Coronation: From the 8th to the 21st Century - Roy Strong

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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

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