both the Abbey and the palace but, more importantly, made their way in the open along the ray-cloth path linking the one building to the other. Those who lined the route would have seen their future ruler, bare-headed, devoid of his robes of state and walking in his stockinged feet, a bishop guiding him by either hand. He would be framed by the silver staves of the canopy borne by the Barons of the Cinque Ports, and the onlookers would have been alerted to his imminence by the tinkling of the silver-gilt bells and the chant of the monks. Several hours later they would have seen the same figure re-emerge transformed, dazzling in his robes of state, no longer led but triumphant, clasping orb and sceptre, and on his head a crown of gold and precious jewels. For an age whose mental premise was the image rather than the word the impact must have been overwhelming.

PICTURING THE CORONATION

It is only at this period that for the first time we begin to get some impression of what these events must have looked like. England, however, produces nothing comparable to the magnificent Coronation Book of Charles V of France prompted by his Coronation on 19 May 1364. This contains no less than 38 miniatures closely related to the text ordo but expanding it in terms of showing setting, dress, gesture and action.⁴⁴ As a reflection of its English equivalent it must be discounted, although it does include a record, albeit a diagrammatic one, of a Coronation stage. A narrow flight of steps leads down to the high altar. The enclosure floats on narrow wooden pillars painted with golden fleur de lys and the rails of the stage have been draped with rich fabrics as we know happened at Westminster. That at least provides an impression of what went up in the abbey, although reduced in the miniature to toy-town proportions.

In the case of England we are confronted from the mid-thirteenth century onwards with a series of illuminations seemingly depicting Coronations. Some, like those in the Lytlington Missal and the Liber Regalis, are actually set into copies of the Coronation ordo. Most, however, were occasioned by another circumstance, for their recurrence in chronicles reflects the fact that the accession of a new ruler measured time. Royal bureaucracy actually measured time by regnal years. The richest sequence of these Coronation scenes occurs in a Flores Historiarum on loan to the British Library. Illuminated in Westminster in the 1250s while the new church was arising, it includes no fewer than ten Coronation tableaux, starting with King Arthur. Even though they emanate from a scriptorium in the Coronation church, they cannot be relied upon in any way as accurate depictions of a late medieval Coronation.⁴⁵

The grandest of the sequence, in tune with its origin, shows that of Edward the Confessor. He is seated on a regal seat with a footstool, while one bishop pours oil from a vessel on to the already crowned head of the royal saint, a reversal of the actual sequence, and the other bishop places the rod with the dove in the king’s left hand, just as prescribed in the Fourth Recension. To one side there is a throng of clerics while, on the other, a complementary assembly of magnates lifts their swords in salute, much in the way we saw done in the Coronation of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry. This image is very similar to the one which was in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, executed probably during the 1260s. In this version, however, the laity are entirely excluded in favour of seventeen bishops and mitred abbots. The rod with the dove is placed this time in the king’s right hand in accordance with how it appears on the great seal of Henry III. Nor do the illuminations which accompany the ordines in the Liber Regalis or Lytlington Missal take us any further, beyond an incidental detail in the Liber which has a scene of a double Coronation, with the queen’s throne shown correctly as lower than the king’s.⁴⁶

The most arresting of all these Coronation images is that which prefaces the ordo in Anglo-French for Edward II. It dates from about 1325–30 and the owner has been tentatively identified as Henry de Cobham.⁴⁷ Lord Cobham probably participated in the Coronation of Edward II or Edward III in his role as a Baron of the Cinque Ports. It is difficult otherwise to account for the Coronation ordo appearing in a book whose main text is the Apocalypse. Opinions vary as to whether the king depicted in the illumination is Edward II or Edward III, but what we see does seem to reflect some knowledge of the Coronation. The king is seated on a chair whose back is adorned with fleurons and which resembles the Coronation chair. Although what the king wears in no way accords with the vestments listed in the regalia, it does show some semblance of knowledge as to what was actually worn. There is a white ankle-length undergarment over which comes a bright red tunic, then a dalmatic with broad yellow and golden horizontal bands, and finally a pallium in gold and peach-coloured brocade fastened in the manner of a cope with a morse. In his right hand the king holds a rod topped by a fleuron and in his left an orb arising from a series of fleurons. The king is surrounded by six bishops, two of whom support the crown, and two others, in the foreground, who proffer containers whose purpose has so far defied identification. This without doubt is some kind of composite image of the king at his enthronement.

These miniatures show that king-making was by the fourteenth century a consensual process.⁴⁸ The king is no longer an isolated figure upon whose head a crown is bestowed by an angel or the hand of God. The throne in every instance is surrounded by people, the rapidly emerging estates of the realm. These miniatures spell out the great shift in climate which has taken place as we move through the thirteenth and into the fourteenth century. This is a period which witnesses the emergence of a new thinking about political systems, about the involvement of citizens and how they should participate. The monarchy is recast into a greater vision which includes the notion of consent by drawing in an enlarged constituency of those ruled. Although still in our terms narrow, in medieval understanding it was very wide. This huge change in the concept of kingship and the structure of the state was the result of the reception of Aristotelianism, a philosophy in which sense experience was established as the origin of universal knowledge. The consequence of that was that those capable of responding to reason should be brought into the consensus of kingship: males, the secular nobility and bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia and lawyers. Aristotelianism and the recognition of the powers of reason also meant a cultivation of the arts of persuasion. In the case of the coronation those arts would embrace music, visual spectacle, rhetoric and ceremonial, all aimed no longer at an ecclesiastical audience but at a lay one. In its final form the English Coronation utilised all those powers in a gigantic festival whose aim was to reconcile divine election with popular consent.

