The Project Gutenberg eBook of England under the Angevin Kings Volume I, by Kate Norgate.

[1394] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.
[1395] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 105, 106).
[1396] Rob. Torigni, a. 1157.
[1397] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.
[1398] The Scottish theory seems to be that Malcolm did homage for the earldom of Huntingdon, which had lapsed on his father’s death, and which Will. Newb. (as above, p. 106) and Rob. Torigni (a. 1157) say was now granted afresh to him. But, on the one hand, the treatise “De Judithâ uxore Waldevi comitis” in Chroniques Anglo-Normandes (Francisque Michel, vol. ii. p. 128) says that Huntingdon was not granted to Malcolm till 1159; and on the other, the terms of homage as stated by the Chron. Mailros exclude Huntingdon, which was granted to Henry of Scotland not by Henry I. but by Stephen. The truth probably lurks in another phrase of Rob. Torigni (a. 1157), which says that Malcolm surrendered, besides the three fortresses above-named, Edinburgh “et comitatum Lodonensem.” This can only mean that he made a surrender of Lothian, to receive its investiture again on the same terms as his forefathers—i.e. as a fief of the English Crown. Huntingdon appears in the Pipe Rolls of 1156, 1157 and 1158, but without mention of its third penny.

The closing feast of the year was celebrated with a brilliant gathering of the court at Lincoln. More cautious than his predecessor, Henry did not venture to defy local tradition by appearing in his regal insignia within the city itself; he wore his crown on Christmas day, not in the great minster on the hill-top, but in the lesser church of S. Mary in the suburb of Wigford beyond the river.[1399] Next Easter the king and queen went through this ancient solemnity of the “crown-wearing” together, and for the last time, in Worcester cathedral. When the moment came for making their oblations, they laid their crowns upon the altar and vowed never to wear them again.[1400] The motive for this renunciation was probably nothing more than Henry’s impatience of court pageantry; but the practice thus solemnly forsaken was not revived, save once under very exceptional circumstances in the middle of the next reign, till the connexion between England and Anjou was on the eve of dissolution; and as it happens, the abandonment of this custom of Old-English royalty marks off one of the lesser epochs in Henry’s career. He was about to plunge into a sea of continental politics and wars which kept him altogether away from his island-realm for six years, and from which he never again thoroughly emerged. This last crown-wearing at Worcester serves as a fitting point at which we may leave our own country for a while and glance once more at the history of the lands united with her beneath the sceptre of the Angevin king.

[1399] Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 9 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 117, 118). Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; it is he who gives the name of the suburb, “Wikeford.” Will. Newb. has a wrong date; the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 136, settles that point.
[1400] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 216; more briefly, R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 302; both with very confused dates, but again they are set right by the Pipe Roll 4 Hen. II. (Hunter), p. 175.