History of England 1-6

The continuity is there. The promises made by King Edgar at his coronation in 973 were repeated in the coronation charter of Henry I, beginning with the words ‘In the name of the Holy Trinity! I promise three things to the Christian people subject to me! First, that God’s Church and all Christian people of my dominions shall keep true peace!’ The ceremony, devised by Archbishop Dunstan to crown Edgar at Bath, has been at the centre of every subsequent coronation. Much of it was employed, for example, at that of Elizabeth II in 1953. In his writings, particularly in his preface to the soliloquies of St Augustine, King Alfred reflects upon the divine power of the king, who is closer to God than anyone else in the realm; indeed, God Himself can be seen as ‘an exceedingly powerful king’. The damned souls of doomsday are compared to men ‘condemned before some king’.

From generation to generation the same message has been passed. The monarch has been anointed with holy oil, and is invested with divine power; he or she has been elected by God, rather than the people, and has been blessed by the Holy Spirit. That is why, from the tenth century, the king organized and controlled both the monasteries and the bishoprics; the strength and unity of the nation were materially assisted by the union of secular and ecclesiastical authority. The leading clergy were the king’s servants, assisting him in times of peace and war. He was a Christus.

The main task of the king was indeed to lead his people into battle. By the aggrandizement of land and wealth he rendered the country more powerful and more worthy of God’s grace. All the land was his. He owned all highways and bridges, all monasteries and churches, all towns and rivers, all markets and fairs. That is why from the earliest times England was controlled by a minute and complex system of taxation. The coin itself was minted in the king’s name. The voice of the king was the voice of law; it could be said that he held the laws of the land in his breast. This was also the claim of Richard II, many centuries after his Saxon ancestors.

William the Conqueror did not need to create the role of a powerful and centralizing king, therefore; he simply had to take up the part acquired by him. He adopted his crown three times a year at a ceremony known as the festal crown-wearing; we may imagine a tableau in which the king, in silent possession of his majesty, receives the homage of his great lords. There had been such crown-wearings in the eighth century but the practice may lie further back. These three days of the year – Christmas, Easter and Pentecost – were also the days when the pagan kings of the north used to perform a ritual sacrifice for the sake of the people. So kingship had very ancient roots. It has been said that William borrowed from the customs of the Frankish or Roman or Byzantine civilizations; yet it may be that his true ancestors are to be found in those who ordered the building of Stonehenge.

The Angevin kings, the line of Henry II, Richard I and John I, chose instinctively to espouse and even to exaggerate the sense of divine kingship. They were all wilful and ruthless sovereigns who systematically exploited the resources of the country to bolster their own sense of significance. Richard was the first king to use the plural ‘we’ in the composition of royal charters. John was the first to call himself the king of the land rather than the king of the people. The premise of absolute power was of course challenged by the barons in the course of John’s reign, but it did not disappear with his death. It lay beneath the confused inheritance and dynastic struggles of the later generations; royal power was still a question of what was possible rather than what was just or right. In the thirteenth century the principle of primogeniture or the hereditary right of the eldest son was first advanced. The power of the Crown was secure in the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V and Edward IV. Richard II was the monarch most inclined to emphasize the divine rights of kingship.

There was no progress towards a more liberal or benevolent concept of monarchy working in partnership with the great magnates of the land. As soon as the conditions were right, at the beginning of what has become known as the Tudor period, the king reasserts all of his authority and power with as much forcefulness as any Norman monarch.