Chapter 1

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CORONATION ANECDOTES,

ETC. ETC. ETC.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY J. MOYES, GREVILLE STREET.

CORONATION ANECDOTES;

OR,

SELECT AND INTERESTING

FRAGMENTS

OF

ENGLISH CORONATION CEREMONIES

* * * * *

BY GILES GOSSIP, ESQ.

"In pensive thought recal the fancied scene, See _Coronations_ rise on every green."--POPE.

* * * * *

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR ROBERT JENNINGS,

IN THE POULTRY.

1823.

[Transcriber's Notes:

A letter with a dot over it, is denoted in the following way [.y] Superscripts are denoted by a carat ^ ]

ADVERTISEMENT.

The coronation of our monarchs presents a wide field of meditation to an intelligent eye. It is an epitome of the genius of the monarchy, and a miniature exhibition of the leading events of our annals.

Connected, in point of fact, with the first establishment of Christianity in this island, it also perpetuates some of the earliest British notions of public liberty; and while it confirms the hereditary claims of each succeeding prince, it is introduced by a recognition of some of the most ancient rights of the people,

"Mighty states, _characterless_, are grated To dusty nothing,"

says that great dramatist who has so largely alluded to English coronations in his historical plays. These ceremonies exhibit the character of each constituent portion of the political body from age to age; and are chiefly valuable, perhaps, as preserving a chain of _national identity_, unbroken by conquest, or by civil war; by changing dynasties, or the most important revolutions of the empire: on the other hand, they present to us a vast _variety_ of character and events.--They are associated with the gloom, "the dim religious light" of Anglo-Saxon history, with the stormy character of the Conquest and the Norman domination; they bring before us the lofty Plantagenet, the proud Tudor, and the tyrannical but unfortunate House of Stuart, in all the pomp, and strife, and vanity of their respective pretensions.

But the general reader will require a _clue_ to this symbolical kind of instruction: a companion to his recollections of such an exhibition, which, without destroying the vividness and pleasure of the pageantry, shall connect its objects with the march of history, the advance of civilization, and the final settlement of our laws and liberties. "To converse with historians," says an accomplished writer, "is always to keep good company;" while, "to carry back the mind _in uniting_ and to make IT old," is the one great difficulty which Lord Bacon points out in the study of history. Every effort, therefore, to smooth this difficult path, and to introduce the rising generation to such company, will be properly appreciated by the anxious and intelligent parent; and such is the design of this little volume. It is the especial business of the historian, certainly, to instruct; but the more he can keep alive our _interest_ without flattering either our passions or vices, the more effectually will he accomplish his great object, and swell the train of the votaries of truth.

CORONATION ANECDOTES,

_&c. &c._

Sec. 1. ANECDOTES OF THE REGALIA AND ROYAL VESTMENTS.

"History--the picture of man--has shared the fate of its original. It has had its infancy of _Fable_; its youth of Poetry; its manhood of Thought, Intelligence, and Reflection."--ANON.

No. 1. _The Regal Chair._

The Regalia of England are the symbols of a monarchical authority that has been transmitted by coronation ceremonies for upwards of ten centuries. But the incorporation of England, Scotland, and Ireland, into one united kingdom,--an event peculiar to the coronation of George IV, to have recognised,--has connected the history of the Imperial Regalia with some tales of legendary lore, the truth of which, if this circumstance does not demonstrate, be assured, gentle reader, nothing will. Irish records are said to add at least another thousand years of substantial history to the honours of that solid regal seat, or coronation chair, in which our monarchs are both anointed and crowned[1]: while some of our own "honest chroniclers" assign to it a still more marvellous antiquity.

