Here was an image of
Our Lord crucified, wrought with a profusion of gold and silver and
precious stones, through the pious solicitude of Canute, who was
formerly king and presented it. This being seized by the flames and
thrown to the ground was afterwards stripped of its ornaments at the
command of the Legate himself; more than five hundred marks of silver
and thirty of gold, which were found in it, served for a largess to the
soldiers."
It would, perhaps, be untrue to say that Winchester never really
recovered from the appalling sack and pillage which followed the flight
of Matilda; but it is true to assert that time was fighting against
her, and that the thirteenth century did not bring the splendid gifts
to her that it brought to so many of our cities. One great ceremony,
the last of its kind, however, took place in her Cathedral in 1194; the
second coronation of Coeur de Lion. "Then King Richard," we read,
"being clothed in his royal robes, with the crown upon his head,
holding in his right hand a royal sceptre which terminated in a cross,
and in his left hand a golden wand with the figure of a dove at the top
of it, came forth from his apartment in the priory, being conducted on
the right hand by the Bishop of Ely, his Chancellor, and on the left by
the Bishop of London.
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