History Live!

This Saturday I'll be speaking about the Norman Conquest at the English Heritage History Live! Festival at Kelmarsh Hall, Northamptonshire.

Interview for Sittingbourne FM

Another recent radio interview on the Norman Conquest.

Historical Association Talk

The talk on the Norman Conquest I gave to the Historical Association last month is now available as a podcast.

The Coronation of William the Conqueror, 1066

By the time William himself reached London some days later, the situation there must have been incredibly tense. The city, as we have noted, had been swelled by the survivors of Hastings. They, and the relatives of the thousands who had fallen, can hardly have looked upon the arrival of the Normans with anything other than abhorrence. According to William of Jumièges, the advance guard that the Conqueror had sent ahead ‘found many rebels determined to offer every possible resistance. Fighting followed immediately and thus London was plunged into mourning for the loss of her sons and citizens’. Jumièges may not be the most reliable witness here, but the resistance he describes is implicitly acknowledged by the better-informed William of Poitiers, who tells us that the advance guard had been ordered to build a fortress in the city, ‘as a defence against the inconstancy of the numerous and hostile inhabitants’.

The coronation itself took place on Christmas Day. Given the situation in London, there can have been little appetite for the kind of processions through the streets that we know preceded later ceremonies. If the Carmen can be believed (and, sadly, most of its account of this episode has to be rejected), William may have taken up residence in Edward the Confessor’s palace at Westminster in the days immediately prior to the ceremony. We know that the ceremony took place in Confessor’s new church at Westminster Abbey, and we also know that the audience included both English and Normans. Since there can only have been space inside for a few hundred people, the majority of London’s citizens must have remained at home, and the bulk of the Norman army camped elsewhere (perhaps in the new castle in city’s south-eastern corner). A number of armed and mounted Normans, however, were stationed outside the abbey as a precaution against ambush.

As for the ceremony itself, we know enough to see that it followed a conventional form. Historians continue to debate which order of service was followed, but all agree that, despite the novelty of regarding it as the king-making moment, William’s coronation adhered to longstanding English traditions. Anthems in praise of the king were sung, just as they had been in the Confessor’s day, and the service was conducted by an English archbishop. As at the start of the year, this was Ealdred, archbishop of York, rather than Stigand, the pariah archbishop of Canterbury. In describing the ceremony, English sources, for obvious reasons, emphasized the first part, wherein the new king swore the traditional oath to govern his subjects well, according to the best practice of his predecessors. As John of Worcester explains, William promised to defend the Church and its rulers; to govern the whole people justly; and to establish and maintain the law, totally forbidding ‘rapine and unjust judgements’.

The English in the audience must have been particular keen to hear the last part, in light of recent events. William of Poitiers gives the impression that the days between the submissions at Berkhamsted and the coronation had been peaceful ones: had the Conqueror wished, we are told, he could have spent all his time in hunting and falconry. The D Chronicle, by contrast, tells a different story. Having noted William’s promise at Berkhamsted to be a gracious lord, it adds bitterly that ‘nevertheless, in the meantime, they harried everywhere they came’. As the English had feared, the Normans had continued to behave during these weeks as if they were still at war. Now, at last, as their new king swore his oath, they could hope the ravaging would cease.

But evidently someone had forgotten to explain the significance of this moment to those Normans who were standing guard outside. As William of Poitiers explains, the next part of the service involved asking the audience whether or not they would accept the rule of the new king – a question which had to be put twice, first in English by Ealdred, and again in French by the Norman bishop of Coutances. Naturally everyone answered in the affirmative, shouting out in their respective tongues, but, unfortunately, says Poitiers, the guards outside the church thought that this loud clamour was some sort of last-minute English treachery, and responded by setting fire to the nearby houses.

As modern historians have observed, this is William of Poitiers at his most unconvincing: if the guards had really thought there was trouble in the church, surely they would have rushed inside? What we seem to have is a clumsy attempt to excuse yet more burning and pillaging, even as the coronation service was in progress. At the same time, the fact that Poitiers felt compelled to mention this incident at all suggests it must have been serious, and that suspicion is confirmed by the later but fuller account provided by Orderic Vitalis. As the fire spread rapidly, says Orderic, ‘the crowd who had been rejoicing in the church took fright, and throngs of men and women of every rank and condition rushed outside in frantic haste’. Some, we are told, went to fight the flames, while others went to join in the looting. Meanwhile, in the abbey, only the bishops and a few monks and clergy remained to complete the coronation service. Archbishop Ealdred, as was customary, anointed William with holy oil, placed the crown upon his head, and seated him on the royal throne. The churchmen were reportedly terrified, and one can well believe it: at the very moment they had called upon God to bless their new king and grant him a peaceful rule, the scene outside was mayhem. By the end of the ceremony, we are told, even the Conqueror himself was trembling from head to foot. It was, as Orderic observes, an inauspicious beginning.

 

The Norman Conquest, pp. 198-200.