4 Sacred Monarchy

IN SHAKESPEARE’S Richard II the Earl of Salisbury encounters a captain at a camp in Wales. The fate of the king is already sealed and the captain repeats a rumour that he is in fact dead. He then says:

The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-fac’d moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change; Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap, The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, The other to enjoy by rage and war; These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

(II, iv, 11. 8–15)

Such a passage is a window into the minds of those who lived in the pre-Newtonian age. Belief in the occult and what, to a post-Enlightenment mind, would seem to be the irrational was the norm. The monarch in his kingdom was a mirror of the divine order reflecting God’s rule over the hierarchies of heaven. Thus the fate of kings signalled cosmic consequences as the God-ordained natural order of things had been violated.

MYSTICAL MONARCHY

The three centuries which take us to the collapse of the monarchy in 1649 are those of sacred monarchy, an apotheosis which spirals ever upwards until James I actually enunciates the Divine Right of Kings, informing his eldest son ‘you are a little GOD to sit on his Throne, and rule over other men’.¹ This escalation in the mystique of monarchy was to have profound repercussions on the Coronation, first in the phase which runs down to the Reformation, the subject of this chapter, and second in that which was to end with a royal head being severed on a scaffold.

Although the notion of the priest-king had long gone, that did not destroy the fervent belief that he who had received unction was different from ordinary mortals. That was reinforced by the emergence of the theory known as the king’s two bodies, his mortal one which made up the transitory aspect of monarchy, and the immortal one which was his fictive entity, the undying legal ‘body’ of the crown, of which the sovereign was but the temporary representative. On the theory that the king never dies the state depended for continuity in the administration of government. In this way we begin to witness what might be described as a new secular mysticism surrounding the monarchy, one which was based not so much on holy unction but on the precepts of law.²

All of this was to happen during the century preceding the triumph of the Tudors, in fact precisely in a period when it would be thought that exactly the opposite would occur. For most of the fifteenth century the monarchy was in crisis. Richard II was deposed. Henry IV, his successor, was little more than a usurper. His son, Henry V, was to revive successfully for a short period the war with France, but disastrously left a baby as heir to the new dual monarchy of France and England. Built up as the descendant of two royal saints, St Edward and St Louis, it was unfortunate that Henry VI grew up to be a pious simpleton, precipitating a major crisis as to what should be done with a man unfit to be king. The sanctity of kingship was such, however, that it was to take two decades before he was finally removed and replaced by Edward IV, a descendant of the second and fourth sons of Edward III. Unfortunately, Edward IV’s premature death left the country for a second time with a child king, Edward V. The mysterious disappearance of both him and his brother in the Tower opened the way for the brief usurpation of their uncle, Richard III, who, in his turn, was defeated by what was in effect yet another usurper, albeit a successful one, Henry VII, the first of the Tudors.

The turbulence of the period we know as the Wars of the Roses, indeed, was from time to time challenged as the contending parties tried to discredit each other. Sir John Fortescue, chief justice of the King’s Bench and a partisan of the Lancastrian Henry VI, for example, denied the Yorkist Edward IV any of the wonder-working powers which, he argued, could only be exercised by the deposed king: ‘Those who witness these deeds [royal healing of scrofula by touch] are strengthened in their loyalty to the king, and this monarch’s undoubted title to the throne is thus confirmed by divine approval.’³

For whoever wore the crown, it was of supreme importance that he was seen to possess the healing attribute, so much so that in the case of touching for scrofula the coin bestowed by the monarch on the sufferer was increased in value as an added attraction. At some date it ceased to be the lowly silver penny and became the gold angel. This was first coined under Edward IV, but whether it was Edward or Henry VII who made the change is unknown. What it reveals is the desire that the mysterious powers bestowed by unction at Coronation were seen to be effective.⁴

Royal healing powers were, in fact, extended during the fourteenth century when rings made from coins presented by the king and laid at the foot of the cross during the Good Friday liturgy in the Chapel Royal were considered to be capable of relieving muscular pains or spasms, and more especially epilepsy. It was for that reason they were known as cramp rings.⁵ The practice is first certainly identifiable in the reign of Edward II, and every monarch up until the death of Mary Tudor in 1558 took part in what became a ritual. As in the case of royal healing for scrofula, which would never have taken off but for Henry II’s battle with the Church, so in the case of cramp rings there is a connexion between the development of this new healing power and the fate of the monarchy. It is, therefore, no surprise that it first emerges during the reign of a king under siege or that it enters its most significant phase during the reign of another beleaguered monarch, Henry VI. During precisely the period when the child monarch was being built up as the dual ruler of both France and England the ritual in the Chapel Royal was changed. Instead of coins being offered, taken away and made into rings, on Good Friday a bowl of rings was presented which the king fingered. This new ritual is described as follows: ‘the king’s highness rubbeth the rings between his hands, saying: “Sanctify, O Lord, these rings … and consecrate them by the rubbing of our hands, which thou hast been pleased according to our ministry to sanctify by an external effusion of holy oil upon them”’.⁶

Fortescue argues that the king’s hands have this magical power through the unction bestowed at Coronation. So what had begun as a simple offering of coins at the foot of the cross on Good Friday was transformed into a rite for a miracle-working king. By the beginning of the sixteenth century attempts were made to link this new royal miracle with the legendary ring bestowed by St John on Edward the Confessor and preserved in Westminster Abbey. If the Reformation had not intervened it is interesting to speculate as to where that association would have led.

Unction for kings from Henry IV onwards was further sanctified by the use for the first time of what was proclaimed to be the Holy Oil of St Thomas.⁷ As in the case of the cramp rings the saga has its turning point in the reign of Edward II, but it was built on the fulfilment of a much earlier legend. In any consideration of the Holy Oil of St Thomas it is essential to grasp the primacy attached to prophecy during the Middle Ages. In the case of the Oil this had its origins in a legend circulating at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In it the Virgin appeared to St Thomas in a vision while he was praying in the church of St Columba in Sens during his exile. She presented him with a gold eagle which contained a stone flask filled with the Oil, and informed him that this was to be used at the Coronation of unspecified kings of England at some future date. As the story was elaborated, her prophecy was that the first king to be anointed with it would recover Normandy and Aquitaine and go on to build many churches in the Holy Land, drive the pagans from Babylon and build churches there, too.

