THE ABBEY--III.
The history of the successive Coronations performed in Westminster Abbey
from that of the Conqueror to the present day--especially those which
were picturesque--may be found in the pages of Stanley. There may be
read the dramatic Coronation of William the Conqueror; the joy of the
people at the Crowning of Queen Maude; the murder of the Jews at the
Coronation of Richard; here will be found Walpole’s account of the
Coronation of George III.; and the somewhat unworthy note on the
perspiring of George IV.
There are other points connected with the Coronations which may interest
us. Thus, the creation of knights at every Coronation was a custom both
graceful and symbolic. The candidate, after a bath, watched his arms all
night; in the morning he confessed and heard mass; he thus entered upon
his knightly duties cleansed and pure--body and soul; after the mass the
new king conferred knighthood and presented him with robes. At the
Coronation of Henry VI. there were thirty-six knights thus created; at
that of Edward IV., thirty-two; at that of Charles II., sixty-eight. The
part of the ceremony of a Coronation which most pleased the people was
the procession from the Tower to Westminster. That of Henry IV. is thus
described by Froissart:
“The duke of Lancaster left the Tower this Sunday after dinner, on his
return to Westminster; he was bare-headed, and had round his neck the
order of the king of France. The prince of Wales, six dukes, six earls,
eighteen barons, accompanied him; and there were, of knights and other
nobility, from eight to nine hundred horse with the procession. The duke
was dressed in a jacket of the German fashion, of cloth of gold, mounted
on a white courser, with a blue garter on his left leg. He passed
through the streets of London, which were all handsomely decorated with
tapestries and other rich hangings; there were nine fountains in
Cheapside, and other streets he passed through, which perpetually ran
with white and red wines. He was escorted by prodigious numbers of
gentlemen, with their servants in liveries and badges; and the different
companies of London were led by their wardens, clothed in their proper
livery, and with ensigns of their trade. The whole cavalcade amounted to
six thousand horse, which escorted the duke from the Tower to
Westminster.”
Or in the words of Shakespeare:
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
Which his aspiring rider seemed to know,
With slow but stately pace, kept on his course:
While all tongues cried, God save thee, Bolingbroke!
You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their desiring eyes
Upon his visage: and that all the walls
With painted imagery had said at once
Jesu preserve thee! welcome Bolingbroke!
Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,
Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed’s neck,
Bespoke them thus; I thank you, countrymen;
And thus still doing, thus he passed along.[5]
Another magnificent procession was that in which Elizabeth, Henry VII.’s
Queen, and, in the minds of many, the lawful heiress of the Crown,
received her Coronation, when the King perceived that there would be
discontent until that honor was paid to her. But she was not crowned, as
Mary II. was afterward crowned, as Queen Regnant, but as the Queen
Consort. This nice distinction, however, was not comprehended by the
people.
The Queen came first from Greenwich to the Tower by water: “There was
attending upon her there the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen of the city,
and divers and many worshipful commoners, chosen out of every craft, in
their liveries, in barges freshly furnished with banners and streamers
of silk, richely beaton with the ‘armes and bagges’ of their crafts; and
in especial a barge called the bachelors’ barge, garnished and
apparelled passing all other; wherein was ordeynid a great red dragon
spouting flames of fire into the Thames, and many other gentlemanly
pageants, well and curiously devised to do her highness sport and
pleasure with. And her grace, thus royally apparelled and accompanied,
and also furnished in every behalf with trumpets, claryons, and other
mynstrelles as apperteynid and was fitting to her estate Royal, came
from Greenwich aforesaid and landed at the Tower wharf and entered into
the Tower.”
Next day the court went in procession from the Tower to Westminster, the
Queen dressed in white cloth of gold of damask, with a mantle of the
same furred with ermine. She reclined on a litter and wore her fair
yellow hair hanging down behind her back, “with a calle of pipes over
it.” Four knights carried over her a canopy of cloth of gold; four
peeresses rode behind her on gray palfreys; the streets were cleaned
and swept; the houses were hung with tapestry and red cloth; the crafts
of London in their liveries lined the way, and singing children came
dressed as angels, singing welcomes as the Queen was borne along.
The same kind of procession was that of Henry VIII. and Queen Katharine.
In addition, at the end of Old Change stood virgins in white holding
branches of white wax, while priests in copes with crosses of silver
censed the King and Queen. Another procession much the same called forth
similar rejoicings when Anne Boleyn was carried from the Tower to
Westminster, and equal popular rejoicing was shown when Queen Mary rode
through the City to her Coronation.
At the Coronation of Elizabeth a variety of pageants were exhibited: the
principal one was the presentation of a Bible.