The Coronation of Edward I, 1274

On Sunday 19 August, the day itself dawned. Regrettably, we have no detailed eye-witness accounts of the kind that survive for some other medieval coronations. Past precedent and later example indicate that Edward, accompanied by Eleanor, led by the clergy and the magnates, would have processed the short distance from the palace to the abbey. The new abbey, of course, was Henry III’s greatest legacy, and Edward was the first king to be crowned in it. Henry and his architect had been acutely conscious of Westminster’s longstanding role as the coronation church, and had tailored the new building accordingly. Its ornate north portal was sufficiently huge to admit with ease those processing from the palace; the galleries around its transepts allowed spectators to view the proceedings from on high. The crossing of the church, where much of the ceremony would be acted out, seems to have been rendered deliberately massive for this reason. On the day of Edward’s coronation, as on later occasions, it was very likely filled with a giant wooden stage. This was elevated so that those standing in the nave could observe the king, and – most remarkably – of sufficient height that those earls, barons and knights among the congregation could ride underneath it. In seeking to picture Edward’s coronation, we must imagine the north and south transepts of the abbey filled with aristocrats who were not merely elaborately dressed, but apparently mounted on their horses too.

Once the procession from the palace had passed inside the abbey, the ceremony itself began. In keeping with the grandeur of the setting and the splendid array of the participants, it was a magnificent piece of religious drama. Solemn prayers were intoned, censers were swung, torches and candles burned, glorious anthems rang out. If this all sounds slightly vague, it is because, once again, we cannot say precisely what took place. Indeed, contemporaries would have struggled to do so. The long years from one king’s inauguration to the next gave ample scope for old practices to be forgotten and new ones to be introduced. In the case of Edward’s coronation, one senses that Henry III, as well as designing the theatre, must also have contributed many details to the script. Later medieval kings, for example, would begin by making an offering at the altar of two gold figurines, one of Edward the Confessor, the other of St John the Evangelist – a ‘tradition’ almost certainly introduced in 1274 on the posthumous instructions of the Confessor’s most avid devotee.

            Nevertheless, at the heart the proceedings lay strong strands of continuity. In its bare essentials, the English coronation service had changed (and has changed) very little across the centuries. The coronation oath, for example – Edward’s next significant act after making his offering at the altar – had been a central part of the service since it was first devised in the tenth century. By this long-established convention, the new king made three basic promises: to protect the Church, to do good justice, and to suppress evil laws and customs. A fourth promise, to protect the rights of the Crown, had been added in the mid-twelfth century. This was, of course, a much more self-interested pledge as far the king was concerned, and one to which Edward would attach much importance later in his reign.

            The next part of the service, the unction, was of similar long standing. Edward would have descended from the stage towards the altar and disrobed down to his undershirt, in order that the archbishop of Canterbury could anoint various bits of his body with holy oil. The most mystical part of the whole ceremony, it took place on a suitably mystical pavement of multicoloured marble mosaic, the work of Italian craftsmen, and another finishing touch supplied by Henry III. The unction was the point where medieval practice drew on Biblical precedent: the Old Testament kings, David and Solomon, had been anointed in this way, and, for this reason, the choir in Westminster Abbey sang the anthem Unxerunt Salomonem (‘They Anointed Solomon’) while the act was performed. Traditionally this had been the critical part of the service – the religious ritual that transformed a mere man into a king – and Edward, although king in name already, must nevertheless have regarded it as the supreme spiritual moment. At this moment his rule became blessed, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit were bestowed upon him. In more practical terms, it meant that, in addition the holy oil that had been applied to his breast, shoulders and elbows, Edward also had chrism – an even holier oil – poured over his head, where custom decreed that it must remain for a full seven days.

            Lastly came the investiture: the part of the ceremony where the king was re-dressed in the most elaborate royal fashion and adorned with all manner of symbolic baubles (collectively known as the regalia). These had tended to multiply over the years, with the result that by the thirteenth century the new king was weighed down with glittering ornament. Edward was vested in a golden tunic, girded with a sword, and robed with a mantle woven with gold. A gold ring was placed on his finger, and golden spurs were attached to his heels. Once he was wearing his special coronation gloves, a golden rod and a golden sceptre were placed in his hands. These items had for the most part been wrought in the early thirteenth century but, thanks to the enthusiasm and credulity of Henry III, by 1274 each was believed to have been an original first used by Edward the Confessor himself. When, therefore, Edward was invested with the greatest item of all – described in an later account as ‘a great crown of gold…with precious jewellery of great stones, rubies and emeralds’, he understood this to be the same object once worn by his sainted namesake.

            Edward’s coronation, therefore, for all that it took place in a magnificent new church, and despite the manifold small details of staging introduced by Henry III, was essential traditional in format and stuck to a time-honoured script. There was, however, one genuine moment of novelty in the proceedings, a deviation so striking that several chroniclers saw fit to record it, even though they recorded nothing else. It was supplied by the king himself, at what was literally the crowning moment. Once the great gold crown been placed on his head, Edward immediately removed it and set it aside, saying (according to one chronicler) ‘he would never take it up again until he had recovered the lands given away by his father to the earls, barons and knights of England, and to aliens’.

 

A Great and Terrible King, pp. 113-15.

Kings and Castles for FREE

My e-book of collected articles, Kings and Castles, can be downloaded FREE from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com until Wednesday next week. You can download it to a PC as well as Kindle etc.

1066: The Limits of our Knowledge

My article in the latest issue of The Historian can now be read online.