In its full-blown fifteenth-century version the Holy Oil was entrusted by St Thomas to a monk of the monastery of St Cyprian of Poitiers, with the message that it would be revealed at an opportune moment and that that signal would come from the King of the Pagans. Now when the latter discovered the existence of the Oil through his demons, realising the threat which it posed to him he sent a pagan knight and a Christian and his son to find the ampulla. The pagan knight died on the journey, but the Christian and his son discovered the Holy Oil, taking it first to the German king and then to Jean II, Duke of Brabant. He brought it to England and presented it to his brother-in-law, Edward II, with the idea that it should be used at his Coronation. The Council, however, declined to do so. Nine years later the king began to have second thoughts about the Oil and sent an emissary to Pope John XXII at Avignon seeking permission to be anointed. The pope wisely prevaricated, saying that the king could be anointed but only in secret. Edward did not pursue the matter and the ampulla seems to have been placed in the Royal Treasury in the Tower.

There it remained until 1399, when Richard II alighted upon it while rummaging through the royal jewels. The ampulla was a small stone phial containing the Oil set, by that date, into a gold eagle. In form it would have resembled a late medieval brooch which could be worn, as many relics were, suspended from a chain around the neck. He asked the then Archbishop of Canterbury to anoint him, but he refused on the grounds that the unction received at Coronation was unique and unrepeatable. The king’s faith in the ampulla was such that he took it with him to Ireland, suspending it around his neck. On his return Archbishop Arundel, now his sworn enemy, gained possession of it: ‘it was not the divine will that he [Richard II] should be anointed with it, so noble a sacrament was another’s due’. So Arundel kept it ‘until the Coronation of this new king [Henry IV], who was the first of English kings to be anointed with so precious a liquid’.

There is no doubt that the Lancastrian adoption of the Holy Oil was in emulation of the French Sainte Ampoulle, oil delivered from heaven during the baptism of Clovis, the first Christian king of France. Hence the French king’s style of Rex Christianissimus. Buried amidst the legend of the Holy Oil of St Thomas there is a substructure of truth. We know that it existed in the reign of Edward II and that it resurfaced in 1399. We also know that it was certainly used at the Coronations of Henry IV and Henry VI and quite possibly that of Henry V. It is to be recalled that part of the prophecy predicted the reconquest of Normandy and Aquitaine, and this must connect with the appearance during the fifteenth century for the first time of two squires clothed to represent Normandy and Guyenne (Aquitaine) in the Coronation procession. Moreover, by the middle of the century the Holy Oil of St Thomas had acquired a solemn ceremony of delivery from the palace to the Abbey for the Coronation. It was borne in procession by a bishop in pontificals attended by a cross and candles to the high altar. As it passed the waiting king he rose from his chair. All of this is recorded in the Liber Regie Capelle compiled about 1445–8 and recording what happened in the Chapel Royal. By then it was certainly housed in a gold eagle, the ampulla, and in 1483 Richard III made it over to the Abbot of Westminster with the stipulation that after his death it should become part of the Coronation regalia ‘for evermore’. And by re-creation it has.

In the context of the Lancastrian pursuit of the santification of their dynasty, we might add Henry VII’s campaign for the canonisation of Henry VI.⁸ As early as 1473 an effigy of the king had appeared on the choir screen of York Minster and the cult could not be suppressed. In the context of the new Tudor dynasty a royal saint to add to the Confessor was a desideratum, and negotiations were begun with Rome. They came to nothing, but Henry VII’s intention, when work began on what we know as his chapel in Westminster Abbey, was that its focal point was to be the shrine of ‘St’ Henry VI, his body being translated from Windsor. The fact that Henry VIII never pursued the project any further should not detract from what was initially to be a second dynastic valhalla, this time of the Tudors gathered around the shrine of a second royal saint in the same way that the Plantagenets encircled St Edward in what was the Coronation church.

All through this century when the crown was beleaguered there was an augmentation and elaboration of anything which would exalt its mystery. Crown-wearings, for example, increased in number. Originally confined to Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, there were now added Epiphany, All Saints and the two feasts of Edward the Confessor. In addition, there was the innovation of the queen wearing her crown on the anniversary of her Coronation.⁹

To all of this we can add the increasing mystique attached to the regalia in Westminster Abbey and to other artefacts which were deployed at the Coronation. About 1450 a monk called Richard Sporley compiled an inventory of the Abbey’s relics in which the regalia figure. It is worth quoting in full, if only because in the ensuing century these relics alone survived the purge of the Reformation:

Relics of Holy Confessors

Saint Edward, king and confessor, for the memory of posterity and for the dignity of the royal Coronation, caused to be preserved in this church all the royal ornaments with which he was crowned; namely his tunicle, supertunica, armil, girdle, and embroidered pall; a pair of buskins, a pair of gloves, a golden sceptre, one wooden rod gilt, another of iron.

Also an excellent golden crown, a golden comb, and a spoon.

Also for the Coronation of the queen, a crown and two rods.

Also for the communion of the lord king, on the day of his Coronation, one chalice of onyx stone with a foot, rivets, and a paten of the best gold; all of which are to be considered precious relics.¹⁰

About 1387–9 Richard II had asked a monk at the Abbey, Walter of Sudbury, ‘whether the regalia of [his] reign are the regalia of King Alfred and take their origin from him’. In the resulting treatise, De Primis Regalibus Ornamentis Regni Angliae, Walter describes the Abbey as a royal seat, sedes regia, one deliberately chosen by Edward the Confessor as the repository for the regalia. The latter he defines as insignia, ‘signs’ of the sacrament of Coronation and the means whereby the king takes on ‘the royal dignity, which among and above all the riches, pleasures, and honours of this world takes first place, supereminently at the very highest point’. In Walter’s mind the royal prerogative and the privileges of the Abbey are indissolubly intertwined thanks to its role as the custodian of the regalia and of the shrine of St Edward.”¹¹

