THE "HONOURS OF SCOTLAND."

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11347, 9 August 1902, Page 6

THE "HONOURS OF SCOTLAND."

REGALIA OF SCOTTISH MONABCHS.

The outward and visible symbols of Scottish monarchy, known of old as the Honours of Scotland, and in modern phrase as the Scottish Regaiia, are of singular interest, not only on account of the exquisite artistic merit of some of the articles, but oecause of tha strange vicissitudes through which they have passed. They are in custody 6f the King's Remembrancer for Scotland, and are preserved in Edinburgh Castle. A BEAUTIFUL CROWN. The various articles comprised in the Regalia are, first, the Crown, a fillet or band of gold, heightened by ten crosses fleury atteriating, with ten fleur-de-lys, and enriched with pearls and precious stones. Four radial arches of-gold, enamelled with oak leaves in red, rise from the fillet and meet at the top to support the "mound" or celestial globe, the 'symbol of sovereign authority, which is of blue enamel powdered with gold stars, and is surmounted by a cross of black enamel, with gold ornament in relief, adorned with a fine amethyst and eight large pearls. The total weight of this beautiful crown, which was remodelled by James V. in 1540, is 560z sdwt troy. Sir Walter Scott held that the re-fashioning of tha crown in 1540 consisted only in the addition of the arches, and believed that the fillet was the original open diadem of Robert the Brnce, but tEis has been prettyconclusively disproved. Part of the metal and some of the jewels are probably the same, but the fashion has been completely altered. 2. The Sceptre is a hexagonal rod of silver gilt, richly chased on all its faces, surmounted by three dolphins so arranged as to enclose a triple shrine containing images of the Virgin and Child, St. James and St. Andrew. Upon a knop above the sceptre head is a ball of rock crystal, enclosed in three golden bands and surmounted by an egg-shaped finial, topped with a Scottish pearl. Originally presented to James IV. by Pope Alexander VI. in 1494, this sceptre was considerably altered by command of James V. in 1536. It measures over all 33g inches in length.

3. The Sword of State was the gift of Pope Julius 11. to James TV. in 1507, and by great good fortune remains in its original state, except that some of the ornament on the scabbard has been lost, and that the blade has been snapped 14 inches from the hilt and welded anew. The pommel, hilt and guard are of silver, wrought in a very beautiful renaissance design. With this sword came a fine embroidered belt, which was lost for many years, until recovered in the manner presently to be described. The other articles preserved with the Regalia proper are the Lord High Treasurer's Mace, a rod of silver gilt surmounted by an oval g'.oba of rock crystal, cut in square facets, the ensigns, collars, jewels, etc., of the Orders of the Garter and of the Thistle, and a ruby and diamond ring, bequeathed, with the ensigns, to George in. by Cardinal York, the last male descendant of the Stuart kings. JEWELS WHICH HAVE DISAPPEARED. Many other Crown jewels there were once, but these have disappeared. The Great Harry, for instance, a large diamond with a gold chain and j;reat ruby attached, given to Queen Mary by her father-in-law, Henry 11. of France, and bequeathed by her as one of the chief crown jewels of Scotland ; a jewelled dagger given by Francis I. of France to his son-in-law, James V., and last heard of in 1566, in possession of Lord Ruthven, when he fled to England after the murder of Riccio. In 1567 «-_e gc/d font sent by Queen Elizabeth for the baptism of Mary's son, went into the melting pot to pay the troops which her third husband, Both well, collected against the confederate lords ; and a few weeks later, when Mary was a prisoner at Lochleven, 1300oz of the Royal plate were coined by her brother, Regent Moray, to be used against her adherents. Regent Moray also sold many of his sister's jewels to Queen Elizabeth, and gave the Great Harry to his wife, who, when she becamg Countess of Argyll, refused to give it up to Regent Morton. But Morton insisted, and recovered this fine jewel for the Crown. It afterwards went to England with James VI. and 1., where it was incorporated in the famous jewel, the Mirror of Great Britain, and shared the doom of the rest of the English Regalia at the hands of Cromwell.

A STRANGE STORY

_?ow we come to the strange story of the adventures of the Scottish Regalia. First, it is to be noted that dummy substitutes had sometimes to be made in haste for some special occasion; for in Scotland, rent as it ever was by faction, possession of the monarch's person was always re garded as the winning card in the fierce game of politics. This was rendered the more easy because the monarch was so often a minor, or indeed an infant; but the Regalia—the ensigns of Monarchy— sometimes remained in the hands of the party opposed to that which held the monarch. Queen Mary was crowned at Stirling, at the tender age of nine months; when she fled to England in 1568, never to return, she left '_er son James VI., a child of eighteen months, in the hands of the Protestant lords; but the Regalia were securely lodged in Edinburgh Castle, so long and gallantly held for the Queen against the Regency by Kirkaldy of Grange. Therefore, in 1571, when the Regent Lennox and his colleagues desired to hold a Parliament for the punishment of certain Catholic lords, they had a temporary crown and sceptre made of Bilver gilt, and a new sword of State; so that King James VI., being of the mature age of five years, might open the session in proper State.

