The Order of Service for a Coronation: A Mystery in the Register of Alexander Neville, Archbishop of York, 1374-1388

As we get ready to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III this weekend, our guest blogger Helen Watt investigates an intriguing set of entries relating to a past coronation, which she found in one of our medieval Archbishops' registers during a recent project.

On 6 May 2023, Charles, formerly Prince of Wales, will be crowned King Charles III, following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, last year. The coronation ceremony will take place in Westminster Abbey, where kings and queens of England have been crowned since 1066. Although King Charles is intending to have a shorter ceremony than that of his mother in 1953, the solemnities will presumably still largely follow that same order of service which has been used for English royal coronations since the fourteenth century. Details are found in the Liber Regalis, an illuminated manuscript belonging to the Abbey, thought to have been created around 1382, probably for the coronation of Queen Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of King Richard II.[1]

Cover of a programme for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 1953, from the author's own family papers. 

The Liber Regalis shows that the coronation ceremony is performed by the archbishop of Canterbury, with the bishop of Durham and the bishop of Bath and Wells as supporters of the new monarch. What then was the role of the archbishop of York in the proceedings? No particular actions by him are mentioned in the order of service and it seems likely that the archbishop at the time would simply have been present as the second highest-ranking member of the clergy alongside the archbishop of Canterbury. So it is all the more intriguing to find the order of service for the coronation of a king in the register of Alexander Neville, archbishop of York, 1374-1388, ‘Ordo coronandi Regem’ (Order of crowning a king).[2] This entry is found alongside two others relating to the coronation of King Richard II and a third relating to the manner of performing the coronation of a king and queen, ‘Qua solemp[nita]te ac sub q[ui]buz m[od]o & for[m]a Rex & Regina debeant coronari’ (By which solemnity and under what manner and form a king and queen should be crowned).[3] All four entries have come to light following successive projects to work on the registers of the Archbishops of York, 1225-1650, carried out by the Borthwick Institute for Archives and Department of History at the University of York. The first of these projects, entitled ‘Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’, completed between 2014 and 2015 in the Borthwick and generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, resulted in the digitisation of the registers of the Archbishops of York, 1225-1650.[4] It produced high quality images of the registers contained in an online database and included entries from the register of Archbishop Neville, which had been indexed as part of the pilot for the project in 2012, also funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.[5] Following on from that project and a subsequent project generously funded by the Marc Fitch Fund also carried out in the Borthwick between 2015 and 2016 to index the registers, 1576-1650, ‘The Northern Way’ project, generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ran from 2019 to 2022 and was managed by the Department of History in partnership with The National Archives, Kew, and with the support of York Minster.[6] That project carried out indexing of all the fourteenth century York Archbishops’ registers, and so further highlighted entries from Neville’s registers, including those relating to the coronation of Richard II and the order of service for coronations of a king and a king and queen.

Registers of Archbishop Neville on the shelves in the Borthwick strongroom, 2023.

The register of Archbishop Neville containing entries for the coronation of King Richard II. 

Thinking of the latter two entries and taking into account the duration of the reign of Richard II, 1377-1399, and the period during which Neville was archbishop, 1374-1388, could the first entry relate to the coronation of Richard II in 1377 and predate the Liber Regalis, and the second, to the coronation of Richard II’s queen in 1382 and follow the Liber Regalis? As we shall see, the answer is not so simple. The first point to consider is that the initial entry firmly identifiable with the coronation of Richard II consists of the royal order to the archbishop, dated 26 June 1377, to attend that coronation, which was to take place on 16 July 1377 at Westminster Abbey. This order is identical to that sent out to the archbishop of Canterbury and presumably to all those dignitaries who were to attend.[7] However, the second entry in the register consists of a royal letter dated 4 July 1377, excusing Archbishop Neville from attending, for fear of invasions by the Scots and enemies approaching by sea. These reasons seem to make it very plausible that the archbishop would not travel to London at that time; nevertheless he is described as only ever having left his archdiocese during his first ten years in office, mostly for short spaces at a time to attend Parliament.[8] The only other period he spent outside his own diocese was to assist in defending the border with Scotland during threats of invasions in 1383 and 1384, and not in 1377.[9] Although taxation, specifically two clerical tenths from Canterbury and York, was to be raised at the very beginning of the reign of Richard II to finance resisting enemy invasions, this request may well have applied equally to naval attacks launched by the French, as to invasions by the Scots.[10] Therefore, it seems very likely that Archbishop Neville was simply not intending to make the journey to London for the coronation, but to stay in the north, probably at his palace at Cawood, on which he spent much time and money improving.[11]

The first two entries relating to the coronation from the register of Archbishop Neville: the Royal writ of King Richard II ordering the archbishop of York to attend his coronation on 16 July 1377 at Westminster, and copy of a letter of Richard II excusing the archbishop from attending his coronation.

