The Coronation of King Henry III in 1216

Following the death of King John, who on his deathbed entrusted the care of his son and heir to William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the deceased monarch was taken, again as he had requested, for burial at Worcester Cathedral under the direction of the Earl.

The effigy of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke in the Temple Church in London. 

Image: Wikipedia 

 

Meanwhile King John’s heir, his elder son Henry was living with his mother Queen Isabella at Corfe Castke in Dorset. Given that the French Prince Louis controlled the south-east and had been invited to invade with the promise of the crown by the barons opposed to the late king there was urgency to get the boy crowned as it was still coronation rather than accession which made a monarch. This was in fact the last time this was a factor: in 1272 King Edward I automatically succeeded his father whilst in the Holy Land on Crusade and did not return to England to be crowned until 1274.

With Westminster Abbey inaccessible to the royalist party the coronation was arranged at Gloucester Abbey on this day in 1216. The abbey of St Peter at Gloucester - since 1541 it has been Gloucester Cathedral - had long established links with the monarchy. It often hosted the Christmas ‘crown wearing’ court, most famously in 1085 when the Conqueror had commissioned the Domesday Survey, and in later years the abbey also was the place Parliament met in 1278, 1378, and 1407.

Given that many of the royal party were at Worcester and the new king and his mother in Dorset it was a convenient place to meet up and was a confluence of routes.

 

Preparations were hasty, and part of King John’s treasure and chapel furnishings had apparently been lost in the Wash at the beginning of the month. In an absence of a crown, or one at least that fitted the nine year old King Henry III was to be crowned with a circlet belonging to his mother.

Archbishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury was in exile on the continent, and Archbishop Walter de Gray of York presumably out of reach in the north the actual coronation was assigned to the most senior suffragen of Canterbury who was in attendance. This was Bishop Peter des Roches of Winchester, who had been the young King’s tutor. Also in attendance was the Papal Legate, Cardinal Guala Becchieri.

The date chosen was presumably the closest feast day: coronations if not held on a Sunday were often on a major feast such as Christmas Day for King William I or Ascension Day for King John. Friday October 28th was the day of SS Simon and Jude, as the feast of two Apostles, and chosen in preference to the following Sunday or All Saints Day the following Tuesday.

Before the coronation liturgy William Marshal knighted the young King. Inside the abbey church the anointing was performed not be the Bishop of Winchester but by two other diocesans, the newly enthroned Benedictine monk Sylvester Bishop of Worcester and the Italian born Simon of Apulia, Bishop of Exeter. Following that Bishop des Roches crowned King Henry III. 

The mutilated effigy of Bishop Peter des Roches in Winchester Cathedral

Image: Wikipedia 

An innovation was the new monarch paying homage to the Pope as his overlord under the terms of his father’s accord with the late Pope Innocent III.

The coronation of King Henry III in 1216

A stained glass by J.R. Clayton from 1860 in the nave of Gloucester Cathedral

Image: Facebook 

Detail of the central panel

Image: meisterdrucke.uk

The complete window in the south aisle

Image: Facebook

  

This was the last English coronation not to be held in Westminster Abbey. The somewhat improvised liturgy was considered possibly lacking and, following the peace of 1219, on May 17th 1220, and at the insistence of Pope Honorius III the King was crowned again at Westminster, although I think he may not have been anointed afresh. 

The second coronation of King Henry III in 1220

Image: meanderinthroughtime.weebly.com

The court was still at Gloucester on November 11 when the Earl of Pembroke was appointed rector regis et regni and appointed Peter des Roches as tutor to the King.

The abbey church which witnessed this hasty coronation has been substantially changed since 1216, with thirteenth century vaulting and aisle windows and the marvellous transformation of the sanctuary, choir and transepts in the mid-fourteenth century and the great central tower and Lady Chapel added in the fifteenth century. At first sight the most obvious features that still survive from 1216 are the cylindrical nave pillars, akin to those a few miles north at Tewkesbury Abbey. However a stroll around the choir aisles reveals more of the Norman church behind the great fourteenth century re-packaging that faces the choir.

The nave of Gloucester Cathedral 

Image: gloucestercathedral.org.uk

So began the fifty six year long reign of King Henry III, one which was to profoundly shape the future of the  monarchy and the realm.

