When Britain Crowns a Monarch

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 401, 7 April 1937, Page 3

When Britain Crowns a Monarch

Eight of Thirty-eight Sovereigns Lost Their Thrones.

TWO WERE NEVER CROWNED

Not all of England’s coronations have been happy and fortuitous, says an overseas writer. Eight of the 38 sovereigns, since William and Norman, lost their thrones, and two of the eight were never even crowned. Edward V was murdered in the Tower before his coronation, and Edward VIII recently abdicated. Five of the unfortunate kings were | Plantagenets, counting York and Lancaster as sub-branches of the Royal Family tree. Surely the sonorous syllable s ‘Plantagenet’ should take precedence over most other surnames, even, though we know that the broom plan emblem was chosen largely because an illegitimate son of the House of Anjou had no surname at all. With the Tudors, dethroning kings went out of fashion in England for a while, to be revived more than 150 years later, but then only in two cases —both of them Stuarts. The inauspicious happenings at the Coronation, February 14, 1407, of Edward ll—first King to lose his throne —were many and obvious. The superstitious were not alone in presaging bad luck. Edward 11, first Prince of Wales, was the son of Edward I, against whom Woodstock, Bishop of Winchester, had conspired actively, if unsuccessfully. Yet from ail the other bishops, not to speak of the Archbishops, of England, Edward II chose Woodstock for the honour of placing the crowns upon the King and Queen. Under Favourite’s Influences. Further, the Coronation confirmed what both nobles and people had long guessed—that Edward II was too

much under the influence o£ a weak and vicious favourite, Piers Gaveston. | Prior to his crowning. Edward II had i promised his nobles to give up this i favourite, but at the ceremonies I “none was neare to Piers in braverie I of Apparrell and delicacie of Fashi ion.” Gaseton assumed all responsi■bilities for the Coronation, to which i he was quite unequal and the results i were disastrous. i In the Coronation records of differI ent ages, mention is often made of , the weariness of the King, due to his j obligation to undergo the communion { fasting. It was therefore necessary j that the ceremonies begin early in the i day and on time. But the crowning l of Edward II was late and unduly prolonged. The subsequent banquet, for which everyone was more than ready. ! was cold, badly-cooked and ill-served. Queen Isabella, sometimes referred to as “the she wolf of France’’ —was so deeply affronted by it all that she wrote her father, King Philip IV of France, a bitter letter complaining of the slights put upon her. The crowd at this coronation was so great that a number of persons were crushed to death, but the name of only one of then, has come down to us, a knight, Sir John Bakewell. The untitled victims are not recorded. Formally deposed by Parliament on January 7, 1937. Edward II was murdered at Berkeley Castle on September 21, 1327. His wife, Isabella, despised him and instigated the revolt against him. She succeeded in placing their son, Edward 111, a boy of 15. on the throne. For four years Isabella dominated the court, and it I was not remarkable for its moral tone. Then, suddenly, the young king seized

4 the reins and relegated his mother to a more private life. He ruled for 50 , years. His eldest son was the Black ; Prince. The Order of the Garter was instituted during his reign. { One of the Most Gorgeous. ■ As befitted the son of the Black J | Prince and the grandson of Edward ' | 111, the coronation of Richard II was one of the most gorgeous in English j history. Richard II (“of Bordeaux,” | as ancient chroniclers and present- | day dramatists delight to call him) ■ j was but 11 years old when crowned i ; at Westminster, July 16, 1377, and, ’ J after it was all over, the tired little boy was carried back to the palace ’ upon the shoulders of his knights—“being oppressed with fatigue and | ( long fasting.” Yet, in spite of this reign’s opening splendours, many persons foresaw and foretold it would end sorrowfully. The ’ youthful sovereign was attired in ’ white, and, since the days of King • Arthur, white has ever been consid--1 ered an unlucky colour for England’s ’ Royal house. Profuse extravagance ! marked every detail of this corona5 tion. The conduits in the streets ' flowed with wine. At “the upper ende ’ of La. Cheape” (Cheapside—where ■ Whittington heard the bells call “turn ■ back to London”) —“a castle was 1 erected with four towers, where stood ! four beauteous damsels in white (like s the king!) who blew on the king's E face as he passed leaves of gold and f threw gold florins before him and his , 1 horse.” 1 No wonder that the Coronation ser- ’ mon, preached by the Bishop of RochE ester, warned of the perils of exces- > sive taxation. The cost of this Coro- * nation was made the excuse for immense financial demands upon Parliai ment. Deposed by Parliament. t Parliament deposed Richard II in - 1399, and with a gallant company of j f nobles, in long-sleeved silken gowns, s he fled to France. The original Earl t of Oxford, the de Vere of Tennyson’s . vers’e, was of that company, he and 1 his title falling when Richard II fell.

