II.—THE CORONATIONS IN THE ABBEY.
Come with me now inside the Abbey. We take off our hats here with great reverence, for we are not only in the House of God, but in the midst of the memorials of some of the most gifted of our countrymen. It is Poet's Corner. But we will not linger here; I want you to come right away into the chapel of Edward the Confessor, and as we pass along picture to yourselves how the Abbey looked on Coronation days, when the light from the great stained glass windows fell upon crowds of brave men and fair women, all robed in costumes of state to see the crown of England placed upon a monarch's head. You must try and imagine the moment when, as the Coronation rubric has it, "the Dean of Westminster bringeth the crown, and the Archbishop taking it of him, putteth it reverently upon the Queen's head. At the sight whereof the people with loud and repeated shouts cry, 'God save the Queen!' and trumpets sound, and by a signal given the great guns at the Tower are shot off."
Well, now we are in the chapel of Edward the Confessor, and I see you all look at that chair standing by the screen. It is well worth looking at, for it is doubtful whether there is any curiosity in all England to compare with it in interest. It is King Edward's chair, upon which English monarchs have been crowned for many centuries, and while we stand near it, I shall tell you very briefly about the crowning of some of our kings and queens.
For more than 800 years the coronations of English monarchs have regularly taken place in Westminster Abbey. Duke William of Normandy claimed the throne as lawful successor of Edward the Confessor, and upon the Confessor's gravestone the burly Norman stood to receive the crown of England. There were two nations represented in the throng assembled here that day. Godfrey, Bishop of Coutances, made a speech in French, Alred, Archbishop of York, spoke in English, and then the crowd, some in French and some in English, hailed William the Conqueror as their king. While this was going on inside the Abbey the Norman cavalry were without sitting on their war-horses, ready to quell any disturbance should it arise. They had not long to wait. It seems that they were not aware that their leader was to go through the form of receiving by popular vote the crown which he had already won by his sword, and when they heard the excited shouting inside the building they thought something had gone wrong, and so they set fire to the gates of the Abbey. Then the crowd inside the building were sure there was something wrong without, and they rushed out, only to be trodden down by the Norman horse-hoofs. Only monks and prelates remained within, and the ceremony of coronation was hurried through, while William, for the first time in his life, it is said, trembled from head to foot; and so ended the first coronation in the Abbey of which we have any authentic information.
Nothing of importance marks the coronation of William Rufus. When he perished in the New Forest, within four days Henry I. was in the Abbey claiming the crown, and making all sorts of promises in order to get the thing done speedily. So he was crowned by the Bishop of London, being in too great a hurry to wait for the arrival of either of the archbishops, who were away from London.
In those days, when times were troublous, kings were not so anxious to have throngs of people in fine dresses, and specially composed music and all that sort of thing. They only wanted men with good swords, and as much speed in being crowned as possible, for "delays were dangerous." Stephen was almost as prompt as his predecessor; Henry ate his supper of lampreys on December the 1st, and Stephen was crowned on St. Stephen's Day, December 26th, 1135. At the next coronation, that of Henry II., Norman and Saxon rejoiced together at the prospect of an era of peace. Prince Henry, son of Henry II., was crowned during his father's lifetime, on June 14th, 1170. At the coronation banquet, when his father stood behind him, the Prince remarked, "The son of an earl may well wait on the son of a king." The event took place during the height of the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose right it was to put the crown on the royal head. Accordingly Becket excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the assistant bishops who had officiated on the occasion. This led to the murder of Becket, with disastrous consequences too numerous for me to allude to here.
At the coronation of Richard I. there was a grand array of nobles and prelates, who came with the king from his palace to the Abbey and witnessed the ceremony. Ill omens attended the occasion; a bat fluttered round and round the throne at mid-day, and at night (they say) there was a peal upon the bells, of which no one could give an explanation. But the day was also marked by real horrors. From superstitious fears the Jews had been forbidden to witness the ceremony. But at the banquet some of them were discovered amongst the bystanders. They were at once beaten almost to death. The mob began plundering the Jews' houses, and murdering the inmates, and at York and other cities similar scenes quickly followed.
At John's coronation the custom began of having the canopy over the king's head carried by the five Barons of the Cinque Ports. This was in return for their aid to John in his frequent voyages. When Henry III. succeeded, Westminster was in the hands of Prince Louis of France, "the Dauphin" of Shakespeare's play. The king was accordingly crowned at Winchester; but he had a second coronation in Westminster Abbey, on May 17, 1220, having on the previous day laid the foundation-stone of his Lady Chapel, which was to be the germ of an entirely new edifice. All previous coronations were said to be outdone by the feasting and joviality on this occasion.
