were delighted to welcome a ruler who seemed to them bent upon outdoing all that was good and undoing all that they considered evil in the government of his predecessor.[381] From Winchester Richard was moving on by leisurely stages towards London when a report of a Welsh raid made him suddenly turn towards the border, with the intention of punishing the raiders; but Eleanor, who perhaps better understood the danger of plunging unnecessarily and unwarily into a Welsh war, called him [Sidenote: _Sept. 1, 2_] back, and as usual he obeyed her.[382] On September 1 or 2 he was welcomed with a great procession in London;[383] on the 3rd he was crowned at Westminster.[384] Three contemporary writers, one of whom actually assisted in the most [Sidenote: _Sept. 3_] sacred detail of the ceremony,[385] tell us how at its outset Duke Richard was “solemnly and duly” elected by clergy and people; how he took the threefold oath, to maintain the peace of the Church, to suppress injustice, and to promote equity and mercy.[386] After receiving the threefold anointing and being clothed with the symbolical vestments of the kingly office, he was adjured by the Primate not to assume it unless he were fully minded to keep his vow; he answered that by God’s help he did intend so to do. He then took the crown from the altar and handed it to the archbishop, and the archbishop set it on his head.[387] Richard’s coronation is in one way the most memorable in all English history, for it is the occasion on which the form and manner of crowning a king of England were, in every essential point and in most of the lesser particulars, fixed for all after-time.