Coronation: From the 8th to the 21st Century

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