34.K. Norgate, The Minority of Henry III (London, 1912), 5 and n. 1. Faced with an analogous succession of a minor in 1249, the nobles of Scotland debated whether the inauguration of young Alexander III, then nearly eight, should be postponed by a day to allow his knighting beforehand (M. D. Legge, ‘The Inauguration of Alexander III’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 80 (1945–1946), 77–80; and A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292 (Edinburgh, 2002), 132–3, and 132, n. 21 for a discussion of the place of knighting in contemporary French and Iberian coronations). In the event, the inauguration went ahead and Alexander was knighted by Henry III on Christmas Day at York, 1250 when he was eight. On this ceremony, see B. Weiler, ‘Knighting, Homage, and the Meaning of Ritual: The Kings of England and their Neighbors in the Thirteenth Century’, Viator, 37 (2006), 275–300.
35.Policraticus, VI: 10; Etienne de Fougères, Le Livre des manières, ed. J. T. E. Thomas (Paris and Louvain, 2013), ll. 617–32; J. Flori, ‘Chevalerie et liturgie’, Le Moyen ge, 4e série, 23 (1978), 247–78, 409–42.
36.Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, 179, trans. Bradbury, ‘Geoffrey V of Anjou, Count and Knight’, 32; Flori, L’Essor de la chevalerie, 305–6.
37.HWM, ll. 15306–24, ‘s’avra dues reis faitz chivaliers’. The History has one noble say, ‘“Who can do that except one man? … he who already knighted one young king … Let him gird the sword on this child so he shall have worthily knighted two kings”’ (ibid., ll. 15309–20).
38.For the central importance of dubbing to knighthood within chivalric culture, see Keen, Chivalry, 64–82.
39.When, for example, Frederick Barbarossa knighted his two sons at Mainz in 1184, he held a court of exceptional magnificence and festivities, which involved tournaments (J. Fleckenstein, ‘Friedrich Barbarossa und das Rittertum. Zu Bedeutung der grosser Mainzer Hoftage von 1184 und 1188’, Festrschrift für Heinrich Heimpel zum 70 Geburtstag 1971, 3 vols (Göttingen, 1972), II, 1023–41; H. Wolter, ‘Der Mainzer Hoftage von 1184 als politische Fest’, Feste und Feiern im Mittelalter, ed. D. Alterburg, J. Jarnut and H.-H. Steinhof (Sigmaringen, 1991), 193–99; and W. H. Jackson, ‘Knighthood and the Hohenstaufen Imperial Court under Frederick Barbarossa 1152–1190’, Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, III. Papers from the Fourth Strawberry Hill Conference, 1988, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. H. Harvey (Woodbridge, 1990), 101–20.
40.GH, I, 63 (Richard); 207 (Geoffrey); 336 (John); and for David, GH, I, 4.
41.Keen, Chivalry, 69–70. Prior to the coronation of Erec in Chrétien de Troyes’ first known romance, Erec et Enide, probably written in the early 1170s and very possibly alluding to the Young King’s own coronation, King Arthur knights and richly equips no fewer than 400 young men, ‘all sons of counts and kings’ (Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, tr. Kibler, 119).
42.Gesta Stephani, 214–17; Continuatio Beccensis, 323; A. C. Lawrie, Annals of the Reigns of Malcolm IV and William, Kings of Scotland, AD 1153–1214 (Glasgow, 1910), 43–4. Similarly, in 1212, William the Lion’s son Alexander knighted twelve Scots nobles immediately after his own knighting by King John at Clerkenwell (Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols (Rols Series, London, 1890), II, 20).
43.Warren, Henry II, 278–81, who notes that debts owed for the aid ‘ad maritandum filiam regis’ were pursued by the Exchequer until as late as 1187.
44.PR 16 Henry II, 15, ‘roba de viridi essaia et caligis et ocreis et tribus pannis sericis ad opus Regis filius Regis’. Other robes worth over £9 for the Young King and his familia had also been purchased (PR 16 Henry II, 61). It is impossible to know if the expense of 18s. ‘for work on four helmets for the use of the King’, recorded on the Berkhamsted account, was connected in any way with the bestowal of arms (ibid.).
45.As suggested by the editors of the History of William Marshal, III, note to l. 2091. Crouch, William Marshal, 44, accepts the Marshal’s knighting of young Henry in 1173.
46.For an important assessment of the context and limitations of English sacral kingship in the twelfth century see G. Koziol, ‘England, France and the Problem of Sacrality in Twelfth-Century Ritual’, Cultures of Power. Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. T. Bisson (Philadelhia, Pa., 1995), 124–48.
