On this day in 1547 Edward, the young son of the late King Henry VIII and his third wife Jane Seymour was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the event accompanied by much pageantry and celebration, as recorded by the Grey Friars Chronicler:
Item the 20th day of the same month the said King Edward the Sixth came from the Tower of London through London, and in divers places pageants, and all the streets hanged richly, with all the crafts standing in Cheap, presenting them as loving subjects unto their King, and so to Paul’s; and at the west end of Paul’s steeple was tied a cable rope, and the other end beside the Dean’s place at an anchor of a ship, and a man running down on the said rope as swift as an arrow out of a bow down with his hands and feet abroad not touching the rope; and when the King had seen the said thing went forth unto the palace of Westminster; and the next day came from thence unto Westminster church, and there was crowned, and kept his feast in Westminster Hall. God of his mercy send him good luck and long life, with prosperity! And this was done in the 9th year of his age and birth.
Among those in charge of the arrangements for the coronation and accompanying festivities was Lord Rich (a title that by this time he had enjoyed for five days). On the day of Rich’s ennoblement, the corpse of Henry VIII had arrived at Windsor where it was received by Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who preached at the Requiem Mass, and at Edward’s coronation Archbishop Cranmer was flanked by both Gardiner and Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall. But that the tide was turning against such religious conservatives as Gardiner, Tunstall and Bonner was already evident, Cranmer in his coronation sermon extolling Edward as a royal iconoclast and second Josiah. (Josiah, according to the Second Book of Kings, became King of Judah at the tender age of eight, and was known for having destroyed the images, idols and other ‘abominations’ that had been spreading among the Hebrews.) The nine-year-old Edward must indeed have appeared a Josiah-like godsend to the convinced reformers at court and in the Church.
Many of those present at Edward’s coronation feature in my book, The Burning Time.
Virginia Rounding: Author/editor/proofreader 