of John. 7. John was crowned on Ascension Day-the same fatal Coronation festival as that which the soothsayer afterwards predicted as the end of his reign. Archbishop Hubert at a later period pointedly dwelt on the fact, that he had scrupulously gone through the forms of election on that day; and gave as his Ascension reason that, foreseeing the King's violent career, he had Day, May wished to place every lawful check on his despotic passions. Geoffrey, the Archbishop of York, was absent, and, on his behalf, the Bishop of Durham3 protested, but in vain, against Hubert's sole celebration of the ceremony. 27, 1199. A peculiar function was now added. As a reward for The Cinque the readiness with which the Cinque Ports had assisted John, Ports. in his unfortunate voyages to and from Normandy, their five Barons were allowed henceforward to carry the canopy over the King as he went to the Abbey, and to hold it over him when he was unclothed for the sacred unction. They had already established their place at the right hand of the King at the banquet, as a return for their successful guardianship of the Channel against invaders; the Conqueror alone had escaped them.5 8. The disastrous reign of John brought out the sole instance, if it be an instance, of a coronation apart from Westminster. On Henry III.'s accession the Abbey was in the First Corohands of Prince Louis of France, Shakspeare's 'Dauphin.' nation of Henry III. He was, accordingly, crowned in the Abbey of Gloucester, St. Simon by the Bishop of Winchester, in the presence of Gualo the Legate; but without unction or imposition of hands, lest the rights of Canterbury should be infringed, and with a chaplet or garland rather than a crown. At the same time, with and St. Jude, Oct. 28, 1216. ronation of Whitsun day, May that inconsistency which pervades the history of so many of our legal ceremonies, an edict was issued that for a whole month no lay person, male or female, should appear in public without a chaplet, in order to certify that the King was really crowned.' So strong, however, was the craving for the complete formalities of the inauguration, that, as soon as Westminster was restored to the King, he was again Second Co- crowned there in state, on Whitsunday, by Stephen Langton,2 Henry III. having the day before laid the foundation of the new Lady Chapel,3 the germ of his magnificent church. The feasting and joviality was such that the oldest man present could remember nothing like it at any previous coronation. It was a kind of triumphal close to the dark reign of John. The young King himself, impressed probably by his double coronation, asked the great theologian of that time, Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln, the difficult question, 'What was the pre'cise grace wrought in a King by the unction?' The bishop answered, with some hesitation, that it was the sign of the King's special reception of the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit, as in Confirmation.' 5 17, 1220. Abolition of the Lord High Stewardship. One alteration Henry III. effected for future coronations, which implies a slight declension of the sense of their importance. The office of Lord High Steward (the temporary Viceroy between the late King's demise and the new King's inauguration), which had been hereditary in the house of Simon de Montfort, was on his death abolished-partly, perhaps, from a dislike of De Montfort's encroachments, partly to check the power of so formidable a potentate. Henceforward the office was merely created for the occasion. At his Queen's coronation, a curious incident marred the splendour of the coronation banquet. Its presiding officer, the hereditary Chief Butler, Hugh de Albini, was absent, having been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for refusing to let the Primate hunt in his Sussex forest.1 9. The long interval between the accession of Edward I. and his coronation (owing to his absence in the Holy Land) reduced it more nearly to the level of a mere ceremony than it had ever been before. He was also the first sovereign who discontinued the commemoration of the event in wearing the crown in state at the three festivals. But in itself it was a peculiarly welcome day, as the return from his perilous journey. It was the first coronation in the Abbey as it now appears, bearing the fresh marks of his father's munificence. He and his beloved Eleanor appeared Coronation together, the first King and Queen who had been jointly ward I. and crowned. His mother, the elder Eleanor, was present. Eleanor, Archbishop Kilwarby officiated as Primate. On the fol- 1274. lowing day Alexander III. of Scotland, whose armorial bearings were hung in the Choir of the Abbey, did homage.5 For the honour of so martial a king, 500 great horses-on some of which Edward and his brother Edmund, with their attendants, had ridden to the banquet-were let loose among the crowd, anyone to take them for his own as he could." of Ed Aug. 19,3 There was, however, another change effected in the corona- The Cotions by Edward, which, unlike most of the incidents related Stone. 