A coronation church

ALMOST exactly 955 years ago to the day, on Christmas Day 1066, William, Duke of Normandy was crowned King of the English in the abbey church of St Peter at Westminster. The ceremony set divine seal on his victory at the Battle of Hastings less than three months earlier, but it was an ominous affair. William was presented to his people for acclamation and when the nervous guards outside the church heard shouts in an unfamiliar language they imagined treachery and began firing houses. According to the chronicler Orderic Vitalis (d. 1142), in the pandemonium that ensued, William, perhaps for the only time in his life, completely lost his nerve and sat trembling uncontrollably on the throne.

‘When William had proved the legitimacy of his own rival claim, he pointedly chose to be crowned in the same place as Harold’

The church in which William was crowned was the predecessor to the Westminster Abbey we know today (Fig 1). In 1066, the Benedictine monastery here already claimed a long history—impossible now to substantiate—stretching back to the piety of Saeberht, King of the East Saxons, in the early 7th century. It was only very recently, however, an important institution.

According to an anonymous