The successive coronations of Harold II (probably) and William I in the newly completed Abbey were surely intended to emphasise their respective legitimacy as heirs to the Confessor’s throne rather than any special regard for his cult or foundation and both kings chose to be buried elsewhere in churches they had founded or patronised. Why was this? How far did it represent a royal cult of the Confessor, and how far the growing importance of London-Westminster as a capital? And once the tradition was established, why were some monarchs buried elsewhere, whether through choice or circumstance? The royal connections with the Abbey have been extensively discussed, most recently and helpfully by Emma Mason, Paul Binski and David Carpenter, but there is more to be said on the wider issues raised by royal choices of burial places.īetween 10 there was apparently no close relationship between Abbey and monarchy, despite the fact that the Confessor had rebuilt it as his mausoleum church. Coronations were held there almost without exception from 1066, but it was not until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that it became the usual regum sepultura. ‘From the era of its first foundation’, claimed Prior John Flete in the fifteenth century, ‘this has been the place of royal consecration, the burial place of kings, and the repository of the royal insignia.’ In fact, however, the systematic combination of functions came much later than Flete implied. By tradition, the two functions had been combined from a very early period, even from the Abbey’s distant origins. In the fourteenth century Westminster Abbey fulfilled the double function of coronation church and mausoleum for the kings of England, a combination rare among the royal churches of medieval Europe.

Dropbox not logging in