47.GH, I, 6. On Westminster, R. D. H. Gem, ‘The Romanesque Rebuilding of Westminster Abbey’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 3 (1980), 33–60; E. Mason, ‘“The Site of King-Making and Consecration”: Westminster Abbey and the Crown in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, The Church and Sovereignty, c. 950–1918. Essays in Honour of Michael Wilks, ed. D. Wood (Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 9, Oxford, 1991), 57–76.
48.Torigni, 245, who notes that the sees of Carlisle, Hereford, Bath, Lincoln, Chichester and Ely were at that time still vacant. Roger of Worcester had been detained in Normandy, while Henry of Winchester and William of Norwich excused themselves on grounds of sickness.
49.Howden, II, 4–5; and Torigni, 245, ‘cum magna cleri et populi laetitia’.
50.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E, 1154; Torigni, 245; WN, I, 101. Even the chronicler closest to Henry II, Robert of Torigni, 245, concentrates on listing the clergy present, and of the ceremony in Westminster simply notes that Henry was ‘ab omnibus electus et in regem unctus est’.
51.Ralph of Diss, usually coolly distanced in his treatment of the Becket controversy, was careful to follow his very brief notice of the Young King’s coronation by giving the text of Alexander’s letter of prohibition, and noted that the coronation took place ‘inconsulte’ (Diceto, I, 228); and A. Duggan, ‘Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Becket’, Authority and Power. Studies in Medieval History Presented to Walter Ullman, ed. B. Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980), 59–81. Newburgh calls it ‘that most ill-starred coronation (illi infautissimae coronatio)’ (WM, I, 160). Torigni, 245, alone sought to defend the coronation by Roger of York, citing the precedent of the Conqueror’s coronation by Ealdred of York.
52.GH, II, 79–83. Howden, III, 247–8, similarly provides a detailed account of Richard’s crown-wearing in 1194, as does Gervase, I, 524–5, citing parts of the ordo used. For twelfth-century English coronations, P. E. Schramm, A History of the English Coronation (Oxford, 1937), 27–73; H. Richardson, ‘The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath’, Traditio, 16 (1960), 111–202; and R. Strong, Coronation. A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London, 2005), 35–69, which provides a valuable survey and discussion of the coronation service from the Conquest to 1189. For wider context of the study of such rituals, see the introduction by J. M. Bak in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. J. M. Bak (Berkeley, 1990), 1–151.
53.The text of the Third Recension ordo is printed and translated in English Coronation Records, ed. L. G. Wickham Legg (London, 1901), 30–45. On this recension, see J. Bruckmann, ‘The Ordines of the Third Recension of the Medieval English Coronation Ordo’, Essays in Medieval English History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969), 99–115; and G. Garnett, ‘The Third Recension of the English Coronation Ordo: The Manuscripts’, Haskins Society Journal, 11 (1998), 43–71. For a valuable study of coronation in the eleventh century see J. Nelson, ‘The Rites of the Conquereor’, The Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1982 for 1981), 117–32, 210–21, and reprinted in J. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (1986), 375–401.
54.Aurell, Plantagenet Empire, 110–12; King, King Stephen, 47–8, 176–7.
55.GH, II, 80.
56.Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 30.
57.GH, II, 81.
58.In 1189, Howden notes these were ‘tres gladios cum vaginis aureis sumpos de thesauro regis’ (GH, II, 81). That these played a similar role in young Henry’s coronation in 1170 is confirmed by the payments in the Pipe Rolls for the refurbishment of the swords (PR 16 Henry II, 16). For the office, Round, The King’s Serjeant
s, 337–47.
59.Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit. Herrschaft und Repräsentation der Welfen, 1125–1235, ed. J. Luckhardt and F. Niehoff, 3 vols (Munich, 1995), II, 374–5 and 365 for a detailed illustration of the scabbard; A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, II: Masterpieces of the Secular Treasury, ed. W. Seipel (Vienna, 2008), 8–9.
60.As in April 1194, when King William performed this role at Richard’s great crown-wearing at Winchester on the latter’s return from crusade and captivity (Howden, III, 248). At the coronation of 1189, his brother Earl David had done so as his representative, though in this instance the central position was taken by John, count of Mortain, as the king’s brother (GH, II, 81). For Curtana, see M. R. Ditmas, ‘The Curtana or Sword of Mercy’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd series, 29 (1966), 122–33.
