Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday, 5 May 2023

The Coronation Feast of King Henry VI in 1429


The Briitish Library Medieval Manuscript blog has a topical piece about the recorded descriptions of the feast following the coronation of King Henry VI in 1429. The boy king was a month short of his eighth birthday and his solemn demeanour during the coronation struck contemporary observers.

A principal source for the banquet afterwards in Westminster Hall are verses by John Lydgate, the Benedictine monk of Bury St Edmunds who has been described as the unofficial court poet of the Lancastrian monarchy, and who was commissioned to record the events of the coronation.

The feast had all the wierd and wonderful array of a late medieval banquets in terms of dishes and spectacular subtleties to drive home with their symbolism the claims of the Anglo-French Dual Monarchy the young King Henry embodied.

The illustrated article can be read at The Coronation Banquet of Henry VI

It is linked to a forthcoming broadcast of The Food Programme this coming Sunday at 12.30 on Radio 4.

Alas there will not be such a banquet after tomorrow’s Coronation, but amongst those taking part and bearing the Royal Standard in the Abbey will be the present King’s Champion, Francis Dymoke, from the same lineage as Sir Philip Dymoke in 1429.
 

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