Holinshed gives us the history of one Gathelus, a Greek, who brought from Egypt into Spain the identical stone on which the patriarch Jacob slept and "poured oil" at Luz. He was "the sonne of Cecrops, who builded the citie of Athens;" but having married Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, he resided for some time in Egypt, from whence he was induced to remove into the West by the judgments pronounced on that country by Moses. In Spain, "having peace with his neighbors, he builded a citie called Brigantia (Compostella)," where he "sat vpon his marble stone, gave lawes, and ministred justice vnto his people, thereby to maintaine them in wealth and quietnesse," And "Hereof it came to passe, that first in Spaine, after in Ireland, and then in Scotland, the kings which ruled over the Scotishmen received the crowne sittinge vpon that stone, vntill the time of Robert the First, king of Scotland." In another part of his "Historie of Scotland," Holinshed mentions king Simon Brech as having transmitted this stone to Ireland, about 700 years before the birth of Christ, and that "the first Fergus" brought it "out of Ireland into Albion," B.C. 330. One important property of this stone should not be unnoticed. It is said, by the writers from whom the foregoing particulars are derived, to furnish a test of legitimate royal descent; yielding an oracular sound when a prince of the true blood is placed upon it, and remaining silent under a mere pretender to the throne. We heard various joyful acclamations on the recent "royal day;" but (perhaps from that very circumstance) could not distinguish the sound in question.

Apart from these legends, the real history of the [Saxon: hag-fail], or Fatal Stone[2], is curious; and has induced the learned Toland to call it "the antientest respected monument in the world[3]." It is to be traced, on the best authorities, into Ireland; whence it had been brought into Scotland, and had become of great notoriety in Argyleshire, some time before the reign of Kennith, or A.D. 834. This monarch found it at Dunstaffnage, a royal castle, enclosed it in a wooden chair, and removed it to the abbey of Scone, where for 450 years "all kingis of Scotland war crownit" upon it; or "quhil y^e tyme of Robert Bruse. In quhais tyme, besyde mony othir crueltis done be kyng EDWARD Lang Schankis, the said chiar of merbyll wes taikin be Inglismen, and brocht out of Scone to London, and put into Westmonistar, quhaer it remains to our dayis[4]."

An ancient Irish prophecy, quoted by Mr. Taylor in his learned "Glory of Regality[5]," assures us, that the possession of this stone is essential to the preservation of regal power. It runs literally, "The race of Scots of the true blood, if this prophecy be not false, unless they possess the Stone of Fate, shall fail to obtain regal power." King Kennith caused the leonine verses following to be engraved on the chair:--

Ni fallat fatum Scoti quocunque locatum Invenient lapidem Regnare tenentur ibidem.

Thus given by Camden,

Or Fate is blind, Or Scots shall find, Where'er this stone A royal throne.

A prophecy which is said to have reconciled many a true Scot to the Union in Queen Anne's time; and which, since the extinction of the Stuart family, is remarkably fulfilled in the claims of the House of Brunswick,--George IV. being now the legitimate heir of both lines.

At or near a consecrated stone, it was an ancient Eastern custom to appoint kings or chieftains to their office. Thus we read in Scripture of Abimelech being "made king by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem[6]," (the earliest royal appointment, perhaps, of which we have any traces in history;) and of Joash having the "crown put upon him" while he "stood by a pillar, as the manner was[7]." Subsequently, and among the northern nations, the practice "was to form a circle of large stones, commonly twelve in number, in the middle of which one was set up, much larger than the rest: this was the royal seat; and the nobles occupied those surrounding it, which served also as a barrier to keep off the people who stood without. Here the leading men of the kingdom delivered their suffrages, and placed the elected king on his seat of dignity[8]." From such places, afterwards, justice was frequently dispensed.

"The old mun early rose, walk'd forth, and sate On polished stone, before his palace gate; With unguent smooth the lucid marble shone, Where ancient Neleus sate, a rustic throne."

HOMER'S _Odyss._ POPE'S _Tr._ [Greek: G]. 496--10.

Thus arises the name of our Court of King's Bench.

At the coronation of our kings, the royal chair is now disguised in cloth of gold; but the wood-work, which forms its principal parts, is supposed to be the same in which Edward I. recased it, on bringing it to England.

Shakspeare's RICHARD III. inquires--

"Is the _Chair_ empty? Is the Sword unswayed? Is the King dead? The empire unpossessed? What heir of York is there alive but We?"

