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
No comments:
Post a Comment