Stone of Scone

From Old England: a Pictorial Museum
by Charles Knight, 1845

In the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey there's a little shelf underneath the seat for the Stone of Scone.  This sandstone slab is supposedly the pillow Jacob used as he slept and wrestled with angels.  It's been used for centuries to impart divine right to the kings of Scotland.  In 1296 Edward I (you may recall him as Edward "Longshanks" from the movie Braveheart) stole the stone and had it put in his throne back in London.  By doing so he symbolically ensured all future English kings crowned in said chair were also kings of Scotland.

As you may or may not know, Scotland has had a long and bloody national history.  When Elizabeth I (the famous Virgin Queen) died childless in 1603, James VI of Scotland (a descendant of one of Henry VIII's sisters and therefore Elizabeth's cousin) inherited the English throne as James I and thus created the present-day country of Great Britain.

Self (or home) rule has since been a sticking point for many Scots.  In 1950, a post-war nationalist movement gained support when four Scottish university students stole the stone from Westminster Abbey and returned it (after a period of "laying low") to their homeland.  My Husband and I just saw the 2008 film about the heist, Stone of Destiny via Netflix this weekend.

The incident's protagonist, Ian Hamilton, is a barrister (lawyer) and a member of the Scottish National Party.  He's 83 years old, has a blog and is one of my new favorite people.  Imagine, a guy who was in Scotland during WWII and did this amazing thing and now he's online?!  Technology is totally worth the government surveillance.

Courtesy of the Anglophile Thomas Moore, Sr.

By the way, the Church of Scotland (to whom the students and their Nationalist Party mentor had entrusted the stone) eventually surrendered it to English authorities.  In 1996 a great show was made of "returning" the stone to Scotland amid renewed Nationalist fervor as long as it could be used in all future British coronations.  The four students were arrested and charged, but never prosecuted.

There's a rumor, too, that when a master mason repaired the broken stone (which probably had been broken for hundreds of years) in Scotland, he made copies and the stone that will return for Charles' (or William's, for that matter) coronation as the next king of Great Britain will not be the original.

If you want to take lessons in thumbing your nose at authority, ask a Scot to teach you :)