The king, after his ride to Westminster Palace, partook of a light supper and retired to his chamber. If he had not already been knighted he prepared for that ceremony, a usual though not invariable preliminary to coronation, by keeping vigil. The room in which the young Edward III. rested was provided with red rugs with the royal arms worked in the corners, three ‘bankers’ or bench covers of a like design, and other ‘bankers’ of red, green, murrey and blue, and his bath was covered with silken cloth of gold, though for the bath of Henry VII. Flemish linen was considered good enough. On the morning of the coronation day the king, after the ceremonial bath, put on spotless raiment, to signify that ‘as his body glistens with the washing and the beauty of his vestments so may his soul shine,’ and went into Westminster Hall, where he was lifted by his lords into his throne. Presently the royal procession, the king walking barefoot and the various nobles carrying the regalia, started down the covered way, carpeted with the coarse burrell cloth of Candlewykstrete (now Cannon Street), so much of this carpet as lay outside the church being the perquisite of the lord of the manor of Bedford as almoner for the day, and were met by the monks and clergy, and by them conducted into the Abbey. With the details of the ceremony that then ensued, ‘whereof the circumstaunce to shewe in ordre wolde aske a longe leysoure,’ all who are interested must by this time be well acquainted, so often and so fully has it been described.
Crowns ancient and modern.
The ceremonial investiture was performed with the regalia of St. Edward, preserved in the Abbey treasury and regarded as too sacred for lay hands to touch, so that in the procession they were carried set out upon a covered board; but before the close of the service the king laid aside the crown of St. Edward and assumed his royal crown. This did not resemble the glittering monstrosity with which we now render our sovereigns’ heads uncomfortable and slightly absurd, but was a dignified and artistic circlet of the type known to heraldic writers as a ducal coronet. Edward III. had three crowns, all of gold, the chief—described in 1356 as ‘lately pawned in Flanders’—with eight fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with four great orient pearls and eight sprays of balas rubies and orient sapphires; the second, given to Queen Philippa, had ten fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with groups of emeralds and six pearls; the third was not, strictly speaking, a crown, but a chaplet, being an unflowered circlet with nine groups of great oriental pearls and in the midst a beautiful ruby. Wearing his crown and attended by his nobles bearing the other insignia of royalty, the newly anointed king returned to Westminster Palace for the great business of the coronation banquet. For this event Westminster Hall was prepared, a ‘siege royal,’ or throne, being set for the king at the upper end, covered with ‘Turkish cloth of gold,’ or other handsome material, with a canopy. The benches of the lower tables were covered with ‘bankers’ of red or blue cloth and ‘dorsers’ of the same material hung behind the guests—the ‘dorser’ being the mediæval equivalent of the ‘thing they call a dodo, running round the wall.’ The ‘dorsers’ behind the royal seat were of cloth of gold and were protected from the dampness of the walls by a lining of canvas. When the guests were seated in their order of precedence, and the Earl Marshal and his attendants had ridden up and down the hall to make room for the attendants, the banquet began, and during its course a number of nobles and lords of manors had the duty or privilege of discharging various services to the king, receiving as a rule valuable perquisites. Thus the table had been laid by the lord of Kibworth-Beauchamp manor, in return for which service he kept the salt cellar, knives, and spoons; the cloths and napkins had been provided by the lord of Ashley in Essex, as Chief Napier, and remained his property. The important post of Chief Butler was filled by the Earl of Arundel, though at the coronation of Queen Eleanor, in 1236, his place was taken by the Earl of Surrey, as he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a quarrel over sporting rights, but the lord of Wimondley had the privilege of passing the first cup of wine to the king, and then withdrew in favour of the mayor of London, who acted as chief cupbearer—not without reward, for at the coronation feast of Edward III. the mayor received as his fee a gold cup enamelled with the royal arms, and a gold ‘water-spout-pot,’ or ewer, ornamented with enamel and two Scottish pearls. At the same feast the Earl of Lancaster as steward secured four silver chargers stamped with the arms of Harclay, and four others bearing the badge of the Countess of Hereford, ten silver skewers, and eight sauce-boats, each marked with the royal leopard, and the chamberlain carried off two basins parcel gilt and enamelled with the arms of England and Scotland. The lord of Addington supplied a dish of gruel and the lord of Liston in Essex wafers; other persons brought water and held basins and towels, and the head of the family of Dymoke of Scrivelsby rode into the hall in full armour, with his punning crest of a moke’s ears on his helm, and offered to fight any one who would deny the king’s sovereignty.
‘Dymoke of Scrivelsby.’
