The ceremonial investiture was performed with the regalia of St. Edward, preserved in the Abbey treasury and regarded as too sacred for lay hands to touch, so that in the procession they were carried set out upon a covered board; but before the close of the service the king laid aside the crown of St. Edward and assumed his royal crown. This did not resemble the glittering monstrosity with which we now render our sovereigns' heads uncomfortable and slightly absurd, but was a dignified and artistic circlet of the type known to heraldic writers as a ducal coronet. Edward III. had three crowns, all of gold, the chief--described in 1356 as 'lately pawned in Flanders'--with eight fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with four great orient pearls and eight sprays of balas rubies and orient sapphires; the second, given to Queen Philippa, had ten fleurs-de-lys of rubies and emeralds with groups of emeralds and six pearls; the third was not, strictly speaking, a crown, but a chaplet, being an unflowered circlet with nine groups of great oriental pearls and in the midst a beautiful ruby. Wearing his crown and attended by his nobles bearing the other insignia of royalty, the newly anointed king returned to Westminster Palace for the great business of the coronation banquet. For this event Westminster Hall was prepared, a 'siege royal,' or throne, being set for the king at the upper end, covered with 'Turkish cloth of gold,' or other handsome material, with a canopy. The benches of the lower tables were covered with 'bankers' of red or blue cloth and 'dorsers' of the same material hung behind the guests--the 'dorser' being the mediæval equivalent of the 'thing they call a dodo, running round the wall.' The 'dorsers' behind the royal seat were of cloth of gold and were protected from the dampness of the walls by a lining of canvas. When the guests were seated in their order of precedence, and the Earl Marshal and his attendants had ridden up and down the hall to make room for the attendants, the banquet began, and during its course a number of nobles and lords of manors had the duty or privilege of discharging various services to the king, receiving as a rule valuable perquisites. Thus the table had been laid by the lord of Kibworth-Beauchamp manor, in return for which service he kept the salt cellar, knives, and spoons; the cloths and napkins had been provided by the lord of Ashley in Essex, as Chief Napier, and remained his property. The important post of Chief Butler was filled by the Earl of Arundel, though at the coronation of Queen Eleanor, in 1236, his place was taken by the Earl of Surrey, as he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a quarrel over sporting rights, but the lord of Wimondley had the privilege of passing the first cup of wine to the king, and then withdrew in favour of the mayor of London, who acted as chief cupbearer--not without reward, for at the coronation feast of Edward III.