The Coronation of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor in 1154

Today is the 870th anniversary of the coronation at Westminster of King Henry II and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

King Henry II from the Gospels of his son-in-law Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony

Image: Wikipedia 

Wikipedia has a good and detailed biographical account of the King and his reign, which discusses, inter alia, his education, appearance and style of living and governance, at Henry II of England

The same site has a very good online account of Queen Eleanor’s long and remarkable life at

Eleanor of Aquitaine

She was Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, and nine years older than the twenty one year old.King. Her previous marriage to King Louis VII of France was annulled early in 1152 and eight weeks later she married the nineteen year old Henry, Having campaigned as a teenager in England he was already established as Duke of Normandy and the next year by treaty was recognised as heir to King Stephen. The rather unexpected death of the latter in October 1154 brought this determined and energetic couple to the English throne.

The coronation was carried out by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec.

The new King was crowned with one of the crowns that had belonged to his mother’s first husband the Emperor Henry V, and which she had brought to England as his widow. 

The outward ceremonial of kingship appears to have mattered little to King Henry. After a few recorded ‘crown-wearings’ on July 17th 1157, or at Easter the following year - authorities vary - he and Queen Eleanor laid their crowns on the altar of Worcester Cathedral or the shrine of St Willian and swore not to wear them again.

Little survives of the Westminster that saw that coronation day beyond some of the claustral buildings of the abbey and the shell of Westminster Hall, which was the work of King William II. In 1154 the new King and Queen moved on to celebrate their Christmas Court at Bermondsey Abbey across the Thames rather than at Westminster.

Together with their sons King Richard I and King John, King Henry and Queen Eleanor are well reported by contemporary chroniclers and writers, shaped by the literary models of their time, as well as in the emerging and continuing records of royal administration. As a result the Angevin monarchs emerge more vividly on the modern printed page than their later medieval descendants often do.

Walter Map, who was a member of the peripatetic Angevin court, recorded his impressions of life there - with maybe the emphasis of a skilled raconteur making the most of a good story on occasion - in De nugis curialum 

In it he writes of the King as follows:

He was slow in settling the business of subjects, whence it happened that many, before their affairs were settled, died or departed from him dejected and empty-handed under the compulsion of want. It was another of his faults that, whenever he was lounging, which happened rarely, he never allowed approach to him, in answer to the prayers of the good, but, remaining in inner chambers tightly closed, he was accessible to those only who seemed unworthy of such access. His third fault was that he was impatient of peace, and felt no qualm in harassing almost the half of Christendom. In these three was his sin; in regard to the rest he was strikingly good, and in all respects lovable, for no one ever surpassed him in gentleness and affability. 

Whenever he went forth, he was caught up by the crowd, carried from place to place and forced to go where he desired not; and, what is remarkable, he gave ear patiently to individuals, and even when assaulted, now by general cries, now by violent hauls and pushes, to none on this account did he bring disgrace or make it serve as a pretext for his anger. And when he was too sorely tried he held his peace and fled to spots of peace. He was never haughty or puffed up; he was sober and restrained and pious, loyal and far-seeing, generous and often victorious, and a doer of honour to the good.

On occasion, indeed famously, King Henry could very publicly, lose his temper ( he did not have red hair for nothing ) as, most famously with “Will no -one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Another instance is recorded by John of Salisbury, although I am not alone in strongly suspecting that the King was channeling his anger to achieve the maximum effect:

I heard that when the king was at Caen and was vigorously debating the matter of the king of Scotland, he broke out in abusive language against Richard du Hommet for seeming to speak somewhat in the king of Scotland’s favor, calling him a manifest traitor. And the king, flying into his usual temper, flung his cap from his head, pulled off his belt, threw off his cloak and clothes, grabbed the silken coverlet off the couch, and sitting as it might be on a dungheap, started chewing pieces of straw.

The effigies of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor as they are now displayed at Fontevrault Abbey

Image: historicalragbag.com