A few hundred years later a Harley assumed the extinct title of Earl of Oxford, to lose it still later in his turn. It was bestowed for the third time in the third decade of the twentieth century by Mr. H. H. Asquith, Richard I soon returned from Bordeaux to England and was murdered at Pontefract Castle upon St. Valentine's Day, 1400. ■ Henry VI, next of England's unlucky kings, was twice crowned, first at Notre Dame, Paris, December 17, 1431. His father, Henry V, Shakespeare’s "Prince Hal,” had won for his youthful son the second sceptre of France. “Nothing was omitted that might be bought for golde nor nothing was forgotten that by man’s Wyt could be invented,” says a chronicler of the Paris Coronation. As a few months’ old baby, Henry VI had been present in his nurse's arms at a Royal council at Windsor Castle, and given the Great Seal to play with, but he proved too young | even to be amused with it as a toy. At the Westminster Coronation, the boy king, scarcely nine years old, "sat on the platform beholding the people about him sadly and wisely as with prescient glance at the evils about him.”

Numerology, which some people consider one of the new sciences, played an active part in Henry VPs crowning. The sixth of November was chosen because it corresponded with his birthday, the sixth of December, and, likewise because he was the sixth Henry. But not even numerology could save the situation. Parliament decided to depose him on March 4, 1461. Henry VI made a brief comeback later, but was a second time deposed on May 21, 1474, to die shortly afterward in the Tower, presumably by violence. Murdered in Tower. An unfortunate little monarch known as Edward V, and proclaimed King on the death of his father, Edward IV, April 9. 1483, had no Coronation. but 15 years old, he was murdered. in the Tower with his younger brothdr, the Duke of York, at the instigation of their wicked and ambitious uncle, Richard, the “Hunchback,” Duke of Gloucester. Both the actual and possible misfortunes attending the Coronation of Richard 111, July 6, 1481, were plain to almost everyone. The monks of Westminster, wo are told, "sung the

Te Deuni with a faint courage”--the identical Te Deum that will be heard at King George Vi’s Coronation in that same Westminster Abbey next May, and that was sung (also in WestmiSnster) to celebrate Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415. The assemblage of the nobility at Richard Ill’s Coronation, we are told, was extraordinary. “Three Duchesses of Norfolk were present. In the King's procession from the Tower there were three dukes, nine earls, 22 barons, besides knights and esquires.” Richard 111, wiho seems to have been very fond of finery, was robed magnificently, both at Westminster and at a second crowning at York, September 8, 1483. At York Richard HI strengthened his none too sure kindly footing "by knighting many gentlemen of the country.” The proclamation of precaution for his safety during the London ceremonies is significant. No bombs existed in those days, but, plainly, he mistrusted the peaceable recognition of his claim to the throne. The proclamation, among other things, commands that “no man, under pain of imprisonment, shall take lodging in the city or suburbs of London except by appointment of the King’s hargingers.” Richard HI imported for his London coronation a large company of stalwart “toughs” to be bls bodyguard. Chroniclers evidently in the King’s pay—fifteenth century publicity promoters—describe these importations as "4000 gentlemen from the north.” Less partial writers say their number was between five and six thousand, and describe the “gentlemen” differently: "They were all evil apparrelled and worse harnessed, which, when mustered, won the contempt of all be-1 holders. They were in their best jacks and rusty salletts with a few in I white harnesse, but not burnished. ( Shortly after the coronation they - were countermanded home with suffl- I cient rewards for their travaile.” Richard 111 died upon the battlefield of Bosworth. His hard-fought-for crown, which he had taken into battle with him, was found upon a hawthorn bush. One of his descendants incorporated a thorn in his coat of arms.