The Coronation of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor in 1274

Today is the 750th anniversary of the Coronation of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor at Westminster in 1274.

He had succeeded his father King Henry III in November 1272, but was on Crusade at the time. The new King and Queen did not return to England until just before their Coronation. This is significant in itself - unlike many previous monarchs, and some later ones,  there was no threat to an orderly succession. This is all the more striking given that it had only been in 1266 that the Baronial war had ceased in England. Apart from the more than seven year delay in crowning the child King Henry VI in 1429 this was the longest interval between accession and coronation in the history of the monarchy since King Edgar, who may have waited fourteen years, until he reached the age of ordination at thirty in 973.

This was the first coronation at Westminster since the second crowning of the King’s father in 1220. Then the ceremony had taken place in the church built by St Edward the Confessor. However King Henry III had devoted himself to creating a church worthy of the shrine of St Edward and destined to be the coronation church and site for royal burials. In 1274 the present sanctuary, transepts and crossing and the  portion of the nave containing the monastic choir stalls as far west as the Pulpitum had been built. West of that there was still the Anglo-Norman nave of the Confessor. This was not to be rebuilt until the munificence of King Richard II and King Henry V made it possible.

Much has changed at Westminster since 1274, but much has survived, both the main abbey church and the great Cosmati pavement of the Sanctuary. This following restoration and conservation is once again visible and not concealed by carpet. So last year King Charles III could see at his crowning the same floor his ancestor had seen in 1274.

King Edward I

A painting from circa 1300 on the Sedilia of Westminster Abbey.

Image: Wikipedia 

Much of the Rite would have been recognised by both monarchs, the reformation and attempts to shorten the liturgy not withstanding. I think we know less about the 1274 Coronation as it antedates the constitutional issues much discussed by historians that revolve around the 1308 Coronation oath, and on the liturgical impact of the later fourteenth century Liber Regalis.

The principal officiant was Archbishop Robert Kilwardby, the only Dominican to occupy the See, and later to be a Cardinal resident at the Curia. It is not recorded whether he had difficulties getting St Edward’s Crown straight on the King’s head. Unlike his current successor he was admittedly dealing with an open and lighter frame.

The long interval between accession and coronation, together with the new and spectacular setting, in itself proclaiming the cultus of St Edward, and the fact that here was a King bearing the name of the saintly exemplar of English Kingship can be seen as a final vindication of much that King Henry III had sought to achieve. It can therefore be seen as the opening of a new chapter in the history of the monarchy. What King Edward “the first after the Conquest” was to set out to do and to achieve, or indeed fail to achieve, was to shape the history of Crown and realm in significant new directions.