Let’s start the season with three, or so, kings!

Rather inconveniently I managed to bypass 1st December, and the death of King Henry I on 1 December 1135 – he’s the one who ate too many lampreys. He’d attempted to ensure his only legitimate child, Empress Matilda, would inherit his throne but in the event Matilda’s cousin Stephen nipped across the Channel, secured the treasury and claimed the throne, resulting in the so-called Anarchy.

On 2nd December 1804 there was another coronation. Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France. Pope Pius VII was apparently there to do the job but Napoleon preferred to do the job himself and make a statement about his relationship with the papacy. Most of the medieval crown jewels had been destroyed during the French Revolution including the Charlemagne’s coronation crown which was traditionally used. The monarchy had had several to choose from but they were all gone apart from the crown of Louis XV who ruled from 1643 to 1715. Napoleon had to have a crown made specially for the occasion. Napoleon called his new crown after the original and modelled it on a medieval style. The following year, Napoleon won the Battle of Austerlitz.

In 1546, Henry VIII, who was becoming old and increasingly paranoid about the future security of the Tudor throne, had Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey arrested and sent to the Tower. He had mentored Henry’s son, Henry FitzRoy, but was not a reformer or terribly keen on the new men who were promoted at court – in short he was something of a conservative as was his father the Duke of Norfolk. When Surrey quartered his own arms with those of Edward the Confessor it seemed to the king that Surrey intended to make a claim to the throne through his descent from King Edward I – and that, as they say, was that…Surrey was executed on 27 January 1547. The only reason that his father survived the whole experience was that Henry VIII died in the early hours of 28 January, saving the duke from the block.