Richard II, like Henry III, had a mystical cult of the crown jewels. Indeed, so much so that in 1390, much to the consternation of the populace, he began to carry them around with him and in 1399 even took them to Ireland, suspending, as we have seen, the Holy Oil of St Thomas around his neck. All of this runs side by side during the 1390s with changes in forms of address to him, the period when ‘highness’ and ‘majesty’ entered, terms of the kind which, up until then, were reserved for the Deity. The word ‘prince’ was also rarely used until the same period, implying recognition of Richard’s role as the supreme lawgiver in a sovereign realm, while ‘your majesty’ paid tribute to his sacral character. More than any other monarch he created a new mystique of monarchy which was to be taken up and developed, one which used language, ceremony and symbolic artefacts.¹²

Like Henry III, too, he had a cult of St Edward and through that of the Abbey, to the extent that in 1397 he adopted new arms, those of England being impaled with those of the Confessor. In times of crisis throughout the reign his first recourse was to the shrine.¹³ Perhaps that cult went back to his Coronation in 1377 when the following incident occurred:

It is generally accepted that immediately after his Coronation the king should go into the vestry, where he should take off the regalia and put on other garments laid out ready for him by his chamberlains before returning by the shortest route to his palace, but at the Coronation of the present king the contrary was done, with deplorable results; for when the coronation was over, a certain knight, Sir Simon Burley, took the king up in his arms, attired as he was, in his regalia, and went into the palace by the royal gate with crowds milling all round him and pressing upon him, so that on the way he lost one of the consecrated shoes through his thoughtlessness.¹⁴

That loss was made good thirteen years later on 10 March 1390 when he sent to the Abbey a pair of red velvet shoes embroidered with fleur-de-lys in pearls, which had been blessed by Pope Urban VI, with the instruction that they were to be deposited with the rest of the regalia.¹⁵

That desire to elevate the monarchy finds reflection, too, during the fifteenth century in the adoption of a form of crown which was imperial, that is, it had a high narrow diadem arising above the circlet in the shape of a mitre. Up until that date such a form of crown was the prerogative of the Holy Roman Emperors. It has been reasonably postulated that we may owe this innovation to Richard II whose wife, Anne of Bohemia, was a daughter of Emperor Charles IV. Froissart’s description of the crowning of Henry IV in 1399 refers to an arched or closed crown, and one was certainly worn by Henry V. One of the earliest representations of an English crown incorporating what are called ‘imperial arches’ is to be found in his chantry in Westminster Abbey, constructed about 1438–52, where the king is depicted twice, once being crowned with what is meant to be St Edward’s crown, and once enthroned wearing an imperial crown with high arches. Under Henry VI the closed imperial crown becomes general and its most spectacular migration occurred in 1471 when Edward IV used it on his second Great Seal. That was not to be followed by Henry VII who used an open crown, although he was to introduce an imperial crown on to the coinage and make use of it elsewhere, typified by his bequest to Westminster Abbey of 29 copes of cloth of gold and crimson silk richly emblazoned with the crown imperial over the Beaufort portcullis. In the series of drawings known as The Pageant of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, made c.1485–90, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI and their queens are all depicted with closed crowns. Although the fifteenth-century English preoccupation with an imperial crown was probably directed towards English claims to France, it was to be repeated throughout Europe by rulers in response to the late medieval legal notion that rex in regno suo est imperator, every king within his own kingdom is an emperor. In 1517 Cuthbert Tunstall, then Master of the Rolls, wrote to Henry VIII: ‘But the Crown of England is an Empire of hitselff, mych bettyr then now the Empire of Rome: for which cause your Grace werith a close crown …’ All of this, however, was to take a very different direction after 1529 and the break with Rome.¹⁶

The orb as we know it today also makes its first appearance in this century. Initially orbs, too, were imperial attributes, one being used first at the Coronation of Emperor Henry II in 1014. This orb was a sphere with a horizontal band of precious stones and a cross on its summit, a form which surfaces in an English context on the first seal of Edward the Confessor in use from 1053 to 1065. Under the Normans and later it was combined with the Anglo-Saxon long rod or verge, resulting in a curious form of attribute, a ball from which arose a foliated stem topped by a cross. This is what we see on the Great Seals. Modern scholarship concludes that it was Richard II who was responsible for the emergence of the orb to prominence. At his Coronation in 1377 he is described as being invested not with St Edward’s sceptre (likely to have been in need of repair) but an orb with a long stem and a cross at the top, which must have formed part of his personal regalia. It, or an approximation to it, appears in the portrait of Richard II in Westminster Abbey. His successors, the Lancastrian kings, took up the orb, changing it to the imperial form of a ball with a cross on its summit. The earliest appearance of it in this guise is in an illumination of Edward IV, and it first appears carried in the Coronation procession of Richard III where it is referred to as the ‘ball with the cross’ and as signifying ‘monarchie’. The king was not, however, invested with it. Although orbs now became part of a king’s personal regalia there is no mention of one for the Coronations of either Henry VII or Henry VIII, although, as we shall see, it resurfaces in response to particular circumstances in 1547 for Edward VI.¹⁷

Side by side with the arrival of an imperial crown and an orb, the swords, which already by 1400 played such a significant role in the various processions as well as in the investiture in the Abbey, assume their final form. The association of ceremonial swords with royal authority goes back to the eighth century. An official royal sword is first recorded in England in the ninth century, while courtiers holding what must be the royal sword appear in the Bayeux Tapestry. The sword first surfaces as an item in the investiture in the Second Recension, and there is the record that three swords were carried in the Coronation procession of Richard I in 1189. The investiture sword, which eventually became known as ‘The Sword of Offering’, was at an early date symbolised by the use of a second sword which was called ‘The Sword of Estate’ (later reduced to State). The earliest reference to this ceremonial duplicate being used comes in 1380, significantly in connexion with a king obsessed by status and regal dignity, Richard II: ‘one sword for Parliament, set with gold, with diamonds, balasses, “balesets”, small sapphires, and pearls’. Thenceforth the sword of state, the visible symbol of the royal presence, recurs.¹⁸

References to the various ceremonial swords increase during the fifteenth century and the texts begin to provide a symbolic gloss as to their meaning. From the Coronation of Henry IV in 1399 onwards they were multiplied to four in number, the fourth, symbolising Lancaster (of which he was duke), being the one which the king had worn at his landing at Ravenspur.¹⁹ Swords were new made for each Coronation, but in 1399 the chronicler Adam of Usk gives for the first time meaning to them: ‘one was sheathed as a token of the augmentation of military honour, two were wreathed in red and bound round with golden bands to represent two-fold mercy, and the fourth naked and without a point, the emblem of justice without rancour’.²⁰

The next text which invests the swords with meaning comes in a poem on the Coronation of Henry VI. The verses list three swords, although four were actually carried:

Thre swerdis there were borne, oon poyntlees, and two poyntid; The toon was a swerde of mercy, the oothir of astate, The thrid was of the empier the which ert our gate. ²¹

In this scenario they represented mercy (the sword Curtana), estate (state) and empire (perhaps the dual monarchy of France and England). Four were borne at Richard II’s Coronation and again they were given a gloss: a naked pointless one for mercy, two swords representing justice to the temporality and to the clergy, and the fourth, the sword of state.²² The meanings may shift, but what they reflect is an increasing desire to see these ceremonial objects as the embodiments of abstract concepts.

During the fifteenth century the Abbey and its abbots strengthen their hold on the Coronation and any artefacts connected with it. The abbot now goes to the incoming monarch to instruct him in the mysteries of the rite. It is he, too, who is the custodian of the regalia around which ever more legend accrues. He and his monks bear these sacred relics to Westminster Hall on the Coronation day, and to them they must be returned. Throughout the whole ceremony the abbot is to be there guiding the king in the action and it is he, too, who now invests the king with the buskins, sandals, spurs, colobium sindonis and supertunica.

This empire-building by the Abbey, it has been suggested, explains one of the more weird transmutations in the regalia which occurs sometime during the fourteenth into the fifteenth centuries. The armils began their life as bracelets with which the king was invested, a fact which is likely to have been lost sight of by the fourteenth century when bracelets were no longer part of men’s attire. But the Fourth Recension calls for armils, and the monks of Westminster must have searched in vain through what they called the St Edward’s regalia trying to identify them, deciding that a cloth-of-gold stole adorned with ‘ancient work’ in the form of shields bearing leopards’ heads (the leopard as an emblem of England is not earlier than c.1200) and vines together with jewels in gold mounts was indeed the armils. By 1483, in the Little Device drawn up for Richard III’s Coronation, an ‘armyll’ is described as ‘made in the manner of a stole woven with gold and sett with stones to be putt … abowte the Kinges nek and comyng from both shulders to the Kinges bothe elbowes wher they shalbe fastened by the seyde Abbott…’ What the monks of Westminster did not know was that the armils never had been part of the regalia but were supplied from the Royal Jewel House. Richard II was invested with both them and the stole, according to Thomas of Walsingham, and bejewelled bracelets were worn by both Lancastrian and early Tudor kings as part of their robes of estate. Along with the orb they were to surface in 1547 at Edward VI’s Coronation.²³

So during a period which was at times one of acute dislocation the aura surrounding the monarchy increased rather than decreased. Indeed kings, whether of Lancastrian or Yorkist descent, availed themselves of any opportunity to gain back some of what had been lost in terms of regal status through the coronation oath of 1308. To that development we can add another powerful force which again was dramatically to affect the Coronation. That was the rise of the laity. Up until the late Middle Ages the clergy who performed the rite of unction and Coronation were not only priests but, being educated and literate, were also the people who ran the government and held the great administrative offices of state like the treasurer and chancellor. The fall of Henry VIII’s minister, Cardinal Wolsey, in 1529 marked the end of the clerical dominance of these offices of state. In the sixteenth century royal power drew upon an ever widening spectrum of society, reaching out through and often across the aristocracy, which had threatened its stability, to the gentry and to townspeople. This, of course, affected the Coronation.

The Abbey ritual was more or less fixed, but what happened on the days either side of it was open to accommodate every kind of innovation, resulting in a long series of accretions, each with a purpose. The Coronation became the occasion when peerages were bestowed and knights created, both designed to draw new allegiances to the crown and vividly demonstrating its role as the fount of honour. The event itself began to be prefaced by a state entry into London of increasing complexity, a vehicle which recognised the importance of the support to the regime of the City as represented by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen as well as the craft companies. It equally exhibited the monarch to the populace as he rode in triumph. As the sixteenth century progressed that became the occasion for pageantry, in which the City was able both to laud the ruler and to present its own view as to the role of the crown in society. The feast which followed the Coronation also burgeoned. It already drew in an elaborate hierarchy of those whose loyalty to the state needed to be cultivated, but to that was now added even greater splendour and the deployment of allegory. Add to all of this even further days of festivity, during which what were called ‘justes of peace’ were held. Honoured guests could be given places from which to watch the sport as the chivalry of England demonstrated its prowess in the royal tiltyard in tribute to the crown. By the time of the last pre-Reformation Coronation in 1533 it had expanded to an event which could at times spread over almost a whole week.

The period 1377 to 1533, which begins with the Coronation of Richard II and closes with that of Anne Boleyn, is a dynamic one as the occasion explodes in all directions. There were fifteen Coronations in all. Of some we know a great deal and of others practically nothing. What can be said is that they all reflect the same impulses and can therefore be treated as a group. For convenience I list them:

Richard II | 17 July 1377
Anne of Bohemia | 22 January 1382
Isabella of France | 5 January 1397
Henry IV | 13 October 1399
Joan of Navarre | 26 February 1403
Henry V | 9 April 1413
Catherine of France | 2 February 1421
Henry VI | 6 November 1429
Margaret of Anjou | 30 May 1445
Edward IV | 28 June 1461
Elizabeth Woodville | 26 May 1465
Richard III and Ann Neville | 6 July 1483
Henry VII | 30 October 1485
Elizabeth of York | 25 November 1487
Henry VIII | 24 June 1509
Anne Boleyn | 1 June 1533²⁴

To these should be added the abortive Coronation of Henry VIII’s third queen, Jane Seymour, delayed on account of plague and eventually abandoned owing to her death.

