Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/176

 128 THE ANCESTOR Edward III. that the king who had been anointed with holy- oil was indued with spiritual jurisdiction.^ So much has been written from time to time on the corona- tion office, and everything directly and indirectly connected with it, that it is hard to find any new point for investigation or discussion. One such seems however to be the history of the royal ornaments put upon the king at his coronation, and it is the object of the present paper to trace this as far as pos- sible, with special reference to the Norman and Plantagenet kings. The oldest of the coronation orders,^ contained in a pontifical of the ninth or tenth century, probably of northern English use, now preserved at Rouen, makes no mention of the robes worn by or put upon the king, and passes directly from the anointing to the delivery of the sceptre {sceptrum)^ staff {hacu- lum)y and crown {galeum). We learn however from a much later source, an inventory of the regalia compiled by Sporley,^ a monk of Westminster Abbey, in the middle of the fifteenth century, what the royal robes may have been, for Sporley records that St. Edward the King and Confessor, for the memory of posterity and for the dignity of the royal coronation, had caused to be preserved in the abbey church all the royal ornaments wherewith he himself was crowned. Besides the sceptre, rod, and crown, these in- cluded a tunic {tunica)^ a supertunic (supertunicd)^ armil {armilld)^ girdle (zond)^ and embroidered mantle {paleum hrudatum)^ to- gether with a pair of buskins {far caligarum) and a pair of gloves [par cerotecarum). The second of the English orders, one of the eleventh cen- tury, which may have been used at the coronations of Harold and William the Conqueror, like the oldest order is silent as to the vestments, though the regalia are augmented by the ring and sword. The representation of the crowning of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry * shows him as wearing a yellow tunic, a green 1 For this and fuller information on the point see J. Wickham Legg, ^he Coronation of the Queen (Church Historical Society, xlii.), 6. 2 For much valuable information on these and other matters connected with the subject the student is referred to Mr. Leopold Legg's English Corona- tion Records. ^ L. G. W. Legg, op. cit. 191. ^ See Vetusta Monumental vol. vi. pi. vii.