THE ANCESTOR 127 THE KING'S CORONATION ORNAMENTS I THE Coronation Service of the Kings of England has from the first consisted of two essential ceremonies : the anointing or unction, and the delivery of the regalia or royal ornaments. Owing to the conservatism which is so strikingly exemplified in the coronation ceremonies these two essentials have always been maintained, and after a continuous use of at least a thousand years the King of England is to this day duly consecrated to his high office by his solemn anointing, and invested with the crown, the sceptre of kingly power, and the rod of virtue and equity. The ornaments which are put upon the king at his corona- tion have likewise from a very early date been of a peculiar character, closely resembling those anciently put upon a bishop at the time of his consecration. Thus the bishop was vested in an amice, albe, girdle, stole, tunic, dalmatic, fanon and chasuble ; a mitre was put on his head, gloves on his hands, and buskins and sandals upon his feet ; a ring was placed upon his finger, and a crosier put into his hands. Upon the king at his consecration were put the coif, which some think may cor- respond to the bishop's amice, the buskins and sandals, the colohium sindonis or albe, the tunic and dalmatic, a belt or girdle, and in later days a stole, and lastly the cope or mantle called the pallium regale ; he was also crowned, a ring put upon his finger, and a sceptre and rod delivered into his hands. The coronation order has also a striking resemblance to the order for the consecration of a bishop.^ The reason for all this is that, as the learned canonist William Lyndwode^ says in his Provinciale^ completed in 1433, an anointed king is no mere lay person, but a clerk as well according to some,^ and it was held as part of the common law of England in the time of 1 See Leopold G. Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1 901), xvii. ^ Bishop of St. David's, 1442—46. iBP' f 3 * Quod rex unctus non sit mere persona laica sed mixta secundum quosdun.* W. Lyndwode, Promnciakf lib. iii. Ut clericalis, etc. (London, I505),f. Ixxij^. I