Following the royal order and letter are the two entries relating to the order of service for the coronation of a king and of a king and queen, as already mentioned. These entries are undated, but are preceded by those noted above, dated in 1377, and followed by others, also dated in 1377, although not in strict date order.[12] Does this order in the register suggest that the entries relating to the coronation service also date from 1377 and so pre-date the coronation of Queen Anne of Bohemia? If not, could they have been copied into the register, but not in chronological order? One answer to these questions might be to look at the overall makeup of the register; as with most of the fourteenth-century registers of the Archbishops of York, it is divided into various sections and these entries fall within the section entitled ‘Diverse Letters’. This section contains entries, as the title suggests, covering a range of subjects, but generally dated between 1377 and 1384. Certainly, the first few folios of this section, ff. 100-7, including f. 104 in which the entries relating to the coronation are found, do appear to be arranged in chronological order between 1377 and 1382, although f. 105r includes an entry containing a copy of a document dated in 1222, and f. 107r, an entry dated in May 1378, in between others dated in 1381 and 1382, therefore perhaps out of place. Given this general arrangement, it is possible to conclude that the coronation entries, because they appear between entries dated in 1377, may well pre-date 1382, and so perhaps relate to an earlier period, perhaps to 1377 or before.

Entries relating to the order of service for the coronation of a king and of a king and queen, found in the register of Archbishop Neville, c.1377.

Turning back to the Liber Regalis, as well as existing in manuscript form, as described above, and as well as having been printed in volume 93 of the series of publications of the Roxburghe Club,[13] the manuscript also appears in print, in the original Latin with an English translation, alongside several other documents relating to coronations of English kings and queens in another volume, English Coronation Records.[14] Therefore, these two works provide ample means of comparing the text of the Liber Regalis with the entries found in Archbishop Neville’s register, in an attempt to discover the origin of the register entries. The editor of English Coronation Records also provides details of the recensions, or various forms which the medieval coronation service took and describes the Liber Regalis as the fourth recension of the text, the fullest thus far.[15] The editor was also of the opinion that this particular version was used at the coronation of King Edward II, which took place in 1308, but only contained short rubrics or criteria for the service, with more detail included later, perhaps in the reign of Richard II.[16]

Could this identification of the text of the Liber Regalis provide further corroboration of the date of the entries in the archbishop’s register or not? The only way to find out was to compare the entries with the text of the Liber Regalis, line by line and word for word. This exercise proved very fruitful and although it answers the question in part, also raises other points. The results of the comparison appear to confirm that the register entries only contain the short rubrics of the coronation service, whereas the Liber Regalis is a much fuller version of the text. Therefore, it does seem likely that the register entries predate the more detailed order of service used in the coronation of Anne of Bohemia, but by how much? The editor of English Coronation Records also compared the Liber Regalis with another document, a fourteenth-century Pontifical of Westminster Abbey in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.[17] Looking at the variations in the text of the Liber Regalis found in the Westminster Pontifical, it is clear that the entries in the York archbishop’s register follow those variations very closely, if not exactly, and so the entries must pre-date the Liber Regalis. Indeed, the editor of a text for a coronation order of service printed in another volume, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, specifically identifies the Westminster Pontifical variations as relating to the order of service for Edward II.[18] However, also published in English Coronation Records is a document entitled ‘Forma et Modus’, which is said to be reminiscent of the rubrics of the Liber Regalis, but is thought to date from the fifteenth century.[19] Although the first register entry relating to the coronation contains the words ‘m[od]o & for[m]a’, as noted above, so that the same words appear in the title and heading of each, the texts do not match and so the register entry may still relate to an earlier period.