The effigy of King Henry III

on his tomb in Westminster Abbey

Image: Dean and Chapter of Westminster 

Anthony van den Wyngaerde’s view of London

I was looking online for a view of early sixteenth century London, and more especially for that drawn by 

Anthony van den Wyngaerde in the 1540s. This was  probably done about 1543 - as well as later depictions of royal residences from 1562. In the search I   came.upon a useful and informative article.

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The author suggests the drawing may have originated with a commission from King Henry VIII, and may have been intended as the basis for a mural of London in one of the King’s palaces. What appears to be the preliminary or draft sketch is ten feet long. 

The  Ashmolean Museum acquired it at auction in Antwerp in the early nineteenth century. It is often reproduced in part in books on the mid-sixteenth century. Drawn only a few years after the suppression of the monasteries it is an also a valuable resource for envisaging late medieval London when the mendicant orders were still a thriving part of civic life.

The article can be accessed at A picture is worth a thousand words: Drawing Tudor Royal Gardens…

One section that is not reproduced in the blog is that showing St Paul’s with its spire - lost as a result of lightning causing a fire in June 1561. It shows clearly how the cathedral dominated much of London as well as the more distant prospect.

St Paul’s Cathedral 

St Mary Overy, now Southwark Cathedral, can be seen to the bottom right, with Winchester House to the left. Suffolk House, the property of the King's brother-in-law, is at the centre base

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Ridge and furrow

Medieval Way has a new and informative video about ridge-and-furrow cultivation in the English midlands in the medieval and early modern periods before the enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created so much of the landscape we recognise today.

Ploughing in the common fields

This may be depicting the plough team turning onto the  headland

Image:thegraceofironclothing.wordpress.com

The video explains the thinking behind the earlier system and illustrates the mechanics of creating the all-important strips, with their ridges and furrows, and what can still be seen by field walking or aerial photography.

The video can be seen at Medieval Way

There is an online 2013 article from Medieval Histories about adding to academic understanding of the significance of the heavy plough between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries which can be seen at The Heavy Plough and the Economic Development AD 900 -1300

The death and burial of King John

During the night of October 18th-19th 1216 as a storm raged outside King John breathed his last at Newark Castle. He was in the midst of a campaign march heading north but was suffering from dysentery which had taken hold of his system whilst he was at Lynn in East Anglia nine days earlier. On his journey towards Newark he had lost a part at least of his baggage train in the treacherous sands of the Wellstream which flowed into The Wash.

The effigy of King John in Worcester Cathedral 

Dated to 1232

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The King was forty nine and, until laid low by illness, had been energetically fighting against those of his nobles who had rejected his authority and invited Louis of France, son and heir to King Philip II, to replace him. Louis’ wife, Blanche of Castile, was King John’s niece and a granddaughter of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor.

Wikipedia has a good biography of King John which appears well grounded in current academic studies of the reign, and of the personality of this ever-intriguing monarch. There is also an up to date bibliography. It can be seen at John, King of England

From it one senses that none of his biographers and historians can fail but to find at least one serious personality failing in King John, and that these contributed to his political, diplomatic and military failures. Nevertheless modern historians do recognise his energy and inventiveness in government - often in order to secure money - and that his reign witnessed an expansion of the royal administration. 

For long the subject of the scorn of near contemporary monastic chroniclers and of high-minded nineteenth century academics maybe it has required the moral ambiguities and uncertainties of the twentieth century to re-humanise King John.

It is always dangerous for historians to seek to identify illnesses and mental conditions in their subjects, especially eight centuries ago, but I wonder if King John suffered from one of the non-incapacitating personality disorders of which we hear so much these days. His mood swings and at times hyper active behaviour might suggest that. Of course it could be simply that he had red hair - that can indicate, as I understand it, in all seriousness, a recognisably distinct medical personality.

Following the King’s death his body was embalmed by his physician, the Cistercian Abbot of Croxden, and who took the internal organs for burial at his monastery.

The burial place for the body was more difficult. With the loss of his lands in France the Angevin family monastery at Fontevraud where he had been educated as a child and which held the remains of his parents and predecessor, as well, later on, of his widow, was not practical. The family association remained as King John’s son King Henry III had his heart buried there in the 1270s.

