Coronation: From the 8th to the 21st Century

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.