Nevertheless, the register entries appear to have been copied from another text, since there are evidently copying errors, where the scribe has missed a line, realised his mistake, crossed out a few words and started again.[20] Another aspect of the register entries is that when compared with the Liber Regalis, they are not in order, but that the first of the entries, relating to the coronation of a king and queen, noted above, should fall within the second, relating to the coronation of a king.

Could it be possible that the register entries were copied from a manuscript belonging to Westminster Abbey, containing details of the order of service of the coronation, probably for Edward II, and if so, how and why? If Archbishop Neville rarely left his archdiocese, did his clerks also stay with him in the north or have access to manuscripts in the south? Or were there other manuscripts in York archdiocese containing the recension of the coronation service earlier than that fuller version thought to have been produced during the reign of Richard II? If the archbishop had no intention of attending the coronation ceremony, why was the order of service copied into his register together with the other documents in the first place? At present, all these questions are intriguing and remain unanswered, but still show that there was perhaps the same interest in the coronation of a new king in the late fourteenth century as there will be today. 

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[1] See the illustrated description of the Liber Regalis on Westminster Abbey’s website, available via  https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/coronations-at-the-abbey/spotlight-on-coronations/the-liber-regalis (accessed 14 April 2023). The Liber Regalis is printed in F. Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, ‘Liber Regalis’, Roxburghe Club (London, 1870), with a manuscript of a translation available in the Society of Antiquaries of London, SAL/MS/231.

[2] BIA YDA/2/Abp Reg 12, f. 104 r, entry 4, available via the York Archbishops’ Registers database https://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk/browse/registers?folio=237&register_id=j67314178 (accessed 14 April 2023).

[3] BIA YDA/2/Abp Reg 12, f. 104 r, entries 1-3. All four entries are printed in J. Raine (ed.), Historical Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers (London, 1873), pp. 411-16.

[4] Details of the project are available via https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/resources/archbishops-registers/#tab-1 (accessed 20 April 2023).

[5] The York Archbishops’ Database is available via https://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk/home_page/index (accessed 20 April 2023).

[6] See ‘The Northern Way: The Archbishops of York and the North of England, 1304-1405’, available via https://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/northern-way/ (accessed 20 April 2023).

[7] See F. D. Logan (ed.), ‘The Register of Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1375-1381’, Canterbury and York Society, 110 (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 293, no. 798.

[8] R. G. Davies, ‘Alexander Neville, Archbishop of York, 1374-1388’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 47 (1975), 87-101 (93).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Two clerical tenths from Canterbury Province, granted 5 December 1377 and two clerical tenths from York Province, granted 22 March 1378, ‘to support the charges of resisting the invasion of [the king’s] enemies’, see the E 179 database, available via the website of The National Archives https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/default.asp (accessed 14 April 2023).

[11] Dobson, R.  Neville, Alexander (c. 1332–1392), archbishop of York. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-19922) (accessed 17 April 2023); R. G. Davies, ‘Alexander Neville, Archbishop of York, 1374-1388’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 47 (1975), 87-101 (93).

[12] The entries immediately following those relating to the coronation service are dated 16 July, 12 August, 2 September and 24 August 1377, see BIA YDA/2/Abp 12, f. 104 v, entries 1-6.

[13] F. Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, ‘Liber Regalis’, Roxburghe Club (London, 1870).

[14] L. G. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1901), XIII, pp. 81-130.

[15] Ibid., p. 81.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records, XVI, pp. 172-190 (81), the document being University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. C. 425, ff. 60-80.

[18] See W. Maskell (ed.), Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols. (London, 1847), III, pp. 1-48, ‘De Benedictione et Coronatione Regis’ (3, note 1); also cited in footnotes are other Pontificals besides that of Westminster Abbey.

[19] Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records, XVI, pp. 172-190 (172).

[20] In the lines relating to part of the coronation oath, the words ‘Faciam ?concedis iustas consuetudines’ have been struck through (BIA YDA/2/Abp Reg 12, f. 104v, line 1), only to appear in the correct place later (BIA YDA/2/Abp Reg 12, f. 104v, line 3); the word ‘servabo’ which should appear in line 1 before the words that have been struck through, has had to be inserted above the line, pointing to another copying error.