And the Earl of Richmond describes him, in admirable allusion to the foregoing facts, as

"A base foul _stone_, made precious by the foil Of England's chair, where he is falsely set[9]."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Toland; Sir J. Ware's Antiq. of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 10, 124, &c.]

[Footnote 2: Called also by the Irish Cloch na cinea[.m]na, or, the Stone of Fortune.]

[Footnote 3: History of the Druids, p. 104.]

[Footnote 4: Chron. of Scotland, lib. i. cap. 2.]

[Footnote 5: P. 54.]

[Footnote 6: Judges ix. 6.]

[Footnote 7: 2 Kings, xi. 12, 14.]

[Footnote 8: Taylor's Glory of Regality, p. 31.]

[Footnote 9: Richard III.]

No. 2. _Of the Crowns._

We, can only speak to the growth and antiquity of their present "fashion," none of those now used being of older date than the reign of Charles II. This monarch issued a commission for the "remakeing such royall ornaments and regalia" as the rebellious Parliament of his father had destroyed[10], in which "the old names and fashions" were directed to be carefully sought after and retained[11]. Upon this authority, we still have the national crown with which our monarchs are actually invested called St. EDWARD'S, although the Great Seal of the Confessor exhibits him wearing a crown of a very different shape.

Whether the parent of our present crowns were the Eastern fillet, in the tying on which there was great ceremony, according to Selden,--the Roman or Grecian wreath, a "corruptible crown" of laurel, olive, or bay,--or the Jewish diadem of gold,--we shall leave to antiquarian research.

"This high imperial type of [England's] glory"

has slowly advanced, like the monarchy itself, to its present commanding size and brilliant appearance. From the coins and seals of the respective periods, several of our Anglo-Saxon princes appear to have worn only a fillet of pearl, and others a radiated diadem, with a crescent in front. AEthelstan's crown was of a more regular shape, resembling a modern earl's coronet. On king Alfred's there was the singular addition of "two little bells;" and the identical crown worn by this prince seems to have been long preserved at Westminster, if it were not the same which is described in the Parliamentary Inventory of 1642, as "King Alfred's crowne of gould wyer worke, sett with slight stones." Sir Henry Spelman thinks, there is some reason to conjecture that "the king fell upon the composing of an imperial crown;" but what could he mean by this accompaniment?

Gradually the crown grew from ear to ear, and then from the back to the forehead; sometimes it is represented as encircling a cap or helm, and sometimes without. William the Conqueror and his successor wore it on a cap adorned with points, and with "labels hanging at each ear[12];" the Plantagenets a diadem ornamented with fleurs de lis or strawberry leaves, between which were small globes raised, or points rather lower than the leaves; Richard III. or Henry VII. introduced the crosses; about the same time (on the coins of Henry VII.) the arches first appear; and the subsequent varieties of shape are in the elevation or depression of the arches. The maiden queen wore them remarkably high.

Blood's exploit with the new crown of Charles II. is told to all the young visitors at the Tower[13]. It is only wonderful that, in that age of plots, no political object or accusation was connected with it. The beautiful dialogue which our great dramatist puts into the mouth of Henry IV. and his son, who had taken the crown from his dying father's pillow, we could willingly transcribe entire:--

"_K. Henry._ O foolish youth! Thou seek'st a greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling by so weak a wind, That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen THAT, which after some few hours Were thine without offence; and at my death Thou hast sealed up my expectation; Thy life did manifest thou lovedst me not; And thou wilt have me die assured of it.

"_P. Henry._ O pardon me, my Liege! but for my tears, (The moist impediments unto my speech,) I had forestalled this clear and deep rebuke, Ere you with grief had spoke, and I had heard The course of it so far. There is your CROWN-- And He that wears the crown immortally Long guard it yours!---- Coming to look on you, thinking you dead, (And dead almost, my Liege, to think you were,) I spake unto the crown, as having sense, And thus upbraided it. 'The care on thee depending Hath fed upon the body of my father; Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold; Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life, in medicine potable: But thou, most fine, most honoured, most renowned, Hast eat thy bearer up!'"

