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

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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

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