The Coronation Written by PAM PREEDY, historian & author. There have been 39 coronation ceremonies for monarchs held in England. The first can be traced to the ceremony devised by Saint Dunstan for King Edgar’s crowning at Bath Abbey in 973AD (CE). The earliest form of an oath was an oral contract between a monarch and their people. The crown may have been an ornate helmet. At this time there was no immediate (or automatic) right of succession, and so a coronation was an essential rite of passage. Nowadays, a…