For the same reason Rouen Cathedral where his elder brother the Young King is buried was not possible.

In England the King’s own Cistercian foundation at Beaulieu in Hampshire was not easily accessible in the wartime conditions then prevailing.

It appears to have been the Abbot of Croxden who asked if the dying monarch would wish to be buried in the cathedral at Worcester. This was a place to which he was attached, having prayed at the recently canonised St Wulfstan’s shrine in 1207, funded repairs to the monastic buildings, and spent Christmas there in 1214. It was also, with its two saints in St Oswald and St Wulfstan, church with an English identity, and, for all his strong desire to regain his lost territories in France, King John had also begun to emphasise his role as an English ruler. To this proposal the King agreed, and it was to Worcester that his body was taken, escorted by some of his mercenaries.

The King’s will, which is preserved at Worcester Cathedral 

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

There are videos about the burial, the tomb and its subsequent openings in 1529 and 1797 from

History Calling at History Calling and from The Antiquary at Opening the Tomb of King John

There is more about the events of the days leading up to the royal demise and those which followed as well as more on the tomb at King John's Bones

The effigy from a slightly different angle

Image: Pinterest

Fabric from the garments that King John was clothed in removed from his tomb in 1797. The animal appears to be an heraldic lion.

Image: Dean and Chapter of Worcester 

The arrangements for the King’s burial brings back the stories of his alleged impiety and lack of attention during the celebration of Mass. Possibly, like his great great uncle King William II, whom he may have resembled physically, he was impatient to do other things. His verbal impiety may reflect something of his upbringing, and the twelfth century Goliard tradition of irreverent literature such as The Gospel according to the Mark of Silver. It may also indicate a cutting sense of humour that was lost on others.

In that respect he may be similar to the Emperor Frederick II who scandalised many churchmen by his 

attitudes in succeeding decades. By contrast King John’s son King Henry III and his near contemporary King Louis IX were notably pious in ways that would be very different. 

Despite the chronicle tradition of shock at his impiety he seems often to be conventionally devout, a patron of the Croxden Cistercians from the beginning of his reign up to his care by the Abbot on his deathbed, and the founder of another Cistercian house, the sizeable one at Beaulieu. 

He was on one occasion reproved by the Carthusian St Hugh of Lincoln when the saint told him not to trust in an amulet the King wore to keep him safe but in the living stone which is Christ, and he left a lengthy sermon preached at him by St Hugh on the duties of kingship. Nevertheless in that same year, 1200, he was a pall bearer at the bishop’s funeral, escorting the body from London to Lincoln.

Whether the deaths for which he is usually deemed particularly responsible, notably of his nephew Arthur of Brittany and of Matilda de Briouse and one of her son, and which are discussed as to their accuracy by History Calling here and here respectively weighed on his mind in his last hours is unknowable. What can be said is that for all the tyranny and horror of both instances, and which contributed to his dreadful reputation, worse was to come from some of his descendants, such as King Edward II in his last years, very probably King Richard III, and was as nothing to the events of the sixteenth century.

Similarly the reports of his promiscuity - evidenced by a number of illegitimate children - on closer examination appear to be from before his accession and before his marriage to Isabella of Angoulême. In that he appears similar to his great grandfather King Henry I, whose vast progeny of children born out of wedlock pre-dated his accession and marriage. 

King John may indeed not have been virtuous but he does not need to be made monstrous.

His reign was a turning point in English history. If Magna Carta came to be seen as a foundational constitutional document that was no thanks to King John, but the loss of most of his landed inheritance in France left his successors with the matter of safeguarding what remained and seeking how to recover those in the hands of the French crown. For the King of France their acquisition made possible the formation of an increasingly powerful and centralised realm - until the English returned with not just an army but a claim to the crown of France. The death of King John was not just the end of one man’s life and of an age but the beginning of a myth about a man and the forging of a new era.

“Putting it all back” at the Oxford Oratory

 It was about a month ago that the Oxford Oratory publicly launched its “Putting it all back” restoration of the sanctuary in the church of St Aloysius.

Several years of planning have gone into this phase of the scheme, and it is clearly at the heart of the project.

