inbui cum principem tum nobiles cum vulgo.'-Quod ad materiem nostram―putem, generalem et consuetum hunč fuisse inaugurandi ritum Belgis".".

Perhaps the point in our English ceremony which is most analogous to the Gothic and German elevations is that of our kings being antiently placed upon a seat in Westminster hall, which was thence denominated The KING'S BENCH. This antient seat, which occupied the upper end of the great hall, was appropriated to the administration of justice by the sovereign in person, or by the judges of his court, to which it gave the title of the Court of King's Bench.

We find that the seat or bench here referred to is spoken of in old authorities as a marble seat; and that there stood before it a marble table. That this marble seat was the place of the chancellor as well as of the justices of the bench; and that here our kings were used to sit before their progress to coronation.

"At the upper end of this hall," saith Stow," is a long marble stone of twelve feet in length and three feet in breadth. And there also is a marble chair where the kings of England formerly sate at their coronation dinners, and, at other solemn times, the lord chancellor: but now not to be seen, being built over by the two courts of Chancery and King's Bench"."

Dugdale." The place where the lord chancellor au

ciently sate and held this court was at the upper end of Westminster hall, at that long marble table which is there situate (though now covered with the courts there erected) whereunto are five or six steps of ascent. For in 36 Ed. III. when Simon Langham was made lord chancellor he placed himself in the marble chair, wherein the chancellors used to sit and sealed patents, which marble chair to this day remaineth, being fixt in the wall there overagainst the middle of that marble table."

The following are instances of kings being said to sit in the marble chair. Henry VII. was to come 66 by vj. of the clock" (in the morning of his coronation)" from his cham bre into Westminster hall, where he shall sitt, under clothe of estate in the marble chaire, appareilled with clothes and quisshins of clothe of golde bawdekyn, as it apperteigneth"." Richard III., say Speed and Stow, upon the 25th of June went in great pomp unto Westminster hall, and there in the King's Bench court took his seat: the Chronicle of Croyland, cited by Buck, in recording the same

8

Origines Juridiciales, p. 37. 9 Litle Devise, &c. Ives, p. 100. 10 Claus. 1 R. II. Rymer, vol. vii. p. 157. A further illustration of this subject may be borrowed from the Liber Regalis, which is of the ⚫reign last noticed. It contains this passage:- "Die vero præfinito, quo novus rex consecrandus est, summo mane conveniant prælati et nobiles regni in palatio regio apud Westmonasterium, tractaturi de novi regis consecratione et electione, et de legibus et consuetudinibus confirmandis firmiter statuendis. Hiis sub universorum concordia peractis, provideatur quod in aula regia majori sedes eminens sit pannis sericis et inauratis decenter ornata, supra quam dictus rex regnaturus cum omni mansuetudine et reverentia elevetur."

A remarkable kind of coincidence in the passage quoted above reminds me of a very antient practice in Sweden, which will be best explained by reference to some of the writers of that country. "Mos

occurrence, says that "se apud magnam aulam Westmonasterii in cathedram marmoream immisit." Grafton informs us that the same king on the day of his coronation 66 came downe out of the white hall into the great hall at Westminster, and went directly to the Kinge's Benche." We are told by Hall that Katherine, queen of Henry V. after her coronation, was 66 conveighed into Westminster hal and ther set in the throne at the table of marble at the upper end of the hal." Richard II. arriving at the palace in procession from the Tower, entered the hall, and "ad altam mensam marmoream in eadem aula accedens, petiit vinum," &c. On the morrow he also came to this high table and sat in the royal seat 1o. To what hath been said above of the present state of the King's Bench it is only necessary to add, that the boarded inclosures which now surround and divide the two courts are removed at every coronation.

As the alterations which have taken place in Westminster hall since the time of our great ceremonialists Ash

autem erat, ut in Vitâ Ingialldi Illrada Sveoniæ Regis memorat Snorro, electum regem in infimo scamno considere, donec illatum fuisset poculum Bragebikare, aureum scilicet cornu hydromeli repletum: quod manibus exceptum surgens, conceptis de egregio suo regimine futuro votis, exhauriebat. Inde ad sedem regiam Kongs háseti deducebatur ; et sic auspicato regnum inivisse censebatur."-" Bragar heroes dicuntur,-Bragebikare ergo poculum erat quod in memoriam heroum exhauriebatur, quorum similem se futurum profitebatur regium solium conscensurus.”Verelius, Notæ in Hist. Gotrici et Hrolfi, cap. 16. p. 83. So also TörDiss. de Mora-Steen, p. 7. "Istud in aula regia Upsalensi celebratum est in præsentia procerum primatumque regni ;—ipse vero rex futurus considebat ante mensam in gradu, ex quo paulo post humeris civium levatus, solio supra mensam collocato imponebatur. Exhausto igitur scypho, sellaque regia occupata, rex ab omnibus salutabatur.”

ner,

mole and Sandford may render it difficult to understand their accounts of the entry of the classes from the places of their assembling, I take this opportunity of reminding the reader that the former entrance to the great hall from the Court of Requests, or present House of Lords, was not, as now, at the end of the hall, between the courts of King's Bench and Chancery, but on the east side, and just below the steps going up to those courts: also, that the passage of the queen from the Court of Wards was by a door at the end of the hall in the south-west corner. This may be plainly seen by reference to the ground plan in Mr Sandford's History.

A SINGULAR mistake hath arisen on the subject of the coronation of the Saxon Queens from the circumstances con→ nected with the histories of Judith and Eadburga. After alluding to the wretched fortunes of the latter, Sir John Spelman, in his Life of Alfred, (p.24) observes that "Hence grew it to be a custom among the West Saxons that the wives of their kings were NEITHER CROWNED nor stiled queens, nor had any other title than only THE KING'S WIFE given them. But Ethelwolf, detesting that custom of his country as altogether barbarous, having married a daughter of France, omitted not, it seems, to honour her with all the dues of right belonging to a queen. And this un derstood at home gave there occasion to a great conspiracy against him."

The inference to be drawn from this passage must be, that the coronation of queens was, at the time when this custom is said to have originated, an establisht practice of the country: upon comparison of dates, however, we shall find that no instance of the use of this ceremony is recorded till after the period here assigned for its aboli tion: and consequently that Sir John has made the practice be discontinued before it ever existed. The death of king Brightric from the poison prepared by his queen took place in the year 800, and the consecration of Egferth, the ear liest of a KING that our history affords, and probably also

"cýninger gemæcca,"-Hearne's Note in loc.