ABSTRACT
In 1973, after 'several months of painstaking research', Selfridges in London celebrated ' 1,000 years of British Monarchy' with an exhibition of dozens of figures of English kings. Three-dimensional life-size images of monarchs from Alfred the Great to George V looked impassively at the Oxford Street crowds, hinting at long-established royal patronage and associating the store with notions of stability and prestige.1 In creating and displaying such a series, Selfridges was continuing a tradition so well established in this country that most of the kings represented would themselves have recognized it. Indeed, some of them practised it at home. At Richmond Palace, in the early sixteenth century, Henry VII entertained in a hall decorated with a set of statues of kings of England, culminating with one of himself.2 But these figures were not the earliest of their kind. Around 1385 Richard II com missioned a series of 13 stone statues for Westminster Hall, to represent the kings of England from Edward the Confessor onwards. At the same time, two larger figures of kings were made for the exterior, to be set in niches above the main entrance.3 These were probably additional images of Richard himself and Edward the Confessor, the canonized predecessor to whom he was most devoted. The hall was the ceremonial heart of the Palace of Westminster, the setting for great royal feasts and meetings. It was also used as a law court, but to most people most of the time only the exterior would have been visible, and this may have prompted the repetition there of the two most significant figures on a larger scale.