The ceiling painting and the reredos were restored several years ago, with the statues being removed for conservation, with missing features restored and the highlight gilding renewed, as was that on the wall beneath. 

In essence the sanctuary will be restored to its original appearance with the High Altar against the wall of the apse and its structural setting recreated. Details of the plans can be seen at Putting it all back

I was one of those who wrote in to the Diocesan advisory committee strongly in support of the project - slightly unusual for me as when I usually write about planning proposals in the secular sphere it is to oppose them… That must have been about five years ago. 

In the intervening time of waiting the spandrel paintings on the side walls have been uncovered and restored. They, like much of the interior decoration of the church, had been painted over in the 1960s or 70s.

The sanctuary has now been screened off and a temporary altar erected in front of it for the time the work takes to complete.

From this week’s Parish E-newsletter:

Progress on the sanctuary is now quite hard to miss.

The previous altar has been completely dismantled and its concrete foundations are now visible. The old flooring has been salvaged. The walls crossing the sanctuary supported the floor and will support the new one. The ledge that formerly held the tabernacle has been taken down. It was surrounded by (now rare) English alabaster pieces recycled from the original altar. These are too small to form any part of the new altar, but they’ve been saved to be reused for something else in the future. The tabernacle will be heading off for restoration soon.

Meanwhile good progress is being made on the apse repairs too, especially the stained glass repairs, despite our poor conservationist being subjected to four seasons per day on top of our scaffolding this week!

Image and text, slightly amended, from the Oxford Oratory website

Archbishop of Birmingham sanctions a Sarum Mass

The Advaticanum website reports that the Archbishop of Birmingham has agreed in principle to the celebration of a Sarum Use - or Rite - Mass within his diocese. 

The story has been picked up by other Catholic websites, but the original article from Advaticanum can be read at Archbishop of Birmingham, UK, gives approval for celebration of medieval Sarum Mass

A page from a Sarum Missal

Image: Cheetham’s Library

The account of recent celebrations includes two by permission of the then Archbishop in 1996 and 1997 in 

the glorious chapel of Merton College in Oxford. I was able to attend those two offerings of the Mass and it was a great privilege, and indeed a beautiful experience, to witness the liturgy of medieval England in a building created for just such a celebration. On the basis of those two occasions I think there can be no doubt that other such celebrations would be very popular.

Photographs from the video  - which can be found online - of the second of these Masses, that of Candlemas in 1997, together with some notes about the Sarum Use, can be seen by scrolling down at Sarum Rite

Properly speaking it is a Use, variant form of the Roman Rite rather than a distinct Rite like Milan, Lyons, or Braga, or the Spanish Mozarabic Rite at Toledo - and akin to the Traditional Dominican form. At the Council of Constance in 1414-17 the different ‘nations’ celebrated Mass according to their home usage and members of other ‘nations’ were especially impressed by the beauty of the English celebration.

Violent death of a bishop in London in 1326

Seven centuries ago the London of 1326 was falling into chaos. The invasion of the country led by the Queen, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer, having landed at Orwell, swept through Suffolk, Cambridge and Oxford, and the government had virtually abandoned London.

  

 

  

Queen Isabella

  

A label stop in Beverley Minster

Image: rebeccastarrbrown.com

Her husband, King Edward II and his close adviser Hugh Despenser the Younger, had fled westwards to Gloucester. The former Treasurer, Bishop Walter Stapledon of Exeter, was left in London together with his brother. Both men were in their sixties. As a figure very much associated with the collapsing government Stapledon and his properties in and close to London came under attack. He was also seen as an opponent by the Queen as a result of some of his actions the previous year when she had been in exile at the court of her brother King Charles IV.

As was their wont the population of London was hostile to the government of the day and on October 15th that by now intense hostility was to claim the lives of the Bishop, his brother who was a judge, and at least two of their servants.

The effigy of Bishop Walter Stapledon 

on his tomb in Exeter Cathedral 

Image: Wikipedia 

There is a detailed account of their murders on Kathryn Warner’s Edward II blog at The Murder of Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 15 October 1326

According to Walter Stapledon’s modern biographer he was beheaded at the Cross in Cheapside with a bread knife. Since reading that over thirty years ago I have never looked at a bread knife in quite the same way.

