whether the sum total were twenty pence or twenty thousand pounds?

The feasts having at last come to an end, King Henry left Canterbury for
Merton Abbey, and Earl Hubert accompanied him. What became of the Queen
is not stated: nor are we told whether His Majesty thus went "into
retreat" to seek absolution for his past transgressions, or from the
lamentable necessity of paying his debts.

On the 20th of January, the royal penitent emerged from his retreat, to
be crowned with his bride at Westminster. Earl Hubert of course was
present; and the Countess thought proper to feel well enough to join him
for the occasion. The ceremony was a most splendid one,--very different
from that first hurried coronation of the young Henry on his father's
death, when, all the regalia having been lost in fording the Wash, he
was crowned with a gold collar belonging to his mother. The Archbishop
of Canterbury was the officiating priest. The citizens of London,
hereditary Butlers of England, presented three hundred and sixty cups of
gold and silver, at which the eyes of the royal and acquisitive pair
doubtless glistened, and which, in all probability, were melted down in
a month to pay for the coronation banquet. King Henry paid a bill just
often enough to prevent his credit from falling into a hopelessly
disreputable condition. The Earl of Chester--one of Earl Hubert's two
great enemies--bore Curtana, "the sword of Saint Edward," says the monk
of Saint Albans, "to show that he is Earl of the Palace, and has by
right the power of restraining the King if he should commit an error."
Either Earl Ranulph de Blundeville was very neglectful of his office, or
else he must have found it anything but a sinecure. The Constable of
Chester attended the Earl; his office was to restrain not the King, but
the people, by keeping them off with his wand when they pressed too
close. The Earl of Pembroke, husband of Princess Marjory of Scotland,
carried a wand before the King, cleared the way, superintended the
banquet, and arranged the guests. The basin was presented by a handsome
young foreigner, Simon de Montfort, youngest son of the Count de
Montfort, and cousin of the Earl of Chester, to whose good offices in
the first instance he probably owed his English preferment. He had not
yet become the most powerful man in the kingdom, the darling of the
English people, the husband of the King's sister, the man whom, on his
own testimony,--much as he fe