1 De officio pincernaria servivit eâ 'die Comes Warenn' vice Hugonis de 'Albiniaco Comitis de Arundel ad quem [? nunc] illud officium spectat. Fuit ' autem idem. . . . eo tempore senten'tiâ excommunicationis innodatus a 'Cant' eo quod cum fugare fecisset 'Archiepiscopus in forestâ dicti Hu'gonis in Suthsex idem Hugo canes 'suos cepit. Dicit autem Archi'episcopus hoc esse jus suum fugandi 6 in quâlibet forestâ Angliæ quando cunque voluerit.' Red Book of the 3 Close Roll, 2 Edw. I. m. 5. 5 Trivet, p. 292. See Chapter III. ronation lation of the Kings. ⚫ in this chapter, has a direct bearing on the Abbey itself. Besides the ceremonies of unction and coronation, which properly belonged to the consecration of the kings, there was one more closely connected with the original practice of elecThe Instal- tion that of raising the sovereign aloft into an elevated seat.1 In the Frankish tribes, as also in the Roman Empire, this was done by a band of warriors lifting the chosen chief on their shields, of which a trace lingered in the French coronations, in raising the King to the top of the altar-screen of Reims. But the more ordinary and primitive usage, amongst the Gothic and Celtic races, was to place him on a huge natural stone, which had been, or was henceforth, invested with a magical sanctity. On such a stone, the 'great stone' (morasten), still visible on the grave of Odin near Upsala, were inaugurated the Kings of Sweden till the time of Gustavus Vasa. Such a chair and stone, for the Dukes of Carinthia, is still to be seen at Zollfell.2 Seven stone seats for the Emperor and his Electors, mark the spot where the Lahn joins the Rhine at Lahnstein. On such a mound the King of Hungary appears, sword in hand, at Presburg or Pesth. On such stones decrees were issued in the republican states of Torcello, Venice, and Verona. On a stone like these, nearer home, was placed the Lord of the Isles. The stones on which the Kings of Ireland were crowned were, even down to Elizabeth's time, believed to be the inviolable pledges of Irish independence. One such remains near Derry, marked with the two cavities in which the feet of the King of Ulster were placed; another in Monaghan, called the M'Mahon Stone, where the impression of the foot remained till 1809.4 1 So Liber Regalis. See Maskell, iii. p. xlviii. 2 Gilbert and Churchill's Dolomite Mountains, p. 483. s It is now called St. Columb's Stone. The marks of the feet are, according to the legend, imprinted by Columba. But Spenser's statement of the Irish practice (See Ordnance Survey of Londonderry, p. 233), leaves no doubt as to their origin. See Shirley's Farney, p. 74. the Stone On the King's Stone, as we have seen, beside the Thames, were crowned seven of the Anglo-Saxon kings. And in Westminster itself, by a usage doubtless dating back from a very early period, the Kings, before they passed from the Palace to the Abbey, were lifted to a marble seat, twelve feet long and three feet broad, placed at the upper end of Westminster Hall, and called, from this peculiar dignity, The King's Bench.'1 Still there was yet wanting something of this myste- Legend of rious natural charm in the Abbey itself, and this it was which of Scone. Edward I. provided. In the capital of the Scottish kingdom was a venerable fragment of rock, to which, at least as early as the fourteenth century, the following legend was attachedThe stony pillow on which Jacob2 slept at Bethel was by his countrymen transported to Egypt. Thither came Gathelus, son of Cecrops, King of Athens, and married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh. He and his Egyptian wife, alarmed at the fame of Moses, fled with the stone to Sicily or to Spain. From Brigantia, in Spain, it was carried off by Simon Brech,3 the favourite son of Milo the Scot, to Ireland. It was thrown on the seashore as an anchor; or (for the legend varied at this point) an anchor which was cast out, in consequence of a rising storm, pulled up the stone from the bottom of the sea. On the sacred Hill of Tara it became Lia Fail,' the 'Stone of Destiny.' On it the Kings of Ireland were placed. If the chief was a true successor, the stone was silent; if a pretender, it groaned aloud as with thunder. At this point, where the legend begins to pass into history, the voice of national discord begins to make 1 Taylor, p. 303.-It is mentioned at the coronations of Richard II. and Richard III. (Maskell, iii. pp. xlviii., xlix.) 2 Or Abraham. (Rye's Visits of Foreigners, p. 10.) Holinshed, The Historie of Scotland (1585), p. 31. Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 239. Ware's Antiquities of Ireland (Harris), 1764, i. 10, 124.-Compare the Llechllafar, or Speaking Stone, in the stream in front of the Cathedral of St. David's. (Jones and Freeman's History and Antiquities of St. David's, p. 222.) |