“Between two hills, representing a flourishing and a decayed
commonwealth, was made artificiallie one hollow place or cave, with
doore and locke inclosed, out of the which, a little before the queene’s
highnesse commyng thither, issued one personage, whose name was Time,
apparalled as an old man, with a sieth in his hand, havinge winges
artificiallie made, leading a personage of lesser stature than himselfe,
which was finelie and well apparalled, all clad in white silke, and
directly over her head was set her name and title in Latin and English,
Temporis filia, the daughter of Time. Which two, as appointed, went
forwards toward the south side of the pageants, where was another, and
on her breast was written her proper name, which was Veritas, Truth, who
held a book in her hand, upon the which was written Verbum Veritatis,
the Word of Truth. And out of the south side of the pageant was cast a
standing for a child, which should interpret the same pageant. Against
whom when the queen’s maiestie came, he spake vnto her grace these sweet
words:--
“‘This old man with a sieth
Old father Time they call,
And her his daughter Truth,
Which holdeth yonder booke:
Whome he out of his nooke
Hath brought foorth to us all,
From whence this manie yeares
She durst not once out looke.
“‘Now sith that Time againe
His daughter Truth hath brought,
We trust, ô worthie queene,
Thou wilt this truth embrace,
And sith thou vnderstandst
The good estate and naught,
We trust wealth thou wilt plant,
And barrenesse displace.
“‘But for to heale the sore
And cure that is not seene;
Which thing the booke of truth,
Dooth teach in writing plaine:
Shee doth present to thee
The same, ô worthie queene,
For that, that words doo flie,
But written dooth remaine.’
Thus the queene’s highnesse passed through the citie, which, without
aine foreigne person, of itself beautified itselfe, and received her
grace at all places, as hath been before mentioned, with most tender
obedience and love, due to so gratious a queene and sovereigne a
ladie.”
The alleged presence of Prince Charles at the Coronation feast of George
III. is interesting and somewhat pathetic. Of kings in exile the
chronicler of the Nineteenth Century will have a good deal to say.
Volumes will be written on the shadowy Courts of Exile of our time. But
the historian will find no exiled Prince more romantic in his youth, and
until a life of disappointment, and with no aims or hopes, ruined him,
than Charles. It was fifteen years after Culloden; he was at this time
perilously near forty; had he been detected one fears that even George
III. could not have saved him; he came over, he entered Westminster Hall
with the crowd, and he saw his rival seated where he would have been but
for his grandfather’s obstinacy. One gentleman recognized him and
whispered, “Your Royal Highness is the last of all mortals whom I should
expect to see here.”
That the glove thrown by the Champion was picked up, or that a glove was
thrown to the Champion from an upper seat in the Hall, was also
reported, but the thing seems doubtful.
As for the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who has described
it in more fitting language than Dean Stanley, afterward her friend and
most faithful servant?
“The last Coronation doubtless still lives in the recollection of all
who witnessed it. They will long remember the early summer morning,
when, at break of day, the streets were thronged, and the whole capital
awake--the first sight of the Abbey, crowded with the mass of gorgeous
spectators, themselves a pageant--the electric shock through the whole
mass, when the first gun announced that the Queen was on her way--and
the thrill of expectation with which the iron rails seemed to tremble
in the hands of the spectators, as the long procession closed with the
entrance of the small figure, marked out from all beside by the regal
train and attendants, floating like a crimson and silvery cloud behind
her. At the moment when she first came within the full view of the
Abbey, and paused, as if for breath, with clasped hands--as she moved
on, to her place by the altar--as in the deep silence of the vast
multitude the tremulous voice of Archbishop Howley could be faintly
heard, even to the remotest corners of the Choir, asking for the
recognition--as she sate immovable on the throne, when the crown touched
her head, amid shout and trumpet and the roar of cannon, there must have
been many who felt a hope that the loyalty which had waxed cold in the
preceding reigns would once more revive, in a more serious form than it
had, perhaps, ever worn before. Other solemnities they may have seen
more beautiful, or more strange, or more touching, but none at once so
gorgeous and so impressive, in recollections, in actual sight, and in
promise of what was to be.”
When the Commons separated from the Lords, they met within the walls of
Westminster Abbey, while the Lords took the Painted Chamber of the
Palace. For two hundred years the Commons assembled in the Cloister
Court, or in the Refectory, or in the Chapter House. They changed the
Chapter House for the no less beautiful church of St. Stephen in 1547,
not long after the Dissolution of the Religious Houses. But the History
of the Houses of Parliament belongs to the History of the Country.
We have now gone through the Abbey without attempting any description of
it. That has been done over and over again; now well, now ill. It is a
treasury of architectural interest; it is crammed full of historical
associations; one may linger among its ruins, among its monuments, under
its noble roof, book in hand for days and weeks and years. I have shown
you the monastic life and what it meant; I have told over again some of
the stories that happened in the Abbey; I have shown you of what kind
were the pageants and processions _outside_, witnessed by the people,
belonging to the Coronations. Those who want the story of the Royal
Tombs and Monuments, the Functions and Ceremonies, the Funerals and
Weddings, that have been celebrated within these walls, may consult the
courtly page of Stanley, the learned page of Loftie, and the laborious
page of Dart.