The days chosen included feast days. Henry IV, for example, was crowned on the feast of the translation of St Edward and his son on Passion Sunday. Such a litany of Coronations is an indication of their indispensability for anyone who wished to wield power. But the fact that the crown was seized first by this claimant and then by that for a time threatened to undermine the Coronation’s centrality as the key rite of passage. Indeed, if it had not been for the return to stability after 1485, it was in danger of being marginalised.

THE CORONATION UNDER THREAT

Between 1377 and 1533 four monarchs came to the throne other than as direct heirs apparent. Each needed to be recognised as king virtually instantly, certainly before the increasingly elaborate ceremony of a Coronation in the Abbey could be mounted. As a consequence of this it was inevitable that some kind of secular enthronement began to be evolved to bridge the gap until the mystery of unction could be bestowed.

The occasion arose first in 1399 when Richard II was deposed. On 29 September Henry of Lancaster, accompanied by a great train of prelates and lords, made his way to the Tower, where the king was held prisoner. The chronicler Froissart describes how Richard was brought into the hall ‘aparelled lyke a kyng in his robes of estate, his scepter in his hande, and his crowne on his head’.²⁵ He then formally renounced the crown, assigning it to Henry of Lancaster, taking it from his head and handing it to him. He, in turn, passed it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and both it and the sceptre were placed in a coffer and carried to Westminster Abbey. This cannot have been anything other than a piece of invented ceremonial.²⁶

On the following day Parliament renounced its allegiance to Richard. From the chronicler Adam of Usk we learn that Richard’s ring had been taken from him and, in the presence of Parliament, was presented to Henry. The Archbishop of York then read, as though in the person of the deposed king, his surrender of the crown. That was followed by a sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the evils of Richard, extolling the virtues of Henry, after which what amounted to some kind of secular enthronement and oath-taking under the aegis of both archbishops took place: ‘the throne being vacant … the said duke of Lancaster, being raised up to be king, forthwith had enthronement at the hands of the said archbishops, and, thus seated on the king’s throne, he there straightway openly and publicly read a certain declaration in writing …’²⁷

That pledge stated his lawful right of succession and that he affirmed the legal status quo. This event established a precedent whereby someone became king at once. It was one which was to be built on in such a way, as the fifteenth century progressed, that it threatened to undermine the rite of Coronation.

It is significant that Henry IV did not resort to what is prescribed for the morning of the Coronation in both the Westminster Missal and the Liber Regalis, that the prelates and nobles of the realm should assemble at the palace ‘to consider about the consecration and election of the new king, and also about confirming and surely establishing the laws and customs of the realm’.²⁸ That had been done in 1308 and 1327, but kings thereafter did all they could to pull the monarchy back from any hint of election. Henry IV and his successors worked from the premise that the crown was theirs by right.

Ironically, the precedent set by Henry IV was to be revived not by a Lancastrian king but by two Yorkist ones, Edward IV and Richard III.²⁹ As in 1399, both kings needed to be seen to ascend the throne immediately as the result of popular acclamation. In 1461, the sequence of events began with a proclamation calling upon all men to meet at St Paul’s the following day, 4 March. On that occasion Edward made a solemn offering at the high altar, the Te Deum was sung and George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, preached at Paul’s Cross setting forth the Yorkist claim to the crown. Edward then rode to Westminster, entered the hall and went into that part of it which since the fourteenth century had housed the Court of Chancery. There before the primate, Thomas Bourchier, the chancellor, George Neville, and the lords he put on the royal parliament robes and a cap of maintenance (not a crown) and took what was in effect a version of the Coronation oath: ‘that he sholde truly and justly kepe the realme and the lawes thereof maynteyne as a true and juste kyng’. Some sources add that this was taken after an acclamation by the populace gathered in the hall. Edward IV then took possession of the marble King’s Bench, that place from which the law-giving virtues of the crown were held to emanate. There he sat in majesty holding a sceptre.

After this he proceeded to Westminster Abbey, where he was met in procession by the abbot and his monks bearing the sceptre of St Edward, which was presented to him. He was then conducted to the high altar and to the Confessor’s shrine, at each of which he made an offering. After this he descended into the choir and sat on a throne while the choir sang the Te Deum, which was followed by the rendering of homage by the peers. Then something akin to the old Laudes regiae was sung. Edward IV was not crowned until three months later, after his defeat of the Lancastrians at Towton, a fact which, although unintentional, gave an impression that Coronation was an additional rather than an essential rite of passage for a king.

Over twenty years later, in 1483, the whole sequence was repeated with variations for Richard III. On 26 June he rode to Westminster Hall, put on the royal robes and, bearing a sceptre in his hand, took possession of the royal estate by an act of enthronement on the marble chair of the Court of the King’s Bench. Richard also took an oath and, like Edward, dated his reign from that day. He also went to the Abbey, received the sceptre, made offerings and heard the Te Deum, but homage was not rendered, the king preferring to return in procession to the City to St Paul’s.³⁰

What are we to make of all this? Richard was crowned only ten days later (much must have been in hand already for the Coronation of Edward V), but Edward IV put off his Coronation until as late as 28 June. These happenings reflect a keen awareness of where the ability to king-make now resided, and that it was no longer solely with the clergy and their rites within the Abbey. Securing London with its vast commercial riches and teeming populace was seen to be crucial to anyone who aspired to be king. That is caught in the fact that two days after his Coronation Edward IV returned to the City and wore his crown to St Paul’s, where an angel descended and censed him. Under the Yorkists crown-wearings, too, were revived and Richard III even wore his into battle. On 22 August 1485 that crown was taken from his body at the battle of Bosworth and set on the head of an obscure Welsh magnate, Henry of Richmond. It was, as the king’s official historian, Polydore Vergil, was to write, as if he had been ‘already by commandment of the people proclamyd king after the maner of his auncestors, and that was the first signe of prosperytie’.³¹ In this way Henry VII was king de facto, by conquest, if not yet de jure.