61.Godred’s presence at the coronation is noticed by the Chronicle of Northampton, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 281, f. 100v. I am most grateful to Dauvit Broun for this reference. Godred, who had been in receipt of small grants from the Exchequer since 1156, may have been anxious to gain Henry II’s protection against the Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland, not least because he had briefly held control in Dublin before Strongbow and his allies took it in 1170 (S. Duffy, ‘Godred Crovan [Guðrøðr, Gofraid Méránach] (d. 1095), king of Man and the Isles’, ODNB).
62.See Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 127–50.
63.GH, II, 81. The chequered board used for accounting, whence the Exchequer received its name, thus symbolized the wealth of the kingdom. In 1189, the great crown was borne by William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, and it is possible that given William’s eminence and closeness to Henry II he may also have borne it in 1170.
64.For the text, Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 30–1. On the oath and its significance, H. G. Richardson, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, TRHS, 4th series, 23 (1941), 129–58; idem, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, Speculum, 24 (1949), 44–75.
65.In 1166, Becket told Henry: ‘Remember also the profession concerning the preservation of the liberty of God’s Church which you made when you were consecrated and anointed by our predecessor, and placed in writing upon the altar at Westminster’ (CTB, I, 288–9). See R. Foreville, ‘Le Sacre des rois anglo-normands et angevins et le serment du sacre (XIe–XIIe siècles)’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1978), 49–62.
66.GH, II, 81–2; Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 30–1.
67.MTB, VII, 426–7, ‘in coronatione sua manifeste juravit se observaturum omnia ecclesia jura, sicut in antique et communi consecrationis canonae continentur, neque de novae consuetudinibus mentione aliqua fact est’. Roger likewise assured the pope ‘quod ipse in coronatione filii regis debitum iuramentum integre recepit, nec aliquid omisit quod in coronatione regis Anglie prestari solet’ (ibid., 942).
68.Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 31.
69.William of Newburgh could describe Henry II as having been consecrated as king ‘mystica unctione’ in 1154 (WN, I, 101).
70.Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 31.
71.CTB, I, 295; and Howden, who, speaking of Richard I’s coronation, noted that this ‘signifies glory, courage and knowledge’ (GH, II, 82).
72.Howden refers to this as the pileus regalis (GH, II, 81). For such caps of state, D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992), 208–10.
73.Diceto, II, 20. Similarly, in 1199 Richard was buried in the regalia in which he had been crowned, and which ‘he had been adorned with’ (infulatus) at his crown-wearing in 1194 at Winchester (Annales de Wintonia, AM, II, 71).
74.W. Ullmann, Growth of Papal Government (London, 1955), 225ff.; Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, 176.
75.N. F. Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England, 1089–1135 (New York, 1969), 137.
76.MTB, V, 532; Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot (no. 170), 236; Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, 176–7.
77.Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture, 180.
78.Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, ed. E. Bernheim et al., 3 vols, MGH (Berlin, 1892–1897), iii, 667, 679; Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture, 191.
79.Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot, no. 170; MTB, V, 532–3. Gilbert’s stance here is discussed by R. Foreville, L’Eglise et la royauté en Angleterre sous Henri II Plantagenêt (Paris, 1943), 244–5; D. Knowles, The Episcopal Colleagues of Thomas Becket (Cambridge, 1951), 171ff.; and Morey and Brooke, Gilbert Foliot and his Letters, 174–80.
80.Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot (no. 170), 236.
81.Epistolae, no. 150 (PL, CVII, col. 440); F. Barlow, ‘The King’s Evil’, EHR, 95 (1980), 3–27, at 19.
82.Barlow, ‘The King’s Evil’, 19.
83.M. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges (Strasbourg, 1924), trans. J. E. Anderson as The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France (London, 1973); Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture, 173; P. Buc, ‘David’s Adultery with Bathsheba and the Healing Power of Capetian Kings’, Viator, 24 (1993), 101–20; and cf. Koziol, ‘The Problem of Sacrality’, 128, 139–40.
84.GH, II, 82; CTB, I, 294–5. Becket’s quotation is from Claudian, De quarto consulate Honorii Augusti, I, 299.
85.That the attachment of such spurs was not a novelty in the coronation of 1189 is suggested by Howden’s statement that those used were ‘calcaria aurea sumpta de thesauro regis’ (GH, II, 82), implying they were already items of regalia. A pair of finely worked gold spurs, of twelfth-century date, used in the coronation of the French kings, was kept with the royal treasure at St Denis, and survive in the Musée du Louvre (D. Gaborit-Chopin, ‘Le Trésor au temps de Suger’, in Le Trésor de St Denis, les dossiers d’archéologie, 158 (1991), 19, at 10). For this ‘encroachment of knighthood upon kingship’, Koziol, ‘The Problem of Sacrality’, 135–6.