Stapledon’s head was reportedly sent to Queen Isabella at Bristol as proof of his death.

 Wikipedia has illustrated biographies of the Bishop and his brother at Walter Stapledon and at Richard Stapledon

Bishop Stapledon has left two enduring monuments. 

The first is the presbytery and choir, with its throne and stalls at Exeter Cathedral. Taking his inspiration no doubt from the Lady Chapel built by a previous bishop a generation earlier the Devon-born Stapledon began the rebuilding of the whole cathedral in the latest style. All that survives of the previous structure are the distinctive transeptal towers. It fell to his successor Bishop John Grandisson to complete the nave in the succeeding decades.

The second is Exeter College in Oxford. Founded in 1314 by the bishop and his brother, and originally known as Stapledon Hall, this was intended to provide for clerical students from the counties of Devon and Cornwall, which comprised the diocese of Exeter. It is the fourth oldest in date of the constituent colleges of the University. 

The Battle of Hastings

As the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum is the hottest ticket in town at the moment it seems appropriate to write about the central event it depicts, the Battle of Hastings, fought in this day 960 years ago in 1066.

The death of King Harold II

The King is the figure being cut down in the right. The standing figure apparently with an arrow in his eye is the result of nineteenth century restoration - originally what is now an arrow was a spear the figure was throwing

Image: Wikipedia 

Duke William, if he did not know it already, took over the most sophisticated royal government in Europe, and being the intelligent and practical man that he was as King William he kept it in place and learned how to use it. Domesday Book may be a great monument to the Normans, but they could not have created it without the institutions created and nurtured by the Anglo-Saxons.

 

The Norman cavalry face the English foot soldiers 

 

Image: historic-uk.com

The battle saw the destruction of much of the military elite of the English realm. Those who survived or were not present were to often go into exile in the years following, but some, with varying success, made their peace with the new dispensation. At least one great English Whig aristocratic family which claims its ancestor fought alongside Duke William at Hastings has been shown by twentieth century scholarship to be of northern English origin who acquired a more glamorous pedigree over the centuries.

The heat and fury, and also the casualties, of the battle

Image: britannica.com

   

There can be no doubt that what happened on the battlefield at Hastings was one of the most momentous events in the history of England, and, by extension, of the British Isles. Virtually everything which has happened since that day is either directly a consequence of the Norman victory, or indirectly conditioned by it. The survival of English as a language, of some national institutions such as the Monarchy and parts of the Common Law and, surprisingly, many Anglo-Saxon churches is a tribute to the vigour and resilience of the kingdom the Duke of Normandy had conquered.

 

The link with Normandy and, consequently, with the Angevin territories shaped the English medieval centuries and the continuing relationship with Europe. Without Hastings there would be little likelihood of such images of national identity as Crécy, Poitiers and, above all, Agincourt. The French territories may have been lost, but the memory shaped the sense of nationhood.

By linking England to the mainstream of European thought and culture England itself, and then the rest of the British Isles, were integrated into the ecclesiastical, cultural and intellectual world of western Europe, and played a major part in transmitting those ideas to Scandinavia.

Within the British Isles the Normans were to have both direct and indirect impact on Wales, in Scotland, and Ireland. These were the new frontiers for territorial and cultural expansion, but yet again, building on Anglo-Saxon precedents.

The sharp distinction between Norman and Saxon so beloved of seventeenth century radicals, nineteenth century novelists and twentieth century filmmakers does seem to have faded quite rapidly. The wealth of England which attracted invaders had already seen successful Danish invasions in the earlier part of the eleventh century and King Harold II’s family were Anglo-Saxon protégés of King Cnut. Within a relatively short time after Hastings men and women of Anglo-Saxon descent were entering into the life of a new Anglo-Norman elite. The very fact that the Bayeux Tapestry is thought to be the work of English embroiderers at Canterbury suggests how early that linkage was taking place.

I have no doubt that the battle of Hastings was terrible and bloody for those who took part, whether they survived or not. It is noteworthy that survivors were required to do penance for what had taken place. It is also an event that has shaped, and continues to shape, not only England, but the English-speaking world.