Of Crowns and Legends

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Henry V's 'Crystal Sceptre' displayed at Guildhall Art Gallery". City of London . Retrieved 21 January 2018. Quoted in weaver, Matthew (14 January 2021). "Bad omen? Tower of London raven missing, feared dead". The Guardian . Retrieved 14 January 2021. The traditions established in the medieval period continued later. By the mid 15thcentury, a crown was formally worn on six religious feasts every year: Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Whitsun, All Saints' Day, and one or both feasts of StEdward. [50] A crown was displayed and worn at the annual State Opening of Parliament. [51] Also around this time, three swords– symbols of kingship since ancient times– were being used in the coronation ceremony to represent the king's powers in the administration of justice: the Sword of Spiritual Justice, the Sword of Temporal Justice, and the blunt Sword of Mercy. [52] ElizabethI, the last Tudor monarch, in her coronation robes The first reference to an early version of the legend that Britain will fall if the ravens leave the Tower comes from July 1944, when ravens were used as unofficial spotters for enemy bombs and planes during the Blitz of World War II. [43] :62–73 During the Blitz, all but three of the ravens died from either bombing or stress; the survivors were Gripp, his mate Mabel and another raven named Pauline. [46] Mabel and Gripp soon "disappeared", however. If the power in question is political and diplomatic, the Royals now have hardly more than the ravens. But the word "power" here can also mean the aura of glamour and mystery which at times envelops both ravens and monarchs. [43] :17

Perry, Simon (19 May 2021). "New Baby Raven at the Iconic Tower of London Gets a Royal Name". People . Retrieved 6 November 2021. Crown stayed with OpTic for the summer split, and they came out of the gate hot, posting a 4-0 record over the first two weeks, albeit against weak opponents. However, the team cooled off significantly after that, and only managed four additional wins over the rest of the split. OpTic's 8-10 record was still good enough to force a three-way tiebreaker for the final playoff spot with Golden Guardians and 100 Thieves, where they rose to the challenge and beat both teams, sending them to the playoffs. There, they were swept by CLG, ending Crown's season and breaking his 3-year streak of playing at the World Championship. Bogdanor, Vernon (1997). The Monarchy and the Constitution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-829334-7.The two-handed Sword of State, made in 1678, symbolises the monarch's authority and is also carried before the monarch at State Openings of Parliament. [136] Its wooden sheath, made in 1689, is bound in crimson velvet decorated with silver-gilt emblems of England, Scotland and Ireland, fleurs-de-lis, and portcullises. [137] The lion of England and unicorn of Scotland form the cross-piece to the sword's handle. The sword weighs 3.6kg (8lb) and is 1.2m (4ft) long. During a coronation it must be held for much of the service pointing upwards without touching the body by the Lord President of the Privy Council. [138] Stratford, Jenny (2012). Richard II and the English Royal Treasure. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-8438-3378-9.

Most European coins from about the 1400’s and Latin American Coins from the 1500’s have latin inscriptions. Carolus is Charles, Georgus is George, Gulielmus is William, Rex means King and Regina means Queen. Identify Coins with Square Hole Center Ethiopian Manuscripts". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol.263. United Kingdom: House of Commons. 19 July 1995. col.1463W. Twining, Edward Francis (1960). A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe. B. T. Batsford. ASIN B Heraldry also attributed to Satan, as the commanding general of the fallen angels, arms to identify him in the heat of battle. The Douce Apocalypse portrays him carrying a red shield with a gold fess, and three frogs (based on Revelation 16:13) (Dennys, 112). An object referred to as " StEdward's Crown" is first recorded as having been used for the coronation of HenryIII ( r.1216–1272) and appears to be the same crown worn by Edward. Being crowned and invested with regalia owned by a previous monarch who was also a saint reinforced the king's legitimacy. [29] It was also wrongly thought to have originally been owned by Alfred the Great ( r.871–899) because an inscription on the lid of its box, translated from Latin, read: "This is the chief crown of the two, with which were crowned Kings Alfred, Edward and others". [30] The crown would be used in many subsequent coronations until its eventual destruction 400 years later. Few descriptions survive, although one 17th-century historian noted that it was "ancient Work with Flowers, adorn'd with Stones of somewhat a plain setting", [31] and an inventory described it as "gold wire-work set with slight stones and two little bells", weighing 2.25 kilograms (79.5oz). [32] It had arches and may have been decorated with filigree and cloisonné enamels. [33] Also in the Royal Collection in this period was an item called a state crown, which together with other crowns, rings, and swords, constituted the monarch's state regalia that were mainly kept at royal palaces. [34] Late medieval period [ edit ] The Stone of Scone in the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey, 1859Wander through this treasure of the Hampton Court Gardens, which was once Charles II's formal pleasure garden and is now a wild meadow. Having fallen out of use in England in the 13th century, [47] two arches topped with a monde and cross reappeared on the state crown during the reign of HenryV ( r.1413–1422), [44] though arches did not feature on the Great Seal again until 1471. [48] Known as a 'closed' or imperial crown, the arches and cross symbolised the king's pretensions of being an emperor of his own domain, subservient to no one but God, unlike some continental rulers who owed fealty to more powerful kings or to the Holy Roman emperor. [49] Tudors and early Stuarts [ edit ] Tower of London: Public to vote on baby raven's name". BBC News. 4 May 2021 . Retrieved 7 May 2021. For the schedule of royal jewels see Nichols, John (1828), The Progresses, etc. of King James the First, vol. 2, p. 45. Eleven smaller salts named after StGeorge were originally made for a StGeorge's Day banquet of the Knights of the Garter in the late 17thcentury. A twelfth, the Queen Elizabeth Salt, was made in 1572 during the reign of ElizabethI for a member of the aristocracy; it was later acquired by CharlesII. Twelve spoons made for GeorgeIV in 1820 complement these salts. [208] Baptismal plate [ edit ] The Lily Font on top of the CharlesII font and basin at the christening of Edward, Prince of Wales in 1842