86.Coronation Records, ed. Wickham Legg, 34–6; Strong, Coronation, 48, and cf. GH, II, 82.
87.At Richard’s coronation, this was described as ‘a great and heavy crown of gold, adorned on all sides with precious stones’, but it is not known if this was the same one that was used in 1170 (Howden, III, 10). The crown may have been made especially for the Young King’s coronation, for the great imperial crown, brought back from Germany by the Empress Matilda and used for the crowning of Henry II in 1154, had been gifted by the Empress to the abbey of Bec (Chibnall, Empress Matilda, 189).
88.E. H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: a Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946), 171–9.
89.Howden, III, 11, noting that ‘talis enim oblatio decet regem in singulis coronationibus suis’.
90.In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, this is the age at which Arthur is crowned king (Bk IX: 1).
91.Howden, II, 4, n. 3, for the text of an anonymous Latin verse in praise of young Henry, penned in the margin of the earliest extant manuscript of the Chronica (BL, MS Reg. 14 C. 2), and possibly in Howden’s own hand (Howden, I, lxxiv–lxxv).
92.HWM, ll. 1956–8.
93.Histoire des ducs, 65. For Westminster hall, The History of the King’s Works, I, 45–7.
94.Eyton, 139–40. Edward Blund received expenses of £30 ‘ad coronationem Regis filius Regis’ (PR 17 Henry II, 80).
95.William of Canterbury, 83, ‘post coronationem celebrato convivio, rex regi, pater filio dignatus est ministrare, et se regem non esse protestari’.
96.FitzStephen, 107. It is difficult to accept that Henry II regarded his son’s coronation merely as a ruse to prevent Thomas Becket from excommunicating Henry, as suggested by U. Vones-Liebenstein, ‘Alienor d’Aquitaine, Henri le Jeune et la révolte de 1173: un prélude à la confrontation entre Plantagenêts et Capetiéns?’, Plantagenêts et Capétiens: confrontations et heritages, ed. M. Aurell and N. Y. Tonnerre (Brepols, 2006), 75–93.
97.La Chronique de Giselbert de Mons,
ed. L. Vanderkindere (Brussels, 1904), c. 70; trans. Napran, 63, ‘King Henry … embraced his sons with great esteem and raised them to their own properties with all honour and placed them in charge by themselves. For he put aside the royal crown and caused his son Henry to be crowned.’ Nevertheless, Gilbert understood that ‘of the entire land, King Henry II retained for himself the fruits and profits belonging to that kingdom, and kept for himself the administration of his son the new king.’
98.Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, I, 352–3; above, 45.
99.J. Backhouse and C. De Hamel, The Becket Leaves (London, 1988). The rubric above the scene reads: ‘Celebratur convivium coronationis, ministrat pater filio et se regem esse diffitetur.’
100.Howden, II, 4, n. 3.These verses, probably by Howden himself, are followed by another stanza praising the young Henry’s good looks in fulsome terms. Roger would similarly use the juxtaposition of a series of favourable and critical verses in lieu of an obit for Richard I (Howden, IV, 84–5).
101.Historia pontificalis, 69.
102.GH, I, 6, ‘et omnes comites, et barones et francos tenentes regni sui, devenire homines novi regis filii sui, et fecit eos super sanctorum reliquias iurare illi ligantias et fidelitates contra omnes homines salva fidelitate sua’.
103.JF, ll. 5–12.
104.Torigni, 245.
105.Torigni, 245.
106.FitzStephen, 104 trans. Appleby, Henry II, 162.
107.Guernes, ll. 2756–60; trans. Short, 92.
108.GH, I, 6; CTB, II, no. 296.
109.Torigni, 246; GH, I, 6, noted that he landed at Barfleur c. 24 June.
110.MTB, VII, 331 (no. 685); Barlow, Becket, 208
111.FitzStephen, 109; Staunton, Lives, 175.
112.FitzStephen, 109–10; Staunton, Lives, 175.
113.FitzStephen, 110; Staunton, Lives, 175. This account tallies closely with the report of the meeting at Fréteval sent by Becket himself to Pope Alexander (CTB, II, no. 300; Duggan, Thomas Becket, 184–5).
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