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‘The Manner and Form of a Coronation’

In advance of the imminent coronation of King Charles III of the United Kingdom, Dr Niamh Pattwell shares with us some of her discoveries about medieval ceremonies around coronation:

The recent ceremonies in England surrounding the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and the proclamation of King Charles III had me intrigued. I was struck by the importance of spectacle: the colour, ritual, solemn declarations and processions through the city of London. However, given my recent discovery of a fifteenth-century copy of ‘The Manner and the Form of the Coronation of the Kings and Queens in England’, in a manuscript in Trinity College Dublin, I will be paying particular attention to the upcoming coronation of Charles III and Camilla, the Queen Consort, on May 6th.

The text provides instruction for the coronation ceremony, beginning with the day before when the prince should dress in the ‘most noble and fairest clothing’ in order to ride from ‘the tower of London to his palace at Westminster’. At least two days before the ceremony, the Abbot of Westminster ‘shall inform them of diverse observances’ including the need to confess and be of ‘clean conscience’. Physical cleanness is also important. The instructions state that ‘first he shall be bathed and after the bath there shall be ordained to him a new shirt and a coat of silk opened to the breast’. The open coat facilitated the anointing with the holy oil on five parts of his body: hands, the breast, between the shoulders, ‘in the great of the arm’ and on the head ‘in the manner of a cross’. I note that the anointing on May 6th, in the upcoming coronation, will be done behind a gold cloth ‘to conceal the King from view’ (see the BBC website here for details).

In the medieval text, there are instructions to burn the linen cloth used to wipe the oil from the king, presumably to prevent any would-be usurpers from using the sacred oil. The anointed head should be concealed by a special ‘pelioun’ or a cap for seven days when an appointed cleric will then remove it. There are details about the prostrations, the presentation of the King to the people (the Recognition), as well as the blessing and presentation of the sword, the crown and the sceptre (the Investiture). In the Medieval instructions, the oaths are to be recited in both English and French. The text ends with a list of the officers and peers who should accompany and support the King on the day, including the mention of a cloth spread under the King’s feet as he ‘goes in procession from Westminster Hall unto the Church’. If any cloth spreads outside the door of the church it is to be divided up among the poor. The coronation of the Queen is also mentioned in the text, but the details are scant. We are simply told that ‘there will also be a procession’ and that she is to be anointed ‘only in the top of the head’.

I am curious to see how these traditions, themselves adaptations of ancient rituals, will be included and modified in the ceremonies on May 6th.

‘TCD MS 484’.

This text and the later sixteenth-century copy in the same manuscript are unrecorded copies of the ‘The Manner and Form of the Coronation’. I discovered them hidden amongst sixteenth-century material in MS 484, during my search for later copies of Medieval texts for the Trinity College Dublin volume of the Index of Middle English Prose. There are eight other extant copies of ‘The Manner and Form of the Coronation’, which was translated into English from the anonymous Latin Forma et Modus Coronacionis. It is uncertain when this particular copy was included in MS 484. It forms part of a series of texts that would have been useful for a herald, including a second later copy (also not recorded heretofore) of the ‘The Manner and Form of Coronation’; Instructions for the Christening of Prince Arthur; Instructions for the Christening of Princess Mary; as well as hand-written extracts copied from printed chronicles. The items are written in disparate hands on varying sizes of paper, so it is unlikely that these texts originated in the one manuscript. They might have been gathered and bound together either by a librarian keen to ‘match’ texts of a similar subject or at the request of one of the Ulster King of Arms during the sixteenth or early-seventeenth century.

The discovery of the fifteenth-century copy of the ‘The Manner and Form of the Coronation’ is an unexpected and exciting find and there are some further clues that might help us to date when it was written. This is a work in progress. In the meantime, we have a coronation to watch.

Dr. Niamh Pattwell 

Associate Professor in Medieval English Literature, School of English, Drama and Film, UCD