One legend attributes the start of the tradition of keeping ravens with clipped wings in the Tower of London to Charles II and to his royal astronomer John Flamsteed, although there are versions of the legend that differ in their details. [36] According to one legend, John Flamsteed complained to Charles II that wild ravens were flying past his telescope and making it harder for him to observe the sky from his observatory in the White Tower. Flamsteed requested that the birds be removed, but Charles II refused to comply with this request. [35] [36] Antonius de Bonfinis (1888), Description historique des monnais frappées sous l'empire Romain, médailles imperiales Further north, you’ll find interesting examples of Scottish unicorns at Stirling Castle, home of the ‘Hunt of the Unicorn’ tapestries, and Dundee, where HMS Unicorn, one of the oldest warships in the world, proudly displays a unicorn as its figurehead. Unicorns in our collections The first two known depictions of ravens in the Tower of London both date from the year 1883. One is in a special edition of the newspaper The Pictorial World and the other is from the children's Book London Town, [42] written by Felix Leigh and illustrated by Thomas Crane and Elizabeth Houghton. [43] :50–53Abramova, Natalya; Dmitrieva, Olga, eds. (2006). Britannia & Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-30011-678-6.

Barclay, Andrew (2008). "The 1661 St Edward's Crown – Refurbished, Recycled or Replaced?". The Court Historian. 13 (2): 149–170. doi: 10.1179/cou.2008.13.2.002. S2CID 159809217. There is a list of additions and alterations up to Queen Victoria's 1838 coronation in Jones, pp. 63–72. For a timeline of changes between 1855 and 1967 see Holmes and Sitwell, pp. 76–78. A thorough history is contained in Blair, vol. 2. Bird, Rufus; Clayton, Martin, eds. (2017). Charles II: Art and Power. Royal Collection Trust. ISBN 978-1-909741-44-7. Best known for his time as a player for Samsung Galaxy, he finished runner-up in Worlds 2016 and won the subsequent 2017 Season World Championship. For thousands of years, people around the world believed that unicorns did exist. However, in 1825, a prominent French naturalist called Georges Cuvier attempted to dispel the myth by stating that an animal with a split hoof could never grow a single horn from its head (he also argued against theories of evolution). Nevertheless, the spirit of the unicorn has lived on ever since – people even celebrate National Unicorn Day every year on 9 April.In the Jewel House there are two crowns that were never intended to be worn at a coronation. Queen Victoria's Small Diamond Crown is just 10cm (3.9in) tall and was made in 1870 using 1,187 diamonds for Victoria to wear on top of her widow's cap. She often wore it at State Openings of Parliament in place of the much heavier Imperial State Crown. After the queen's death in 1901 the crown passed to her daughter-in-law Queen Alexandra and later Queen Mary. [130] When GeorgeV attended the Delhi Durbar with Queen Mary in 1911 to be proclaimed (but not crowned) as Emperor of India, he wore the Imperial Crown of India. As the British constitution forbids coronation regalia to leave the United Kingdom, it was not possible for him to wear StEdward's Crown or the Imperial State Crown, so one had to be made specially for the event. It contains 6,170 diamonds, 9 emeralds, 4 rubies and 4 sapphires. [131] The crown has not been used since and is considered a part of the Crown Jewels. [132] Processional objects [ edit ] William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England, had a coat of arms with two lions. Richard the Lionheart used such a coat of arms with two lions on a red field (Loomis 1938, 47), from which the three lions of the coat of arms of England derive. However, there is no proof that William's arms were not attributed to William after his death (Boutell, 18). Jennifer Latson (11 December 2014). "King Edward and Wallis Simpson: The English Royal Abdication". Time . Retrieved 2 August 2018. Once coats of arms were the established fashion of the ruling class, society expected a king to be armigerous (Loomis 1922, 26). In such an era, it was "natural enough to consider that suitable armorial devices and compositions should be assigned to men of mark in earlier ages" (Boutell, 18). Each author could attribute different arms for the same person, although regional styles developed, and the arms for major figures soon became fixed (Turner, 415).