It was in Westminster Abbey that all the Kings and Queens of England have been crowned, and when a monarch had been crowned previously, as in the case of Henry III, whose coronation took place at Gloucester, it was thought proper to have the ceremony again performed at Westminster, in the presence of the nobles and the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries of the land; the Archbishop of Canterbury always officiating in the august ceremonial.
What wondrous scenes this proud old Abbey has witnessed! I can but enumerate a few of these however. One day in the middle of Lent, 1176, the King and his son came to London, while a Convocation of the Clergy was being held in Westminster Abbey. The Papal Legate was present, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were also present. Thomas a-Becket had been murdered by order of the reigning King Henry II. Becket had been Archbishop of Canterbury. In the Convocation the then Archbishop of Canterbury, as Primate of the Kingdom, sat on the right hand of the Papal Legate. The Archbishop of York seeing this, when he entered the Abbey, came in a rude manner and pushing between the Primate and the Legate, as if disdaining to sit on the left hand of anybody, thrust himself into the lap of the Primate in a swash-buckling manner. The Primate would not move, and no sooner had the insult been offered than the Bishops and Chaplains in the Abbey ran to the dais and pulled my Lord of York down and threw him to the ground, and began to beat him severely. The Archbishop of Canterbury then sought to save him, and when he, the Archbishop of York, got on his feet, he straightway went to the King whom he had advised to murder Thomas a-Becket, and made complaint of the outrage which had been offered him. The King laughed at him for his pains. As he left the Abbey the monks, and priests, and bishops, with a loud shout cried out at him, "Go, traitor, thou didst betray the holy man Thomas a-Becket; go get thee hence, thy hands yet stink of blood."
When the news reached the Archbishop of York (previously) that the Archbishop of Canterbury (Becket) had been assassinated on the steps of the Altar, he ascended his pulpit and announced the fact to his congregation as an act of Divine vengeance, saying that Becket had perished in his pride and guilt like Pharaoh.
In 1297, Edward I offered at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, the famous stone, crown, and sceptre of the Scottish Sovereigns, together with the Coronation Chair, now in the Abbey, on which all English monarchs have to sit to be crowned. This chair was taken from the Abbey of Scone, in Scotland, by Edward, having been brought to Scotland by King Fergus from Ireland, three centuries before the Christian Era. Before that period, it is said to have been used for many hundred years by the Irish Kings for a like purpose.
CORONATION OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
The Scots were very eager to get the stone back for the reason that a legend existed that whoever possessed the stone should rule Scotland. This old stone chair, or rather oaken chair with a stone seat,—twenty-six inches in length, sixteen inches and three quarters in breadth, and ten and a half inches in thickness—has seen many strange changes in dynasties, for every king since Edward I, has sat in it on his coronation day.
The ceremonies of coronation were very grand in the olden time and much of their splendor has passed away or has become obsolete.
CORONATION CHAIR.