Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/178

 130 THE ANCESTOR other picture, nearly contemporary with the Bayeux Tapestry, of the crowning of St. Edmund, in a MS. belonging to Captain Holford, C.V.O., CLE., shows the king similarly vested in an embroidered dalmatic with tight sleeves and narrow girdle and over it a mantle ; on his feet are the buskins (fig. i). The first of the coronation orders to mention any vestments is that contained in a twelfth century English pontifical now in the British Museum.^ In this, after the anointing and the girding with the sword, the king is invested with {a) the armilU or bracelets and (J?) the pallium or mantle, before the imposition of the crown and delivery of the ring, sceptre, and rod. The bracelets are described as typical of sincerity and wisdom, and a token of God's embracing ; and the mantle or pall as formed with four corners to let the king understand that the four corners of the world are subject to the power of God, and that no man can reign happily on earth except he has received his authority from heaven. For pictorial representations of the royal vestures at this period there can be no better authority, except as to minute details, than the great seals of the kings themselves. Both the seals of the Conqueror show him seated, vested in a long tunic or dalmatic reaching nearly to the ankles and with tight sleeves, and over it a mantle fastened on the right shoulder. He of course is crowned and carries the sword and the sceptre with the cross. The seal of William Rufus shows him as wearing two vestments, one with long and tight sleeves, the other with shorter and wider sleeves, and the mantle, but this is fastened in front instead of on the shoulder. Henry I. in his first seal is robed like his brother, but in his other seals the mantle is again fastened on the shoulder. In his third and fourth seals and in the seals of Stephen and Henry II. the under vestment is plain with long tight sleeves, but the dalmatic is striped or banded transversely, and is slit up the front and thrown back on either side on the seat upon which the king sits. In all these examples the mantle continues to be worn fastened on the shoulder. The evidence of the seals is borne out in an interesting way by the life-sized monumental efl^gy of Henry II. at Fontevraud^ (fig. 2). This represents him in (i.) a long vest- ^ See L. G. W. Legg, op. cit. 30. 2 C. Stothard, The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain (London, 1 8 1 7). The colours are given on Stothard's authority.