It is the same prince who afterwards so well apostrophizes his own greatness:--

"O, be sick, great Greatness! And bid thy ceremony give thee cure. Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play'st so subtly with a king's repose, I am a king that find thee; and I know, 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farsed title running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shoar of this world; No, not all these thrice gorgeous ceremonies, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: In the Archaeologia, vol. xv. art. 24, is "A true and perfect Inventory of all the Plate and Jewells now being in the Upper Jewell House of the Tower, in the charge of Sir Henry Mildmay, together with an appraisement of them, made and taken the 13th, 14th, and 15th daies of August, 1649;" containing the following account of "crowns," &c. demolished:--

L. _s._ _d._

"The imperiall crowne of massy gold, weighing 7 lb. 6 oz. valued at 1110 0 0

The queene's crowne of massy gold, weighing 3 lb. 10 oz. 338 3 4

A small crowne found in an iron chest formerly in the Lord Cottingham's charge, &c.:

The gold 73 16 8 The diamonds, rubies, sapphires, &c. 355 0 0 The globe, weighing 1 lb. 5 1/4 oz. 57 10 0 Two coronation bracelets, weighing 7 oz. (with three rubies and twelve pearls) 36 0 0 Two sceptres, weighing 11 oz. 60 0 0 A long rod of silver gilt, 1 lb. 5 oz. 4 10 8

"The foremencion'd crownes, since the inventorie was taken, are, according to ord^r of Parliam^t, totallie broken and defaced."

A second inventory, containing "that part of the regalia" found at Westminster, mentions "King Alfred's crowne of gould wyer worke, sett with slight stones, and 2 little bells, p. oz. 79 1/2, at L3. per oz., L248. 10_s._ 0_d._"]

[Footnote 11: See Sir Edward Walker's Account of "The Preparations for His Majesty's Coronation," &c. 8vo. Lond. First printed 1820.]

[Footnote 12: Taylor, p, 65. The Saxon Chronicle says of the Conqueror: "He was very worshipful. Thrice he bore his _king-helmet_ every year, when he was in England: at Easter, he bore it at Winchester; at Pentecost, at Westminster; in midwinter, at Gloucester. And there were with him all the rich men over all England," &c.--_Sax. Chron._ 189, &c.]

[Footnote 13: The following is Hume's account of this memorable project:--

"A little after [his attempt to carry off the Duke of Ormond], Blood formed a design of carrying off the crown and regalia from the Tower; a design to which he was prompted, as well by the surprising boldness of the enterprise, as by the views of profit. He was near succeeding; he had bound and wounded Edwards, the keeper of the Jewel Office, and had gotten out of the Tower with his prey; but was overtaken and seized, with some of his associates. One of them was known to have been concerned in the attempt upon Ormond; and Blood was immediately concluded to be the ring-leader. When questioned, he frankly avowed the enterprise, but refused to tell his accomplices. 'The fear of death,' he said, 'should never engage him either to deny a guilt, or betray a friend.' All these extraordinary circumstances made him the general subject of conversation; and the king was moved by an idle curiosity to see and speak with a person so noted for his courage and his crimes.... Blood might now esteem himself secure of pardon, and he wanted not address to improve the opportunity."--Charles eventually pardoned him, granted him an estate of L500. per annum, and encouraged his attendance about his person. "And while old Edwards, who had bravely ventured his life, and had been wounded in defending the crown and regalia, was forgotten and neglected, this man, who deserved only to be stared at and detested as a monster, became a kind of favourite."--HUME'S _England_, CHARLES II.]

No. 3. _The Sceptre_

Is a more ancient symbol of royalty than the crown. Homer speaks of "sceptred kings"--[Greek: skeptouchoi basilees]; and the book of Genesis, "of far elder memory," of a sceptre, as denoting a king or supreme governor[14]. There is a very early form of delivering this ensign of authority preserved in the Saxon coronation services; and the coins and seals of succeeding reigns usually place it in the hand of our monarchs. Very anciently, too, our kings received at their coronations a sceptre for the right hand, surmounted by a _cross_; and for the left, sometimes called the verge, one that terminated in a globe, surmounted by a _dove_. The two great symbols of the Christian religion are thus professedly embraced; but the monarch never appears with two sceptres except on this occasion.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: Gen. xlix. 10.]

