The Coronation of King Henry VI in 1429

595 years ago today, King Henry VI was  crowned at Westminster. Two years later he was to be crowned as King of France in Notre Dame in Paris, the only Plantagenet or later monarch to receive the crowns of both realms. The young king was a month short of his eighth birthday and the move to crown him followed from the events of the spring when his uncle King Charles VIi had been crowned King of France at Reims. The view of the government was that King Henry should be crowned as soon as possible in France and that meant that his English coronation had to take place first.

In the early fifteenth century the English coronation rite had assumed probably its most elaborate form following from the compilation of the Liber Regalis in the reign of King Richard II. Thus the boy King was at the centre of a ritual that had been celebrated in 1399 for his grandfather and in 1413 for his father.At its heart was the use of the eagle ampulla believed to have been delivered by the Virgin Mary to St Thomas of Canterbury for anointing English kings, but not used before 1399.

The King Henry VI website, which unfortunately appears to be dormant,has a quite detailed description of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and in the Palace afterwards, which can be seen at The English Coronation – KING HENRY VI

It is not a criticism of the blog author to say that this does not include everything that must have happened, such as the homage of the peers, and that there appears to be some confusion presumably on the part of the contemporary chroniclers as to some precise part of the liturgy, the account of which seems curiously repetitious or confused as to the number of the King’s prostrations and what he wore at certain  points, and not in line with the norms of an English coronation at that time or subsequently. That said a lot of what we witnessed last year in Westminster Abbey at the present King’s Coronation would have been recognisable to those attending in 1429. Whether Archbishop Chichele had as many very obvious problems getting St Edward’s Crown straight on the monarch’s head as his successor did last year is not recorded.

Effigy of Archbishop Henry Chichele in Canterbury Cathedral 

Image: Wikipedia 

There is more about the Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall after the ceremonies in the Abbey in a feature from last year on the British Library Medieval manuscripts blog which can be seen at The Coronation Banquet of Henry VI

Some slight idea of what might have been seen that day can be gleaned from the illumination of the charter granted by the King in 1445-6 to his new fo foundation of King’s College in Cambridge.

Although the king was by now in his twenties, he is still depicted as a small boy in his robes of state supported by the Lords Spiritual ( including Cardinals Beaufort and Kempe ) and Temporal ( in the earliest serving coloured depiction of their robes with the differing bars of ermine indicating their rank ) and by the faithful Commons in Parliament assembled offering the new foundation to the Virgin Mary and to Saint Nicholas.

King Henry VI and his Lords and Commons

Image: kcctreasures.com

King Henry VI

Image:kcctreasures.com

The fact of his anointing and coronation and the oaths made to him were doubtless a very potent factor with many in rhe political elite, and hence the reluctance of a large part of the aristocracy to set the King aside in 1460 in favour of the Yorkist line. Furthermore it helps explain the continuing Lancastrian loyalism, expended in blood, until his own violent death in 1471, and even thereafter in his cult as a saint invoked by ordinary people as well as by King Henry VII.

Preparing this article, I came upon another blog Friends of Henry VI which was active iin 2019, but not seemingly since. It can be viewed at Friends of Henry VI

The Act of Supremacy 1534

 

490 years ago on November 3rd 1534 the legal measure to create the Royal Supremacy in England completed its Parliamentary stages and on December 18th it received the Royal Assent from King Henry VIII and became an Act of Parliament.

Wikipedia gives a summary of the Act, and of the associated Treason Act at Acts of Supremacy

This was the logical and virtually inevitable legislative conclusion to the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532 and of the Appointment of Bishops Act 1533 which was passed and received Royal Assent earlier in 1534. 

Constitutionally the English Reformation had been achieved and legally set in stone.

It is not unreasonable to see these events as the ending of mediaeval England and much more so than, for example, the battle of Bosworth in 1485 or even the summoning of the Reformation Parliament in 1529. The spiritual and temporal partnership of church and Crown over the realm which endured since the tenth century was now merged into a single Constitutional monopoly on behalf of the Monarchy.

During this process Pope Clement VII, much of whose troubled pontificate had been taken up with the “King’s Great Matter”, had died on September 25th and he had been successful on October 13th by Pope Paul III, an outwardly improbable but, as it turned out, very significant reformer, just three weeks before the legislative process was completed at Westminster. 

A significant change can be seen during the process of the passage of these Acts. Whereas  that in Restraint of Appeals and that regulating appointments to Bishoprics had had as their ultimate sanction the 1393 legislation in respect of Praemunire with its its massive financial penalties, the Act of Supremacy and the Treason Act that set out that to deny it was to commit High Treason - for individuals the risks of opposition were made significantly more threatening.

Praemunire had been a marker along the historical road that had included the rejection in the 1420s of Papal attempts to repeal it and the Provisions legislation of the fourteenth century, and long before that the ructions over episcopal investiture in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, and, of course, the dramatic life and death of St Thomas of Canterbury - “Bishop Becket” or the “traitor Becket” as far as King Henry and Mr Secretary Cromwell were concerned.

That there was a recognisable Ecclesia Anglicana long before 1534 is clear, but very much as part of the Catholic Church. Equally it is clear that English Kings exercised a not inconsiderable position of influence within the public life of that Ecclesia and of appointments to the hierarchy, but as patrons and partners not as the ultimate arbiter.

A new era has dawned. We still live with its consequences, unimaginable as they would surely be to everyone in the England or Europe of 1534.

Sentry Duty in a Roman Watchtower

The house in which I was brought up faced north across the open grassland of what survives of the medieval hunting park created by about 1180 and associated with the castle. Within this area is the race course. Just to the north-west was the Park Hill, a geological erratic, on top of which was an early twentieth century water tower built above a nineteenth century reservoir. When that was excavated in the 1870s Roman pottery was found and some apparent evidence for a ditch. This has been interpreted as the site of a Roman signal tower from the later imperial period and seems to be confirmed by an early nineteenth century map which shows a recognisable square just at that point on the hilltop. In Yorkshire, the obvious comparison is the evidence for signal stations along the Yorkshire coast most evident today at Scarborough Castle. The one close to my old home would have overlooked the Roman road linking Legiolium ( Castleford ) and points north to both Eboracum ( York ) and to Hadrians Wall, to Danum ( Doncaster )  and thence to the rest of Britannia and the rest of the Empire. Other possible watchtower sites, forming a linked chain, have been identified to the north and south of the Pontefract example.  Most of this route is still in use as A roads today, although the stretch immediately west of the tower had disappeared under the hunting park by the twelfth century, surviving in part as a boundary, but otherwise obliterated.

 

A reconstruction of a rypical Roman watchtower on the Limes in Germany. There appear to be a considerable number of such reconstructed towers in the area of the Limes.

Image: Wikipedia

It is arguable, indeed probable, that it was along this road that Constantine the Great travelled as he began his journey to the sole rule of the whole Enpirw and all that flowed therefrom. The alternative would have been from York to the Humber at Brough, then, after the ferry, to Lincoln along Ermine Street and thence to the world beyond.

I was therefore interested to find online a couple of videos about this type of watchtower or signal station on the northern frontier of the Empire is now the Netherlands and Germany. The two are filmed at reconstructed towers and explain how they operated as a system of defence and warning, and also about the life of those who are stationed in them.

They can be seen at Watchtowers: the Roman System of Border Defense and at  

What was Watchtower Duty like on the Roman Frontier? DOCUMENTARY

A painting for All Saints Day

Trying to find a suitable artwork to share for All Saints was not easy. Durer’s Asoration of the Trinity  certainly includes a lot of saints but it is more an image of the Church Trumphant and Militant in adoration rather than just a celebration of those whose reward has been gained and is assured.

I then turned to the can Eyck Adoration of the Lamb. As I read the article on Wikipedia I saw the idea advanced that the composition references the liturgy for All Saints, and that decided me to share the article. It is lengthy and quite detailed both in analysing the painting but also in recounting its misadventures over almost six centuries. It is a wonder that we still have it.

The scale of the work means that only small portions make it to the article, but there is sufficient to indicate the microscopic detail and skill in its creation. It is justly esteemed as one of the truly great works of European painting

The article can be seen at Ghent Altarpiece

Warding off witches in Lincolnshire

Today is Halloween and, whilst from my view point, the modern commercialised things surrounding the day should be ignored, there has been the traditional telling of stories about witches and witchcraft and about warding off evil.

They have been some recent online reports about the ways in which people in the past warded off the activities of witches and of the evil eye in Lincolnshire.

The first concerns a survey that has been undertaken of witch marks and of other superstitious markings designed to protect against the house burning down at the Old Hall at Gainsborough. In recent years such symbolic marks have received more attention and it is clear that Gainsborough is a major resource for the study of these things. the Hickman family who owned the house at the beginning of the seventeenth century were closely associated with the Pilgrim Fathers who, of course, left initially from Boston for the United Provinces before their journey across the Atlantic in 1620. They and similarly-minded people were particularly conscious of what they saw as the threat posed by witches in the seventeenth century.

The reports can be seen from the Daily Telegraph at Secret ‘witch marks’ found in Tudor Manir House, from The Guardian at ‘Staggering array’ of witches’ marks discovered at English Heritage site, and from Sky News at 'Astonishing' witches' marks discovered at heritage site - including curses

Like some of the members of the Hickman’s ‘house church’ who met at the Hall the story of the discovery has crossed the Atlantic and is reported upon in some considerable detail by the Washington Post in Centuries-old ‘witches marks’ found carved into walls of English Manor House 

If you have not visited and are in the vicinity I would strongly recommend a visit to Gainsborough Old Hall, which has buildings dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and is a relatively rare survival of a house of its type. It has a very impressive late medieval timber framed Hall and a spectacular brick kitchen with multiple hearths for feeding the owner and his household, not to mention distinguished guests.

The English Heritage website about it can be seen at Gainsborough Old Hall and Wikipedia has a history of the building and its owners at Gainsborough Old Hall

Coincidentally the BBC News website reports on a new exhibition at Lincoln Castle about charms against witches that have been found in the county from as late as the nineteenth century.

The article can be seen at Witchcraft charms go on display at Lincoln Castle

 It also refers to the Belvoir witchcraft case of 1618-19. BelvoirCastle, just over the county boundary in north-east Leicestershire, was at the centre of charges claiming that two children of the Earl of Rutland had been bewitched to death. The monument to the children in the Manners family burial place of Bottesford church is unique in explicitly stating that they died as a result of witchcraft. The story of this well documented and sensational case, together with modern theories about what was going on, can be seen on Wikipedia at Witches of Belvoir

The Coleorton Tunic and Coat

The other day I happened upon the website of the Leicestershire Museums Collections, and encountered there the Coleorton Tunic and the Coleorton Coat.

Coleorton is a small village in north-west Leicestershire. Originally just known as Orton it had, according to Wikipedia in Coleorton acquired the Cole prefix by at least 1443  due to it being a local centre for the digging and then mining of coal. In a somewhat similar process the nearby new town, as it then was, of Coalville acquired its name from the same industry in 1833.

Study of surviving early coal workings in 1985-93 revealed some remarkable survivals in the form of tools and clothing from past generations of miners. Most notable were the sodden, but retrievable, remains of a mid-sixteenth century tunic and a mid-seventeenth century coat, left, for whatever reasons in the coal workings. Sufficient survived to be preserved and displayed. There was evidence of the original dye to indicate the original colour of the tunic so as to enable a replica to be made. Both the original remains and the tunic replica can be seen, together with other finds, at Medieval Coal Mining

A contrary view on the Shroud of Turin

I have recently posted about new research into the Shroud of Turin and the significant evidence that suggest that it is indeed a first piece of first century linen that has been in the Holy Land.

In order to demonstrate my impartiality when it comes to assessing the scientific evidence I will now draw attention to an article in the Daily Telegraph which reports on research and an interpretation that puts forward a counter- argument as to how the image on the Shroud could or could not have come about, and indeed when that event might have happened.

The article can be seen at The 3D graphics that ‘prove’ the Shroud of Turin is a fake

I am not a scientist and claim no expertise at all in the technologies that have been implied by researchers into the history and nature of the Holy Shroud.

However, I would make two points against what appears to be the argument in the article.

Firstly, if I have understood the argument aright, it seems to be returning to a an explanation that is predicated on the cloth coming into contact with either a corpse or a living body, or a carved or moulded model that is somehow covered by an ungeant that would leave the marks on the burial cloth. Previous experiments on these lines produced similar distortions to the figure as opposed to those on the relic itself. That idea has, I believe, been ruled out in favour of a so-far unexplained burst of energy, so this seems to be a return to a discredited type of explanation for the markings on the fabric.

Secondly, the suggestion that this is somehow a forgery or, indeed, a piece of “Christian art” produced in the middle ages, requires the creators to have obtained an authentic piece of first century cloth from the Holy Land and furthermore to have used techniques that are completely unknown and unrecorded by contemporaries or indeed by anybody since.

We come back, it seems to me, to the case that on the basis of probability as other arguments are nullified that, however impossible it may appear. that it seems the “impossible” may have to be accepted.

Trends in the Late Antique Wine Trade

The Mediterranean world has been and continues to be one with a more than passing interest in the creation and consumption of wine. Wine is intimately bound up with Mediterranean culture, a component from the earliest times.

Recent research has indicated what it is suggested were the leading or most marketed types of wine in the Late Antique world from the fourth to the seventh centuries. 

Two regions emerge, both in the Eastern Mediterranean. For quality wines the vinophile looked to Gaza, for the mass market to Cilicia and Cyprus.

The research is st out in Two Wines Dominated the Market in Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean: Gaza and Cilician