Rites of passage were a fundamental part of the repertoire of medieval (as they are of modern) monarchy, and played both a symbolic and a substantive role in the making and unmaking of kings. There has been a good deal of work done especially on the religious aspects of these medieval rites, some of it informed by modern sociological and anthropological approaches, and all of it yielding interesting perspectives on the cultural significance of Christian doctrine and Catholic liturgy in the processes of ordered dynastic succession during the Middle Ages. One need say little more in support of the argument that royal inauguration rituals in particular offer special insights into the way that medieval society negotiated the passage of power from one ruler to the next and invested the new regime with the constitutional and moral authority held to be inherent to the office of king. In the present study, however, I want to consider the degree to which those rituals and other associated processes could be disturbed by, or adapted to fit, a particular and potentially anomalous situation: namely, the accession of a boy ruler to the English throne.