The Stone of Destiny
Scotland's Holy Grail
Edinburgh Castle — where the Stone of Destiny rests today
A visit to Edinburgh Castle not only brought familiar facts from Scottish history back to life, but also reminded me of a film I watched on television a few years ago — The Stone of Destiny. With a brilliant cast and based on real events from 1950, the film tells the story of a group of students from the University of Glasgow who stole the Scottish coronation stone from Westminster Abbey and, on 11 April 1951, placed it in Arbroath Abbey.
Why there, of all places? It was in Arbroath that, on 6 April 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed — the act in which the Scottish nation declared its right to self-determination during the Wars of Scottish Independence. Many Scots regard that era as a golden age, the finest chapter in the history of their nation.
This audacious theft — or rather, as the Scots prefer to call it, the recovery of something stolen from them centuries before — took place at a time when the independence movement was being reborn in Scotland and the twentieth-century struggle for sovereignty was just beginning.
The Magic and Legend of the Stone of Destiny
Now displayed at Edinburgh Castle alongside the Honours of Scotland — the Scottish crown jewels — the Stone of Destiny has stirred profound emotions for centuries. It is a stone wrapped in legend, its mystique fuelled by a turbulent history. Its place in the Scottish consciousness is inseparable from the very origins of the nation. It is, in a sense, Scotland's Holy Grail: coveted by some, who were willing to fight and shed blood to possess it, and carefully concealed by others from those deemed unworthy of it.
What made it so desirable? Certainly the legend — or perhaps the idea — that the stone had the power to shape the destiny of an ancient people. For centuries, imaginations were fired by its mysterious origins. According to one ancient tradition, the stone traces its roots to the Holy Land itself. The biblical patriarch Jacob is said to have used it as a pillow, resting his head upon it each night and dreaming of a ladder reaching to heaven, upon which angels descended to earth. In Jewish tradition, Jacob's Pillar — that same stone — served as the base for the Ark of the Covenant.
How did it come to Scotland? Here I return to the legend of Scotia, the legendary ancestress of the Scottish people, which I described in an earlier post. Around 1400 BC, an Egyptian pharaoh had a daughter named Scota, who married a Greek named Goídel Glas — the reputed creator of the Gaelic language. Both were expelled from Egypt and eventually settled, according to some accounts, in Spain or in what is now Ireland. Their descendants conquered all of Ireland around 700 BC, bringing with them a block of sandstone which they placed on the Hill of Tara, where the kings of Ireland were crowned. In time they became the tribe of the Scots, who founded the kingdom of Dál Riata and carried the stone to Dunadd, its capital.
Around 840 AD, Kenneth MacAlpin brought it to the village of Scone.
The Stone of Destiny as a Coronation Stone
The Honours of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle
From that point on, the stone became the most sacred object of Scottish kingship. Monarchs derived the legitimacy of their rule from the very act of being crowned upon it. Why did it carry such weight? The answer lies in a coronation tradition quite different from that of the rest of medieval Europe. While most European kingdoms followed the law of primogeniture — the throne passing to the eldest male heir — Ireland and Scotland chose their rulers differently. The successor was selected from among the most worthy male relatives of the deceased king: it might be his brother, or even the youngest son of a cousin. What mattered was that the candidate be of age, sound in mind and body, and simply "the most worthy." This system was known as the law of tanistry.
Legend holds that when a king chosen in this way stood upon the coronation stone, it would "roar" with joy — which is why it was often called the Speaking Stone — confirming the rightful claim of the new ruler.
The Stone of Destiny in England
In the thirteenth century, the English king Edward I exploited the turmoil and clan conflicts within Scotland to invade the country, setting off the Wars of Scottish Independence. In 1296, he stripped Scotland of all its national emblems — including the sacred Stone of Destiny.
Edward brought the stone to London and gave it a new home in Westminster Abbey. A special throne — the Coronation Chair — was built by Walter of Durham between 1297 and 1300 to house the stone beneath its seat. Edward II was the first English monarch to be crowned upon it, as was every subsequent ruler of England.
And here another legend enters the story, casting doubt on the authenticity of the stone housed in Westminster. According to this tradition, as Edward I approached Scone, the monks quickly removed the true Stone of Destiny and hid it, replacing it with a block of similar shape and size. It was this substitute that Edward carried off to London — which would explain why the stone on display today is geologically so similar to the sandstone found around Scone.
The Stone of Destiny Stolen
More than 700 years after the stone had been installed in Westminster Abbey, representatives of Scotland's reawakening independence movement decided to remind their fellow Scots of their sacred stone. Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart met and planned their daring raid. In the early hours of Christmas morning 1950, they broke into the Abbey. As they were removing the stone from the Coronation Chair, it slipped from their hands and struck the stone floor — one of its corners broke off.
There was speculation, however, that the original damage may have occurred some thirty-six years earlier, when a group of suffragettes targeted the Coronation Chair and the Stone of Destiny in protest for women's rights. A bomb that exploded on that occasion damaged the upper part of the Chair, and it is thought that the blast may have caused a crack in the stone which only became visible on Christmas Day 1950.
The students made their way back to Scotland, and the stone remained in hiding for several weeks, during which time it was repaired by a stonemason from Glasgow — though some claim he used the opportunity to make a copy.
Despite the audacity of the theft and the heroic effort of those four young people, the stone did not remain in Scotland for long. It was returned to the repaired Coronation Chair in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
The Stone of Destiny Returns to Scotland
The Royal Mile, Edinburgh — where crowds gathered to welcome the Stone home in 1996
The Stone of Destiny stirred passions once again at the end of the twentieth century — this time through the actions of Conservative Prime Minister John Major. On 3 July 1996, he announced in the House of Commons that the stone would be returned to Scotland. The reasons were purely political: the Conservative Party, facing falling poll ratings and aware it had little hope of winning seats in English constituencies, decided to fight for votes in Scotland, where the Labour Party had traditionally dominated. As you may know, Margaret Thatcher was never popular in Scotland, and in an attempt to soften the memory of her deeply unpopular rule north of the border, Major declared that the Scottish people were dissatisfied with their place in the Union and that this needed to change.
On 30 November 1996 — St Andrew's Day — over 10,000 people lined the Royal Mile to witness the return of the Stone of Destiny to Scotland for the first time in 700 years. During a service at St Giles' Cathedral, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Reverend John MacIndoe, officially received the stone on behalf of the Scottish nation.
The stone was transferred to Edinburgh Castle and placed in the same room as the Scottish crown jewels. This is one of those areas of the castle where photography is not permitted — which is why I cannot show you a picture of it here. To see it, you simply have to visit the castle yourself.
John Major's plan did not pay off: in the 1997 general election, the Conservative Party failed to win a single Scottish seat in Parliament. The Labour Party under Tony Blair, which came to power having also campaigned hard in Scottish constituencies, went on to take a series of steps that led, among other things, to the revival of the Scottish Parliament.
The machinery of independence has been gathering momentum ever since, and despite the setback of the 2014 referendum, it continues to turn. I hope it will one day lead to the full sovereignty of this remarkable country.
This post was written based on articles published in the quarterly journal Historic Scotland, produced by the organisation Historic Scotland and distributed to its members.
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz