My favourite kind of reading is historically accurate fiction, especially those works written about the Henry VIII – Elizabeth I period. Years ago, I discovered an author who quickly became my favourite. She was writing a family-based trilogy set in late medieval times. Some 30 years later, she still hasn’t finished writing and I am on book 36. Some trilogy.
I always figured that she must have been carried away by her research….had a love affair with her characters and their offspring ….just couldn’t let go.
I think I just experienced a similar feeling.
While I was checking my notes on Edward and Eleanor, and all his many castles and adventures I came across mention of Edward stealing Scotland’s Stone of Destiny. I remember seeing a movie a few years back, name long-forgotten, about four young Scots stealing the stone and returning it to Scotland.
Where it belongs. Of course. My heart is tartan.
My other favourite genre is mysteries. And what with being a curious kind of person, I discovered an air of mystery and intrigue around the Stone of Destiny.
And with those scents in my nose, off I went researching the Stone of Destiny. And I got hooked.
So here, in a flight of self-indulgence, is a bit of what I found out about that Stone. My really self-indulgent, sideways thoughts are scattered throughout in square brackets.
The Stone of Destiny is Scotland’s Coronation Stone, and was used for centuries in the coronation of Scottish monarchs, and later monarchs of England and the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Physically, it’s a piece of red sandstone 36″ x 16 3/4″ x 10″ and weighs 336 pounds. Known variously as the Stone of Destiny, Jacob’s Pillow, the Tanist stone (tanist means heir apparent), and Stone of Scone (because it was housed at the now ruined Scone Abbey, near Perth), its Gaelic name is Cinneamhain. No idea how to say that.
Historically, it first shows up in the sixth century when Fergus Mor mac Eirc, legendary founder of Scotland, brings it to Scotland from Ireland, where the Scottish Stone of Destiny story intermingles with an Irish Stone of Destiny found at the Hill of Tara. [We visited the Hill of Tara years ago and were surrounded by chanting bell-ringing people circling the site. No one could tell us anything about them, so a decade or more later, it’s still a mystery to us.]
Irish legend says Murtagh Mac Eirc, High King of Ireland loaned the Stone of Density to Fergus his great uncle. [Mac, by the way, means “son of”.] The loan turned out to be a permanent thing because the Irish never got it back. Murtaugh was the last Irish King recorded to have been crowned on the stone.
And although Fergus is mostly legendary, every ruler from Cinaed mac Ailpin to current times claims to be descended from Fergus. Cinaed mac Ailpin [Kenneth MacAilpin in English], known as Kenneth I (810-858) was King of the Picts and was Fergus’ eight times great-grandson.
[As an aside the Great Gallery of the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh was decorated with 89 Jacob de Wet’s portraits of Scottish monarchs, from Fergus to Charles II commissioned by one of the many Jameses.]
So the Stone sat in Scotland from 501-ish when Fergus “borrowed” it until 1296, when Edward I captured it and took it to Westminster Abbey where it was fitted into a wooden chair known as King Edward’s Chair. And where it remained for centuries.
So here’s the mystery part of this story. Some people believe that the Stone Edward captured was a fake. According to The Westminster Stone theory the monks at Scone Palace hid the real Stone in the River Tay, or buried it on Dunsinane Hill, and English troops were tricked into taking a substitute. This theory is supported by the claim that historic descriptions of the Stone do not match the present stone. Another story has it that the Stone is in the care of the Knights Templar.
According to this Westminster Stone theory, the English army was at the Scottish border in mid-March, 1296, and did not reach Scone until June. With three months to anticipate Edward’s arrival, there was plenty of time to make such a switch to protect the original relic.
Author Nigel Tranter believed the Abbott of Scone hid the True Stone, and that eventually Robert the Bruce entrusted it to Angus Og MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, who hid it in his home territory, the Hebrides. If this is more truth than legend, the Stone is probably still somewhere in the Hebrides.
A variaton on that legend, with a switch at the end says MacDonald passed the Stone to a branch of the clan who settled in Sleat. A descendant of this line wrote to Tranter, claiming he was now the Stone’s custodian, and that it was hidden on Skye. [If you’ve been to Skye you will know that the Stone could well be hidden in plain sight in the moonscape landscape of strewn rocks.]
