When Henry III invested Simon de Montfort with the title Earl of Leicester in 1239, the two men were standing on the dais (platform) next to the west wall of Winchester Hall, where the round table crafted during the reign of Henry’s son Edward hangs today. Opposite them was the east wall and it was there that the wheel of fortune was painted (since erased by Tudor hooligans). Simon had a clear view of the wheel, as Henry intended, throughout the ceremony of investiture. An idea of how the wheel looked can be gleaned from half of a painted wheel of fortune, also commissioned in the 1200s, that survives at Rochester Cathedral.