There was high rejoicing when Edward I. came back from the Holy Land, two years after his accession, and was crowned in company with his beloved Eleanor, the first royal couple who were crowned in the Abbey together. Alexander III. of Scotland did homage on the following day, and in his honour 500 great horses were let loose in the crowd for any persons to catch and keep that could.
Edward I. brought from Scotland the noted stone upon which for centuries the Scottish monarchs had been installed, and had it placed in this oaken chair which still covers it. According to tradition, this stone was the one on which Jacob slept at Bethel, and which by a series of remarkable adventures had been transported successively to Egypt, Sicily, Spain, and Ireland. In Ireland they say it stood on the hill of Tara, and that upon it were enthroned the ancient Irish kings. Fergus, founder of the Scottish monarchy, took the stone to Dunstaffnage Castle, and Kenneth II. (here we get hold of historic fact) placed it at Scone in the ninth century. Wherever it may have wandered, it is unquestionably a piece of sandstone from the western coasts of Scotland, and is most probably (says Stanley) the stony pillow of St. Columba, on which his dying head was laid in the Abbey of Iona. On this stone the reign of every English monarch from Edward I. to Victoria has been inaugurated. Only once has it been taken out of the Abbey, and that was for Oliver Cromwell to be installed upon it as Lord Protector in Westminster Hall.
At the coronation of Edward II. the crown was carried by Piers Gaveston, the unworthy favourite whom it had been the dying wish of Edward I. to have excluded from the court. In 1327, Edward III. (by consent of his deposed father) was crowned whilst his mother Isabella, "the she-wolf of France" (as Gray calls her), pretended to weep all through the ceremony. Of the coronation of Richard II. full details are preserved in the "Liber Regalis," a book drawn up by Abbot Littlington, and ever since carefully preserved by the Abbots and Deans, as it sets forth the order which has been observed in all subsequent ceremonials. Proceedings commenced with a grand procession through the city from the Tower, a custom which was kept up till the time of Charles I. The young king rode bareheaded, and was escorted by a body of knights, created for the occasion, and who, from the bath they took in company before assuming their armour, were styled the Knights of the Bath. The young king was taken out fainting from the long ceremonial just as Sir John Dymote, as champion, rode up to the Abbey gates on his charger, to challenge any who dared to dispute the royal succession. It is the first time we hear of the Champion; but it was an age of knightly revivals, and this was probably one of them.
We next see Henry IV. and Henry V. successively installed on the Stone of Scone; and then comes Henry VI., a child of nine, "beholding all the people about sadly and wisely;" his queen, Margaret of Anjou, was crowned here fourteen years afterwards. The coronation of Edward IV. presents no particular feature of interest. For that of Edward V. all was ready, robes for the guests, provisions for the banquet. But the Tower beheld the "midnight murder" of the only English monarch who never wore the crown. Then with splendid ceremonial Richard III. tried to cover the defects of his title. Six thousand gentlemen rode with him to Westminster Hall on June 26th, 1483, and a few days afterwards there was a very grand procession to the Abbey, when Richard and his wife were anointed King and Queen of England. Amongst the Queen's train was Margaret of Richmond, little dreaming that within three years her son should be crowned here as Henry VII. But this monarch's real coronation had already taken place, when the crown of England was found in the hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field, and placed on Richmond's head by Lord Stanley. The public ceremonial was only a poor display. Not so the next event of this character, when Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon were crowned with great splendour, and when for the last time a Roman Catholic Archbishop performed the ceremony. Anne Boleyn's coronation (commemorated by Shakespeare) was a noticeable one, and Cranmer, fresh from sentencing Catherine, performed the ceremony.
Edward VI. came to the Abbey, now a Cathedral, amidst much curious pageantry, and for the first time a Bible was presented to the sovereign.... Mary's procession to the Abbey is signalised by the exploits of a Dutchman, who sat astride on the weathercock of St. Paul's five hundred feet in the air, as the Queen passed. The two Archbishops and the Bishop of London were all in the Tower, so Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, put the crown on Mary's head. On Jan. 14th, 1559, London was wild with joy, as Elizabeth passed from the Tower to the Abbey. The women flung flowers into her lap, groups of children sang welcomes, even old men wept for gladness. The Bishop of Carlisle crowned the Queen.
