Most of the barons of the King’s party were now at Gloucester, and anxious that the coronation should take place without delay. One, however, who ranked next to the Marshal in importance--Ranulf, Earl of Chester--had not yet arrived, and it was not without some hesitation that the others ventured to take so important a step in his absence. The urgency of the case however overcame their scruples and their fears of Ranulf’s displeasure;[7] and on the eve of S. Simon and S. Jude {27 Oct.}--ten days after John’s death--a council over which the Legate presided made the final arrangements for crowning the King the next morning.[8] At the last moment a question arose: who was to knight the boy? “Who should do it,” one of the assembly answered, “save he who, if we were a thousand here, would still be the highest and worthiest and bravest of all--he who has already knighted one young king[9]--William the Marshal? God has given him such grace as none of us can attain. Let him gird the sword on this child; so shall he have worthily knighted two kings.” It was done; and next morning {28 Oct.} the “pretty little knight, clad in his little royal robes,”[10] was led in solemn procession to the abbey church. Standing before the high altar, he recited, under the dictation of the Bishop of Bath,[11] the old traditional coronation oath: that he would, all the days of his life, maintain the honour, peace, and reverence due to God, His Church, and His ordained ministers; that he would render right and justice to the people committed to him; that he would abolish bad laws and evil customs, if any such were in the realm, and would observe good laws and customs and cause them to be observed by all men. He then did homage to the Holy Roman Church and the Pope for the realms of England and Ireland, and swore that so long as he held them, he would faithfully pay the thousand marks promised by his father to the Roman see. This homage must have been done to Gualo as the Pope’s representative. It was followed by the crowning and anointing which made Henry king. This most solemn rite was carried out with as much of the customary ceremonial as circumstances permitted.[12] The Archbishop of Canterbury, who according to immemorial precedent should have performed it, was beyond the sea. Gualo alone had, as Legate, a right to take the Primate’s place on such an occasion; but it seems that he tactfully declined to do so, and commissioned a member of the English episcopate to act in his stead, while he himself undertook the more ordinary duty of singing the Mass. The very crown was a makeshift, “a sort of chaplet”[13]--probably an ornament for a woman’s hair, belonging to the Queen-mother. Under the sanction of the legatine authority Bishop Peter of Winchester, assisted by the Bishops of Worcester and Exeter, anointed the child and placed this improvised crown on his head.[14]