If it were not for the necessity of securing the mysterious powers bestowed by unction and the Tudor succession, the secular ceremony might well have grown in importance. Edward IV’s delay in being crowned is an indication that, if other affairs were more pressing, that could wait. What this does capture is the centrality of London, which throughout the period of the Wars of the Roses was to remain economically prosperous and which could literally make or break kings. Those who seized the crown needed the wealth, power and influence of the great City merchants to survive. In order to meet these new challenges it is hardly surprising to find the role of London in the Coronation dramatically magnified.³²

THE NEW JERUSALEM

Richard II’s Coronation was the first to respond in any very substantial way to this shift in the balance of political power, for on that occasion the vigil procession was invented. This established a sequence of events which was to remain immutable until 1661, the last occasion when there was a state entry into London. That sequence involved the Lord Mayor and Aldermen together with representatives of the great craft companies meeting the new ruler outside the City and conducting him to the Tower. On the morrow they would return to take their places in a great procession on horseback through the City to the Palace of Westminster. First in 1377, and then intermittently, that entry was to be elaborated by the introduction of symbolic pageantry. The involvement of the City on such a scale was an innovation of the first magnitude, fully recognising its crucial importance to the crown. The emergence of pageantry occurred virtually simultaneously on both sides of the Channel, reflecting the dilemma of both monarchies as they tried to free themselves from the juridical restraints which had been imposed on them by institutions and customs earlier in the Middle Ages. The result was an explosion of spectacle and display which was to be repeated in the twentieth century. On both occasions they were profound acknowledgements of where in society the monarchy now had to look for its support.

That change began in 1377 when the boy king was welcomed into what was billed as camera vestra, your chamber. The sudden and innovative appearance of pageantry is likely to have been triggered by the real fears that attended the accession of a child of ten and the need to build him up in the eyes of the populace. It was equally an act of reconciliation by the City with the king’s uncle, John of Gaunt. On 15 July, at some time after 9 a.m., the magnates together with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen went to the Tower. They were all attired in white, the colour of innocency, in tribute to the ten-year-old boy king who was also clothed in the same colour. A great procession was then formed, led by men of Bayeux, in which also took part the citizens of London representing the different wards, some of them making music, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, with the king himself surrounded by the great magnates. Ahead of him rode John of Gaunt and the earls of Cambridge and Hertford and, immediately before them, Simon Burley, the young king’s guardian, who carried the Sword of State. The king himself rode bareheaded as if to emphasise that his Coronation had yet to come and that this exhibition of him to the populace was a public version of the recognitio in the Abbey.

The procession made its way through Cheapside and along Fleet Street and, via the Strand, to Westminster Hall. En route the great conduits were made to run with red and white wine. At the one in Cheapside there stood a castle with four towers, on each turret of which there was a virgin of the king’s age who blew golden leaves on to him and offered him a cup of wine from the conduit. In the centre of the castle there was a spire, on the summit of which floated an angel who descended and offered the king a crown of gold. On reaching Westminster Hall there was enacted what was known as a voidee. The king went up to the marble table and requested wine, after which all drank and retired.³³

We already know some of the underlying reasons for such an innovation, but what in the case of the young Richard did it signify? The key figure in the 1377 Coronation was the king’s uncle, John of Gaunt, who presided over the Court of Claims. The accession, in fact, occurred at a period when there was trouble both at home and abroad. The government itself was split between the great magnates, hereditary custodians of power, and the new men, like Simon Burley, who increasingly began to figure in the administration. The whole Coronation was stage-managed to present a public face of unity in which various contending parties were equally balanced in the ceremonial roles assigned to them. But the most arresting feature of 1377 was the castle with its maidens and crown-bestowing angel. Pageantry of this kind was a late-fourteenth-century phenomenon; the rapid development of the entrance of a ruler into his capital city was a major occasion for symbolic theatre on the grand scale.³⁴ England led the way in this development in an era which saw the emergence of the miracle play. It followed shortly after in France, but with a crucial difference. There the solemn entry into Paris occurred after and not before the sacre at Reims.³⁵ In England the processional entry preceded the Coronation. This meant that the ruler was not yet king in the fullest sense of the word. So the London reception becomes that of a ruler-to-be, one who can be appealed to, and instructed through the language of pageantry in the art of monarchy as cast by the citizens of London.

What was this castle? It was a materialisation in paint and canvas of the Heavenly Jerusalem brought down to earth, a realisation of the text of the Apocalypse (Revelation 21: 2–3); ‘And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’ The Heavenly City is ‘like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal’ (21: 11). These castles, which were to become a recurring feature of London royal entries, were indeed painted jasper green. But why was such a feature thought apposite to greet a royal personage? The medieval entry has liturgical roots.³⁶ In the Rituale Romanum, amidst prayers concerning the Office of the Dying, are also ones concerned with the soul’s arrival in paradise. This arrival is described as an entrée joyeuse with the heavenly host gathered to receive the soul into the celestial Jerusalem. The medieval reception of a ruler was modelled on this, combined with Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. So, when the King of England entered London, the City took on the guise of the New Jerusalem with the ruler as the Anointed One. Any pre-Reformation London royal entry was not only a secular but also an ecclesiastical event. Along the route from time to time there would be gatherings of clergy arrayed in rich copes, bearing crosses and candles, who would cense the king as he passed. So the royal entry was a combination of a re-enactment of Palm Sunday, with its cries of Benedictus qui venit, with the apocalyptic vision of the end of things, Christ’s Second Coming back to earth as envisioned in the Book of Revelation. Already by 1236 the City had adorned its streets for a royal welcome on the occasion of Henry III’s marriage to Eleanor of Provence and her Coronation:

The whole city was ornamented with flags and banners, chaplets and hangings, candles and lamps, and wonderful devices and extraordinary representations … The citizens, too, went out to meet the king and queen, dressed out in their ornaments … On the same day, when they left the city for Westminster, to perform the duty of butler to the king (which office belonged to them by right of old, at the Coronation), they proceeded thither dressed in silk garments, with mantles worked in gold, and with costly changes of raiment, mounted on valuable horses, glittering with new bits and saddles, and riding in troops arranged in order. They carried with them three hundred and sixty gold and silver cups, preceded by the king’s trumpeters and with horns sounding, so that such a wonderful novelty struck all who beheld it with astonishment.³⁷

In 1308, something very similar was staged when Edward II and Isabella of France rode through London before their Coronation, but this time the celestial connexion was made: ‘then was London ornamented with jewels like New Jerusalem’.³⁸ The Heavenly Jerusalem was to reappear later in Richard II’s reign, in 1392, when the City staged a pageant entry as a token of submission to the king, with angels descending with golden crowns;³⁹ in 1432, when Henry VI entered London as king of both France and England; in 1445 to greet his wife, Margaret of Anjou, prior to her Coronation (appropriate also because her father claimed to be King of Jerusalem);⁴⁰ and even as late as 1547 to welcome the Protestant Edward VI.⁴¹

Not every king or queen was accorded a Coronation pageant entry. Indeed, they were irregular events, and it was not until the sixteenth century that a pageant entry was to become mandatory. When, however, they did occur they presented material of great importance on the concept of king-and queenship and its duties. In the case of a king, time and again what the citizens staged in the streets was an allegorical representation of the Coronation and its significance as they viewed it. Although there is mention of a tower full of angels, presumably the Heavenly City, at the north end of London Bridge for Henry VI in 1429, what can be argued to have been Henry VI’s delayed Coronation entry proper took place in February 1432, three years on from his actual Coronation at the age of eight as King of England but only two months after his Coronation as King of France. In the London entry the king is cast as the Christ-figure on whom the Holy Spirit descends, that is, a pageant re-enactment of the unction in the Abbey. In one pageant seven angelic virgins appear and stage an allegorical version of the Coronation. On the young king each bestowed a piece of spiritual armour, partly drawing on St Paul’s text defining the ‘whole armour of God’ (Ephesians 6: 11–17), but equally based on the ceremony of investiture in the actual Coronation: the crown of glory, the sceptre of clemency, the sword of justice and the pallium (cloak) of prudence. From that pageant the king proceeded to one in which his capital city was transformed by his sacred presence into the earthly paradise, and from thence he rode on to a vision of the New Jerusalem, with himself cast as the Solomonic king. How much of this programme stemmed from the City and how much from the court is open to question, but the desire to present the boy ruler as the embodiment of theocratic kingship was strong at a period when being king of two countries was under severe strain and moving to collapse.⁴² That these equations were not lost in the wider context of the whole country can be demonstrated by moving out of London and turning to the city of York’s reception of Henry VII in 1486, where a similar re-enactment of the Coronation for the populace took place. At the city gate the king was greeted with a wilderness from which, at his approach, red and white roses sprang, while above the heavens opened, filled with ‘Anglicall armony’, as the inevitable golden crown descended. Ebrank, the city’s mythical founder, appeared and knelt to present Henry not with the city’s keys but a crown. Next he was greeted by a council of his ancestors, the six Henrys, presided over by Solomon who delivered to the king a ‘septour of sapience’. Later David surrendered the ‘swerd of victorie’ in token of Henry’s ‘power imperiall’, and the citizens of York erupted from their city, cast as the New Jerusalem, all attired in the Tudor colours of white and green. In both these royal entries the tendency to give a symbolic meaning to any royal attribute marries in exactly with what we have seen happen to the processional swords.⁴³

By the close of the fifteenth century much of this pageantry came to be codified. The Household Ordinances of 1494 laid down how a queen was to be received at her Coronation:

At the Tour gate the merye [i.e. mayor] & the worschipfulle men of the cete of London to mete hir in their best arraye, goinge on ffoot ij and ij togedure, till they came to Westminster: And at the condit in Cornylle [i.e. Cornhill] ther must be ordined a sight with angelles singinge, and freche balettes theron in latene, engliche, and ffrenche, mad by the wyseste docturs of this realme; and the condyt in Chepe in the same wyse; and the condit must ryn both red wyn and whitwyne; and the crosse in Chepe must be araied in the most rialle wyse that myght be thought; and the condit next Poules in the same wyse …⁴⁴

This records more or less what happened both for Elizabeth of York in 1487 and Anne Boleyn in 1533. In 1487 the queen arrived from Greenwich by water and was met by the Lord Mayor and the City companies in barges and ‘a great red dragon spowting fflamys of fyers into tenmys [Thames]’. Although there were no pageants, the route had children attired as angels and virgins singing ‘swete songes’ as she passed by.⁴⁵ Thirty-six years later the City sent fifty barges to escort Anne Boleyn, and there was much music-making, and the fire-spouting dragon made a second appearance. This was in response to what amounted to a three-line whip from government, Henry VIII requesting that the City authorities prepare for the reception of his ‘moste deare and welbeloued wyfe … with pageauntes in places accustomed, for the honor of her grace’. She rode along a route whose theme was that common for queens, in which a new queen was presented as a parallel to the Virgin Mary, culminating in her Assumption and Coronation, along with biblical analogies of those who were fruitful in progeny, dwelling on ‘the fruitfulnes of saint Anne and of her generacion, trustyng that like fruite should come of her’. But the most spectacular pageant provides us with a rarity, a drawing for one of the arches straddling the street (a design only, for the pageant ended up at ground level and not over an arch), designed by Holbein and representing Mount Parnassus from which the Muses, amidst much music-making and song, harangued the queen-to-be repeatedly on the need for her to produce a male child. She was, in fact, already pregnant with the future Elizabeth I.⁴⁶

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