James I. was crowned in the time of the Plague, so there was no procession. There was a slight hitch because his wife refused the sacrament. She had "changed once from Lutheran to Presbyterian, and that was enough." The coronation of Charles I. was marked by a slight earthquake shock. This was not the only bad omen. The dove of gold on the staff of Edward the Confessor had been broken, none knew how, and had to be replaced. Oliver Cromwell did not venture on a ceremony in the Abbey; he was enthroned, as I have already said, in Westminster Hall.
At the Restoration, Charles II. was crowned "with the greatest solemnity and glory," as the old historian says. The Regalia was all new, to replace that which had been lost during the Commonwealth. The crown was placed on the king's head by the weak and aged Archbishop Juxon, who had attended Charles I. on the scaffold. At the coronation of James II., a hundred thousand pounds were spent over the Queen's robes and jewels, and the procession was omitted to save expense, much to the wrath of the Londoners. As the crown was placed on James's head, it tottered and would have fallen, but for the Keeper of the Robes, who held it up.
The next coronation, that of William and Mary, was delayed two hours by the receipt of the news that James II. had just landed in Ireland. The Queen, being very short, had to be lifted into the chair of state. When girt with the sword and invested with crown and sceptre, the Princess Anne, who stood near her, said, "Madame, I pity your fatigue." The Queen sharply replied, "A crown, sister, is not so heavy as it seems." When the King came to make the usual offering, he found he had no money with him, and had to borrow twenty guineas from a nobleman. Anne was suffering from gout when her turn came to be crowned, and she had to be carried to the Abbey. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, acted as Lord High Chamberlain. At the coronation of George I., the king knew no English and his ministers knew no German, but they all knew Latin imperfectly, and everything had to be explained to the monarch in that language. The crowning of George II. presents no particular feature of interest; that of George III. was a splendid show, and was marked by a curious incident. Amongst the witnesses was Prince Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, who had been staying in London under the name of Mr. Brown, and had managed to procure admission to the scene of his rival's triumph. George the Fourth's coronation was a splendid ceremony; but the portly monarch found it very exhausting, and whilst the peers were doing homage in succession, he used up pocket-handkerchiefs innumerable in wiping his streaming face, handing them when done with to the Archbishop of Canterbury. His unfortunate Queen, Caroline, had vainly tried to be present at the ceremony, but was repulsed at each of the doors she attempted to enter, and had to drive away discomfited. William IV., to please the political reformers of the period, wanted to dispense with a coronation altogether, and the procession and banquet were omitted. Our present gracious Queen was crowned in the Abbey, in the flower of her youth, in June, 1838, and the ancient building was crowded with all that was eminent in the land as the crown was placed upon the girlish head of the illustrious lady who for nearly half a century has worn it so faithfully and so well.
THE LITTLE FLOWERS' WISH.
Some daisies grew in a green piece of turf just outside the palings of a garden. The grass all round them was soft and fine; they had plenty of room to grow in, and they were near enough to the road to see all that went by. Would you not have thought they were contented?
Little yellow butterflies came and told them stories, little shadowy clouds went scampering over the grass-plot, the pleasant warm sun shone down on their little round faces. And yet they were unhappy with all this.
Through a crack in the palings they had seen into the garden, and it made them all long to be there. Flowers of different kinds grew happily in the garden-beds. Some of them had sticks to lean against and some were trained against the wall.
"Oh, what care is taken of them!" thought the foolish little daisies.
Every day the gardener came and watered these choice flowers. And a stately lady paced the garden walks, and noticed if the flowers grew or faded.
"Oh, if only we could get into the garden!" sighed the daisies, ruffling all their little leaves; "oh, how much happier we should be if we were only growing in there!"
Just then there came running out of the garden a little child with golden hair. Whether he heard what the daisies said I do not know, but it almost seemed as if he did.
"Come along, little flowers," he cried, "would you like to come and live in the garden? See, I will plant you in nicely."
With his soft baby hands he plucked the little daisies from their stalks, sped back with them through the garden gate, and commenced to plant them in the earth. First he made a little hole for each of them in the soft brown mould, then put the rootless flowers in and pressed the earth round tightly.
"It is cold, it is cold," said the daisies.
"I shall have a nice little garden of my own now," said the child, and he ran away contented to his play.
Next day little Harold came to see his garden, and he burst into tears, for the poor little daisies were dead.
And other daisies grew in the grass-plot outside, and the butterflies told tales to them as of old.
