February.
If you do a web search for "lionheart crowned" you'll get lots of
conflicting information. Some sites say 3rd September, while others
say 27th February. Most of the "27th February" crowd seem to take their
information from other incarnations of this file on other operating
systems.
After a very pleasant afternoon spent lunching with my girlfriend's
parents, I availed myself of their extensive reference library.
You'd be surprised how hard it is to get concrete information about this.
The _Encyclopedia Brittanica_ doesn't mention the date, only the year, as
does _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_, as do all the other printed
sources I tried. One of them even said July 7th 1189! Microsoft's (yeah,
so sue me) Encarta '95 has quite a comprehensive entry, but again, no
day and month information
In desperation, I tried the web once more, and finally stumbled upon
http://www.btinternet.com/~timeref/hsttime2.htm. This revealed that
Henry II died on 6th July 1189 (presumably the source of the 7th July
entry in another reference), and that Richard was crowned on 3rd
September.
Best of all, this site gives references. So if any of you have a copy of
_The Life and Times of Richard I_, John Gillingham, pub. George Weidenfeld
and Nicholson Limited, 1974, then you can confirm this for yourselves.
For completenesses sake, I tried to find an ISBN number for the above
book. But Amazon and Barnes and Noble don't appear to stock it (although
it looks like a revised version, by the same author, is due out in October
1999, in case anyone's interested).
PR: docs/10488
Submitted by: solon@macaulay.demon.co.uk
a25123d94a