But after all the main thing at a feast is the food. And that was plentiful—even at the banquet of Edward II., where the waiting was disgraceful. For his coronation feast Edward I. sent out orders to the sheriffs of the different counties to provide 27,800 chickens, 540 oxen, about a thousand pigs and 250 sheep, besides instructing the prelates to send up as many swans, peacocks, cranes, rabbits, and kids as possible, and also giving large orders for salmon, pike, eels, and lampreys. It is not surprising that his cook, Hugh of Malvern, required six oaks and six beeches to be made into tables for the kitchen. This suggests a certain grossness of feeding which a study of the actual menu might dissipate; certainly the banquets of later sovereigns were sufficiently elaborate and varied. When Henry VI. was crowned in 1429, at the early age of nine, he was served with three ‘courses.’ The first of these included not only boiled beef and mutton, capons, herons, and cygnets, but ‘Frument with venyson; viand royall plantyd losynges of golde; Bore hedes in castellys of golde and enarmed; a rede leche with lyons coruyn therin’—in other words, a pink jelly or mould ornamented with lions—and, as a crowning glory, ‘Custarde royall with a lyoparde of golde syttynge therein and holdynge a floure de lyce.’ The second course, besides chickens, partridges, cranes, peacock ‘enhakyll’ (with its feathers), and rabbits, contained ‘pygge endoryd’—gilded sucking-pig—‘a frytour garnysshed with a leopardes hede and two estryche feders; Gely party wryten and notyd with Te Deum Laudamus,’ and, as a masterpiece, ‘A whyte leche (or blancmange) plantyd with a rede antelop, a crowne aboute his necke with a chayne of golde; flampayne powderyd with leopardes and flower delyce of golde.’ After this the third course, with no creation more wonderful than ‘A bake mete lyke a shylde, quarteryd red and whyte, sette with losenges gylte and floures of borage,’ falls rather flat. With each course was presented a ‘sotyltie,’ or elaborate device made, presumably, of sugar and pastry, representing groups of kings and saints. These ‘subtleties,’ however, were not to be compared to those at the coronation banquet of Katherine of France, queen of Henry V. Her banquet also was of three courses, ‘and ye shall understand that this feest was all of fysshe,’ and a most astonishing variety of fish there was. Besides all the common fish—salmon, soles, turbot, etc.—there were lampreys, in comparison with which Henry III. once declared that all other fish were insipid, ‘sturgeon with welkes,’ a combination of the royal and the plebeian, fried ‘menues,’ or minnows, the mediæval whitebait, conger, now much neglected, and ‘porpies rostyd,’ besides a score of other kinds, including certain mysterious ‘dedellys in burneux.’ The sweets included ‘Gely coloured with columbyne floures’; ‘flampeyn—a kind of raised pie—flourished with a scochon royall, therein three crownes of golde plantyd with floure delyce and floures of camemyll wrought of confeccyons’; ‘A whyte leche flourysshed with hawthorne levys and redde hawys;’ and ‘A march payne garnysshed with dyverse fygures of aungellys, amonge the whiche was set an ymage of Seynt Katheryne holdynge this rason, Il est escrit, pur voir et dit, per mariage pur cest guerre ne dure.’ Of the ‘sotylties’ the first showed a pelican and its young, and an image of St. Katherine (of Alexandria) holding a book in one hand and an inscribed scroll in the other; the second showed a panther, the Queen’s badge, and St. Katherine with her more usual emblem, the wheel. The third and most elaborate was ‘a tigre lokyng in a mirrour and a man sittyng on horse backe, clene armyd, holdyng in his armys a tiger whelpe, with this reason (i.e. motto), Par force sanz reson ie ay pryse ceste beste, and with his one hande makynge a countenaunce of throwynge of mirrours at the great tigre, the whiche helde this reason, Gile de mirrour ma fete distour.’ The legend of the Tiger and the Mirror has been very fully worked out in connection with the arms of the Kentish family of Sybill by Mr. G. C. Druce, a great authority on unnatural history, but he does not appear to have known this instance of its occurrence. An early bestiary informs us that ‘there is a beast which is called Tiger; it is a kind of serpent’ (this suggests the zoological classification of Punch’s railway porter—‘Cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs, but a tortoise is a hinsect’). ‘This beast is of a nature so courageous and fierce that no living man dares to approach it. When the beast has young the hunters ... watch until they see the tiger go off and leave its den and its young; they then seize the cubs and place mirrors in the path just where they leave. The character of the tiger is such that however angry it may be it is unable to look in the mirror without its gaze becoming fixed.’ (Surely this is more suggestive of Eve than of the serpent?) ‘It believes then that it is its cub that it sees in the mirror; it recognises its figure with great satisfaction and believes positively to have found its cub.’ (This property of the mirror may explain the puzzling question why so many ladies persist in dressing like their own daughters.) Thus the hunters escape while the tiger stops where it is, and I think that I had better follow the tiger’s example.
‘The tiger and the mirror.’