A theatre of coronation

The setting of Charles III’s crowning in Westminster Abbey in London lends grandeur and history to this great ceremony. John Goodall considers the evolution of this remarkable building and its role in celebrating the authority and antiquity of the monarchy

- John Goodall

WESTMINSTER ABBEY first became our coronation church almost by accident nearly 1,000 years ago. The last Anglo-Saxon king of the English, Edward the Confessor, had a particular fondness for Westminster— then a peaceful spot outside London—and not only created a palace for himself on the Thames here, but also patronised the ancient monastery beside it, rebuilding the church in a new and monumental idiom of architecture inspired by Roman example. He died in this palace and was laid to rest before the high altar of his Abbey on January 6, 1066. The Bayeux Tapestry shows his funeral procession entering the church as a workman erects a final weathercock on the roof.

Taking advantage of the funeral gathering, Earl Harold Godwinson was acclaimed King and crowned in the same church on the same day. It was the first such ceremony ever held at Westminster. Nevertheless, it ensured that, when William, Duke of Normandy, defeated and killed Harold at the Battle of Hastings several months later, he, in turn, sought coronation in the same building.

The ceremony took place on Christmas Day 1066 and was a harbinger of the brutality of Norman rule. Mistaking the cries of acclamation in an unfamiliar tongue for treachery, the guards began sacking the surrounding houses. According to the 12th-century account of Orderic Vitalis, amid the ensuing chaos, the newly-annointed monarch, possibly for the only time in his life, lost his nerve and sat trembling on the throne.