Note 1026 — Chapter V · THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE. 1175–1183.

Gesta Hen. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 245, 246. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 197. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 5. Rob. Torigni, a. 1181. This last writer, whose chronology has now become extremely confused, puts the event a year too late. So does Rigord (Duchesne, Hist. Franc. Scriptt., vol. v.), p. 7. Rigord indeed gives an account of the matter so different from that of the English writers—e.g. he represents it as taking place publicly, amid a great concourse of spectators—that one might almost suppose he was relating a second coronation, performed in the following year. But there seems no other record of any such thing; and there are some details in his story which point to a different conclusion. Not only does he, too, name the archbishop of Sens as the consecrator—an outrage upon Reims which could not possibly have been repeated—but he betrays his own confusion by giving the date as June 1, 1181, and then describing the day as Ascension-day, which in 1181 fell on May 14, but which really was the day of the crowning in 1180 (May 29). The truth is that the panegyrists of Philip Augustus are obliged to slur over this first disgraceful year of his reign as rapidly and confusedly as they can.