On 5 July, 2023, King Charles and Queen Camilla will be in Scotland for a series of events to mark his coronation. At the high point he will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a National Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication at St Giles’ Cathedral. The historian Maggie Craig looks back at the long and sometimes turbulent history of these crown jewels.
The Honours of Scotland are the oldest complete set of crown jewels in Europe and the crown is the oldest in Britain. An enduring popular belief is that it was built up from a simple gold circlet worn by Robert the Bruce. His several times great-grandson James V was the first King of Scots to wear the crown we know today.
It’s fashioned from Scottish gold, silver and freshwater pearls and adorned with precious stones: topazes, amethysts, garnets, emeralds and rubies. When James V’s infant daughter was crowned Mary, Queen of Scots at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling in 1543, the edge of this dazzling crown was touched to her small forehead.
The sceptre is believed to have been a gift from Pope Alexander VI to James IV in 1494. Topped by a sphere of rock crystal, it is decorated with leaves, thistles and St Andrew and his cross, the Scottish flag.
The beautifully wrought Sword of State and its scabbard are masterpieces by Domenico da Sutri, a swordsmith of the Italian Renaissance. They were a gift to James IV from Pope Julius II. Both are richly ornamented with symbols of the Church and Christ.
Such papal gifts honoured Scotland as “a special daughter of the Holy See.” This was hugely important politically, confirming Scotland was an independent kingdom, with no superior other than God and the Church.
Soon after the execution of Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell ordered the melting down of the English crown jewels. His ruthless destruction would have obliterated the Honours of Scotland too. If the soldiers of his New Model Army had been able to get their hands on them.
In 1650, the Scottish Parliament proclaimed the exiled Charles II King. Infuriated, Cromwell invaded, defeating Scottish forces at the Battle of Dunbar in September of that year. Edinburgh Castle fell on Christmas Eve but the Honours had already been whisked away. A week later, on New Year’s Day 1651, the Scottish crown was placed on Charles II’s head at Scone near Perth. This was the last coronation ever held in Scotland.
A few months later, the Honours were hurriedly sent north for safekeeping to the rugged coastal fortress of Dunnottar near Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen. An English army subsequently turned up and besieged the castle. The defenders of Dunnottar held out for eight brutal months.
Thanks to the bravery of two women, the Honours were smuggled out under the very noses of the English soldiers. Christian Grainger, wife of a local minister, asked to visit her friend Elizabeth Douglas, wife of Dunnottar’s governor, Sir George Ogilvie of Barras.
As Sir Walter Scott related in the most cherished version of the story, the minister’s wife came out after the visit with the Scottish crown hidden beneath her skirts. Her maid carried the sceptre and sword of state in her basket under bundles of flax. As every schoolgirl and boy in Scotland used to know, there was a tense moment when the English commander courteously helped Christian up onto her horse.
For the next eight years, until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Scottish crown jewels were buried under the flagstones of nearby Kineff Old Kirk. Reverend and Mrs Grainger made regular night-time visits, digging them up to check their condition.
After the Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707, the crown, sword of state, sceptre and a mysterious wand were wrapped in linen cloths and put into a locked oak chest in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle.
An article in the Treaty of Union guaranteed the Honours would be kept “within that part of the United Kingdom now called Scotland; and that they shall so remain in all times coming, notwithstanding the union.”
Despite this, rumours began to circulate that the regalia had been spirited away to England. Later in the 18th century one Edinburgh historian wrote darkly: “No mortal is known to have seen them.”
Despite his unshakeable conviction that Scotland was better off in the Union, Scott described the Honours as “the venerable symbols of long-cherished national independence”. If they had been taken to England that would have demonstrated a shocking lack of respect towards Scotland, so much so he feared it might “break the Union”.
In 1818, he asked the Prince Regent, soon to be George IV, for permission to open up the Crown Room and look for the Honours. The keys had been lost, so a man with a hammer set to work on two hefty padlocks. It took some time, the atmosphere growing ever more tense. Every hammer blow seemed to give out a “hollow and empty” ring.
The padlocks at last succumbed. The lid of the chest was lifted – and the glinting Honours of Scotland were there, in the linen cloths wrapped around them over a century before.
It was an emotional and joyful moment, including for the people waiting out on Castle Hill, previously alerted as to what was happening.
One Edinburgh newspaper waxed lyrical about the hearty cheers raised by the crowd, noting somewhat patronisingly that “all ranks” were enthusiastic about the Scottish regalia and their connection to the “Ancient Honour of Scotland.”
Three years later, in 1822, the Honours played a central role in the pageantry of George IV’s visit to Edinburgh.
A few weeks after her coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1953, the late Queen Elizabeth attended a service of thanksgiving in the High Kirk of St Giles in Edinburgh. Brought down from the Castle, the Honours were presented to and briefly held by her in turn, sceptre, sword of state and crown.
Elizabeth was the first monarch since George IV to symbolically take charge of the Honours. There was apparently no interest in doing so between 1822 and 1953.
Oliver Brown, leading light of the Scottish Nationalist movement and contemporary commentator, saw this as a nervous response to the rise in nationalist feeling around this time.
The Honours of Scotland continue to be powerful symbols. After she died at Balmoral in September 2022, the crown was placed on the late queen’s coffin as she lay at rest in St Giles. As a symbol of Scottish nationhood it is carried every four years to the state opening of the Scottish Parliament.
With a few interruptions, the jewel-encrusted and glittering Honours of Scotland have been on display to the public ever since that February day in 1818 when Scott and his companions brought them back out into the light.
They can be viewed today in the Crown Room at Edinburgh Castle along with the 300-year-old oak chest in which they slumbered for 100 of those years.
There’s further reading in the richly illustrated The Honours of Scotland: The Story of the Scottish Crown Jewels & the Stone of Destiny by Chris Tabraham, published by Historic Environment Scotland.
Maggie Craig is a historian and novelist. Her most recent books are One Week In April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 (April 2020) and Dance to the Storm (February 2020). Her classic Damn’ Rebel Bitches: the Women of the ’45 was released in an updated version in 2022 to mark 25 years since its first publication.
She has been a generous contributor to Historia. Here are some of her features:
George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822
The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820
1719: the forgotten Jacobite rising
The Battle of Killiecrankie
Damn’ Rebel Bitches: Research Then and Now
You may also find Five memorable coronations by Frances Owen interesting; it looks at the coronations of James and of Charles II in Scotland.
Images:
- The Regalia of Scotland by Andrew Geddes, 1835: by kind permission of Abbotsford
- The Honours of Scotland: © Historic Environment Scotland
- Dunottar Castle: Eduardo Unda for Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
- The Burying of the Scottish Regalia by Sir David Wilkie, c1836: National Galleries of Scotland (CC BY NC)
- ‘The Honours of Scotland’. The discovery of the Scottish Regalia by Sir David Wilkie, 1822: National Galleries of Scotland (CC BY NC)
- The Honours of Scotland: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh at St Giles’ Cathedral, 24th June 1953 by Stanley Cursiter: Kineff Old Church website
