Toyes and Trifles

On January 31st, 1626, two days before his coronation, Charles I called for the principal pieces of the English regalia to be assembled at Whitehall Palace. The state jewels were accordingly brought from the Tower of London and the medieval coronation regalia and vestments, several pieces of which had almost certainly belonged to Edward the Confessor, from Westminster Abbey. Charles was attended that evening by William Laud, then Bishop of St Davids, who recorded in his diary: ‘The King viewed all the regalia, put on St Edward’s tunics [and] commanded me to read the rubrics of direction’. Twenty-three years to the day after this intimate coronation rehearsal, Charles I’s decapitated body would be buried anonymously at Windsor, Laud would have been dead for exactly four years following a public execution on Tower Hill, and arrangements were being made at the Tower of London for the entire collection of regalia, including St Edward’s Crown, to be melted down or sold off for the benefit of the Commonwealth. As one contemporary sadly remarked: