The whole of the next year he had to spend in Normandy and Anjou, and, when he returned in 1157, he found abundant work ready for his hands in his still undetermined relations with Wales and Scotland. His first visit was to the Eastern counties, and there he combined business with pleasure. William of Warenne, Count of Boulogne and Earl of Surrey, the son of Stephen, had received a considerable estate in Norfolk, including the castle of Norwich; and Hugh Bigot, the earl of the county of Norfolk, the same Hugh who had sworn that Henry I., disinherited the empress, was very reluctant to accept the strong rule of the new king. Whether Hugh was now acting on behalf of Stephen’s family or in opposition to them is not clear. It was his attitude that drew the king into that country. He was made to surrender his castles; and William of Warenne likewise surrendered his special provision, on the understanding that he was to receive his hereditary estates. Henry added solemnity to this visit by holding a solemn court and wearing his crown in state on Whit-Sunday, at St. Edmund’s, the second recorded coronation-day of the reign. This ceremony was a revival of the great courts held by the Conqueror and his sons on the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, at Gloucester, Westminster, and Winchester, the three chief cities of the South. At such gatherings all the great men attended, both witan and warriors, clerk and lay. The king heard the complaints of his subjects, and decided their suits with the advice of his wise men; the feudal services, by which the great estates were held, were solemnly rendered; a special peace was set, the breakers of which within the purlieus of the court were liable to special penalties; and during the gathering, whilst the people were amused and humored by the show, the king and his really trusted advisers contrived the despatch of business. The ceremony of coronation, which gave the name to these courts, was not, as is sometimes supposed, a repetition of the formal rite of initiation by which the king at his accession received the authorization of God through the hands of the bishops; the character so impressed was regarded as indelible, and hence the only way of disposing of a bad king was to kill him. That rite, the solemn consecration and unction, was incapable of being repeated. The crown was, however, on these occasions placed on the king’s head in his chamber by the archbishop of Canterbury, with special prayers, and the court went in procession to mass, where the king made his offering, and afterwards the barons did their services, as at the real coronation. These courts had been given up by Stephen, as the historian Henry of Huntingdon notes with an expressive lamentation, in the year 1140, when the clergy ceased to attend them; and he had made only one unlucky attempt, the Lincoln coronation, in 1147, to revive them. Henry, however, renewed the