But in all of this, Edward I was not a stupid man; he knew that taking the Stone away from the Scots was the ultimate humiliation and that making a substitution would be a likely bit of trickery by those wily Scots. He would have been on the lookout for something of this sort, and he wouldn’t have been fooled by just anything.
Even with all this mystery most monarchs since Edward have been crowned on this chair, including Elizabeth II in 1953.
The Stone nearly travelled back to Scotland in the 14th century. One of the terms of the 1328 Treaty of Northampton between the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, was that the stone should be returned to Scotland, But apparently riotous crowds prevented it from being removed from Westminster Abbey. Better to offend the Scots than the English, I guess.
[The treaty of Northampton ended the First War of Scottish Independence, which started when the English invaded Scotland in 1296, mostly because no one knew who was going to be Scottish king . Robert the Bruce had by this point emerged as the ruler, so he signed the treaty, well, he affixed his seal, and it was ratified by the English parliament. The treaty recognized Scotland as independent, Robert the Bruce and his heirs as rightful rulers and set borders between the two countries as they existed at the death of the previous Scottish king, Alexander III. The treaty only lasted five years — it was viewed as humiliating by the English, hence the Second War of Scottish Independence just a few years later.]
Then centuries later, on Dec, 25, 1950, in an act of fervent nationalism, four Scottish students magicked the Stone out of Westminster Abbey, and managed to get it to Scotland where it remained for about four months.
In the process the Stone was buried in a field in Kent, hidden in various places including in a trunk in the basement of the US Consulate’s Public Affairs Officer (although he didn’t know) and had broken into two pieces somewhere along the way. It was repaired by a Glasgow stonemason.
This is the movie I remember.
The search for the Stone set off one of the biggest manhunts in British history, and closed the border between England and Scotland for the first time in more than 400 years.
The British Government obviously ordered a major search, to no avail.
But on April 11, 1951, four months after the theft, the “custodians” left the Stone on the altar of Arbroath Abbey in the Church of Scotland’s in safe keeping, and London Police were informed, the dashed up to Scotland, recovered the stone and returned it to Westminster Abbey.
Of course, rumours circulated that copies had been made of the Stone, and that the returned Stone was not in fact the original. But Queen Elizabeth was crowned on it two years later.
Some 45 years after this, the British government decided that the Stone should be kept in Scotland when it was not being used at coronations. [No similar move has been made to return it to Ireland.]
So on July 3 1996, it was announced in the House of Commons that the Stone would be returned, and on 15 November 1996, after a handover ceremony at the border between representatives of the Home Office and of the Scottish Office, it was transported to Edinburgh Castle.
The Stone arrived in the Castle on 30 November 1996 and it remains alongside the crown jewels of Scotland (the Honours of Scotland) in the Crown Room. The handover with proper pomp and circumstance, was made on St Andrew’s Day, a day honouring the patron Saint of Scotland. Prince Andrew, Duke of York represented the Queen.
[One of the Scots stealing the stone back in 1950, Gavin Vernon eventually married and in 1963 emigrated to Canada, to Saskatchewan where he worked in the potash industry, leading me to believe he probably landed in the Esterhazy area. He was an engineer, and travelled the world, but he started from Saskatchewan. Vernon returned to Westminster Abbey on the 50th anniversary of the theft. He was greeted with “Welcome back Mr. Vernon.” Another of the accomplices traces his lineage back to Edward I, his 21st great grandfather]
And here’s an even more ancient legend. According to some, Jacob used the Stone as a pillow when he was fleeing his elder twin Esau after tricking his father into bestowing the blessing of the first born on himself, Jacob. (See the Book of Genesis) In this legend, the Stone was eventually brought to Ireland by the prophet Jeremiah where the story then carries forward into the Scottish story.
And just for fun, here’s another theory.
Edward created the myth himself.
Apparently there’s not a lot of 13 and 14th century chit chat about the Stone. And the Scots didn’t seem to react when Edward stole it. So some people think that the Stone was never a relic of any significance to Scots, but that Edward used it as propaganda, making it into a relic which the English saw as enhancing his status.
Today, we believe if we read it in the papers (or on the internet) it must be true. Today as in the past, if you say something often enough it becomes the truth. By continuing to flaunt the stone in front of generations of Scots, Edward’s hoax became a self-fulfilling taunt.
Hmmm.
