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