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NOTES AND QUERIES.
ix. JUNK 28, 1902.
another young English monarch was crooned,
and at the coronation of Queen Victoria the
story of Josiah furnished the text of Bishop
Blomfield's sermon.
At the coronation of Queen Mary I., Day, who had recently been restored to the bishopric of Chichester, was the preacher, but I have not been able to find his text. Perhaps some other contributor can supply it. I have also failed to discover if sermons were preached at the coronations of Elizabeth and James I. At Elizabeth's coronation the see of Canterbury was vacant ; Heath, Arch- bishop of York, refused to crown a Protestant queen, and the bishops generally followed his example. Oglethorpe of Carlisle officiated, and if there was a sermon he probably preached.
Charles I. was crowned on the Feast of the Purification. The preacher was Senhouse of Carlisle, whose text, " And I will give thee a crown of life" (Rev. ii. 10), seems, in the light of subsequent events, to have been almost a prophecy. The sermon was full of quotations from various sources Homer, Livy, Dionysius the Areopagite, Philo, Lac- tantius, Jerome, Bernard, Luther, and others as well as from the Bible. Each quotation was assigned to its author, and in many cases translated. There was one touch of humour in what was in other respects a sober, not to say a tedious discourse. The gift of life, said the preacher, was a free gift, unlike the gifts of physicians which they call "doses," though the patients have to pay for them. The bishop concluded with a solemn apos- trophe to the king, " For man hast thou loss here? Thou shalt have a gift there. Hast thou contempt here ? Thou shalt have a crown there. Hast thou death here ? Thou shalt have life there." When, twenty-three years afterwards, on another wintry morning, the king stood beside Bishop Juxon on the scaf- fold at Whitehall, his last words, " 1 go to exchange a corruptible crown for an incor- ruptible one," must have seemed like an echo of the conclusion of Senhouse's sermon.
Charles II. was crowned twice in 1651, at Scone, as King of Scotland, and on St. George's Day, 1661, at Westminster, as King of Eng- land. At the Scotch coronation the Moderator of the General Assembly preached from two texts : " And he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony ; and they made him king, and anointed him ; and they clapped their
hands, and said, God save the king And
Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people, that they should be the Lord's people ; between the
king also and the people " (2 Kings xi. 12, 17).
At Westminster the preacher was Morley,
Bishop of W rcester > an d afterwards of Win-
chester. His text was, " For the transgres-
sion of a land many are the princes thereof :
but by a man of understanding and know-
ledge the state thereof shall be prolonged"
(Prov. xxviii. 2). The sermon was very long,
and was intended to show the evils of a mul-
titude of rulers, and especially of "an un-
natural, unreasonable, insolent, and tyrannical
democracy." Examples were cited from
sacred and secular history. Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram, Sheba the son of Bichri, Cleon
the Athenian tanner, and the Gracchi were
all denounced. Charles was, of course, the
man of understanding, and his comeliness,
courtesy, and affability were expatiated upon.
The joy of the coronation was not confined to
earth. " I do verily believe," said the bishop,
in concluding his sermon, " the angels in
heaven have their share of it. For if there
is great joy in heaven at the conversion of
any one sinner, how much greater joy is
there at the conversion of three so great and
so sinful nations ? "
The morning of the coronation had been fine, but after the king had left Westminster there was a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, which recalled to many minds Richard Baxter's among others the earth- quake and the storm at the coronation of Charles I.
Francis Turner of Ely preached at the coronation of James II. and Mary of Modena from the words, ** Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king instead of David his father, and prospered ; and all Israel obeyed him " (1 Chronicles xxix. 23). Macaulay, in his account of the coronation, has devoted a paragraph to the sermon, of which he has nothing good to say. It is, I think, worthy of record that Turner denounced King John, " who meanly surrendered his imperial crown to the Pope " ; and perhaps it was by way of palliation of this reference to the head of the king's Church that the preacher alluded in flattering terms to his Majesty's person, in which " we see every line of his blessed father's visage."
William III. and Mary were crowned by Henry Compton, Bishop of London, whose collateral descendant, the present Bishop of Ely, had the privilege of assisting at the present coronation. Burnet, who had recently been appointed Bishop of Salisbury, preached from the words : " The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of