No. 4. _The Ampulla, or Golden Eagle_

And the "holy oil" which is poured from it, are connected, like the royal chair, with some of the miracles that no one now believes, and with some interesting historical facts.

Amongst the honours bestowed by the Virgin on St. Thomas a Becket, (according to a MS. in the Cotton Library,) he received from our Lady's own hands, at Sens, in France, a golden eagle, and a small phial of stone or glass, containing an unction, on whose virtues she largely expatiated. Being then in banishment, he was directed to give them in charge to a monk of Poictiers, who hid them in St. Gregory's church at that place, where they were discovered in the reign of Edward III., with a written account of the vision; and, being delivered to the Black Prince, were deposited safely in the Tower. Henry IV. is said to be the first prince anointed with these vessels.

"Holy oil" still retains its use, if not its virtue, in our coronations. The king was formerly anointed on the head, the bowings of the arms, on both shoulders, and between the shoulders, on the breast, and on the hands; but the ceremonials of the last two coronations only prescribe the anointing of the head, breast, and hands. In these, too, nothing is said of the "consecration" of the oil, which seems anciently to have been performed on the morning of the coronation[15].

Historically, the custom of anointing kings is to be traced to the times of the Jewish judges; the consecration of one of whose descendants, Abimelech (before noticed), connects the subject with the earliest and one of the most beautiful fables of the East--that of the trees going forth to anoint a king[16]. Selden regards this fable as a proof "that anointing of kings was of known use in the eldest times," and "that solemnly to declare one to be a king, and to anoint a king, in the Eastern parts, were but synonymies[17]." The elegant allusion to the olive tree, "honouring both God and man" with its "_fatness_" or oil, should not escape us, as corroborating this conjecture. This poem is dated by the learned antiquary "about 200 years before the beginning of the [Jewish] kingdom in Saul."

We have several instances in Scripture of the inauguration of the Jewish kings by anointing, and of its being performed at the express command of God[18]--a circumstance which was held to communicate an official sanctity to their persons, their attire, &c. The noble David twice spares the life of his bitterest enemy, Saul, upon this ground.--"Jehovah shall smite him," he says; "or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into the battle, and perish"--"Who can stretch forth his hand against Jehovah's anointed, and be guiltless[19]?"--and he finely alludes to the general reverence of his country for these appointments, when he exclaims, in his memorable ode over his fallen rival, "The shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though it had not been anointed with oil!"

With the spread of Christianity, or rather of the papal domination, over the kingdoms of western Europe, came the adoption of this rite into the coronation ceremonies of its princes. It at once increased the influence of the church, and surrounded the monarch with a popular veneration. The three distinct anointings yet retained (_i.e._ on the head, breast, and hands or arms,) were said by Becket to indicate glory, holiness, and fortitude: another prelate, one of the greatest scholars of his age, assured our Henry III., that as all former sins were washed away in baptism, "so also by this unction[20]."

"Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an ANOINTED king,"--

Richard II. is made to say, by Shakspeare, on the invasion of Bolingbroke. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to Marmion, speaks of a singular ancient consecration of the kings of arms in Scotland, who seem to have had a regular coronation down to the middle of the sixteenth century,--only that they were anointed with _wine_ instead of oil[21].

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Sandford does not omit to notice, that the dean of Westminster, assisted by the prebendaries, duly performed this office for the coronation of James II., "early in the morning."]

[Footnote 16: Vide Judges, chap. ix.]

[Footnote 17: Titles of Honour, p. i, chap. 8.]

[Footnote 18: 1 Sam. x. 10; xvi. 1; 1 Kings, xiv. 15; &c.]

[Footnote 19: 1 Sam. xxvi. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 20: Selden's Titles.]

[Footnote 21: Marmion, 8vo. Note, p. 456.]