After the union of the Crowns in the person oi James VI., in 1603, the Scottish Regalia passed into still more stormy times. Charles I. is said to have desired that they should be sent to London for his Coronation there, but the Scottish Privy Council objected to this as being contrary to the law of the kingdom; co King Charles came to Holyrood, and was solemnly crowned on 18th June, 163., eight years after his accession to the throne. In 1639 the Covenanters captured the Regalia, hut in 1660, when Edinburgh Castle was taken by the English, the Regalia disappeared mysteriously, and reappeared at the coronation of Charles XL at Scons, on Ist January, 1651. After toe

King's defeat at Worcester;- on the 22nd August in that year, when Cromwell incorporated Scotland in the English Commonwealth, the RegaUa were committed to the keeping of the Earl Marischai. He tw_4\?_«_. &pm to Mto Taw*.* \ j don, but his castle of 2>___iott__- iraa •"> charge of George .Ogilxj of Barms, with, ,<_ garrison, of forty men. The Committee 1 ) of Estates, alarmed at ths rapid advance oi ffcbe English Parliamentary forces, repeat- . ediy demanded that the Regalia should be i given up to them, but Governor Ogilvy ] stoutly refused to surrender his trust. Still J the English pressed forward; all Scotland was passing into their power; on Bth No- \ vember, and agajn on the 22nd, the Parliamentary co__mander summoned Ogilvy f to surrender, telling him that his master, the Earl Marischai, had already submitted, wherefore there was no use continuing resistance. Ogilvy replied boldly that he held Dunnottar for no earl, but for King Charles, and defied the besiegers. HOW THE REGALLA WERE SAVED. Now Dunnottar was a strong place of defence, but with such a slender garrison | Ogilvy could not hope to hold oat long, and he had recourse to stratagem to save the Regalia, Mrs Gratiger, wife of- the parish minister of Kinneff, having obtained leave from the commander of the besieging force to enter the castle on a visit to Ogilvy's wife, received the precious articles, and, on leaving, carried off the Crown in her Up, while the Sword and Sceptre were concealed in a bundle of flax carried by her serving woman. She was very nearly betrayed by the politeness of the English General himselfi who insisted upon helping her to mount her horse, but she succeeded in riding safely through the camp, and brought her precious burthen to her husband, who buried them under the pavement of Kinneff Church. When, some months afterwards, Dunnottar surrendered, great was the chagrin of the captors when the Regalia could not be found. Ogilvy was heavily fined; his wife and he were imprisoned; Mrs Ogilvy died in prison, with her last breath adjuring her husband never to reveal the sacred secret. Finally, suspicion was laid to rest by the circuCation of a rumour that the Regalia had been sent to Charles 11. in Paris. W T ell was it for the romance of history that they never passed into the hands of that monarch in the hour of his extreme poverty, else had the Honours of Scotland been seen no more- At the Restoration, in 1660, the Regalia were exhumed from their dr.rk resting-place, and the DowagerCountess Marischai claimed all the honour of having preserved them. Her younger son, Sir John Keith, was created Earl of Kintore, with a pension of £400 a year; Parliament voted 2000 marks to Mrs Granger for her inestimable service, but Ogilvy, to whose dauntless courage the safety of the Honours was primarily due, received only the empty honour of a baronetcy-

Therefore the Kegalia were produced regularly at the opening and close of each session of the Scottish Parliament, till the legislative union between England and Scotland was effected in 1707. Upon the rising of the last Scottish Parliament, they were locked up in an old oak chest in the Crown room of Edinburgh Caslle and— forgotten! Yes ; completely forgotten, although they' had been reckoned so dear to the national sentiment, that a special article was inserted, nemine contradioente, in the Treaty of Union, providing that, in all time coming they should never be removed "from that part of the United Kingdom now known as Scotland." It is to Sir Walter Soott, to whom Scotsmen owe so much else, that they owe the Restoration of the Honours of Scotland to proper respect. In consequence of Scott's exertions, and those of other influential persons whom he inspired, the Prince Regent issued a warrant in 1817 to open the Crown Room, and make search for the Regalia, which had not been seen for 110 years. There they lay, at the bottom of the old chest, wrapped in linen, and a great change must come over the spirit of the nation before they are again suffered to pass into oblivion and neglect. ADVENTURES OF THE BELT AND CLASP. One and apparently one only, of the articles of Regalia, thus happily preserved, was mot found with the rest in 1817. This was the embroidered belt and clasp of the Sword of State given by Pope Julius 11. to James IV. in 1817. All trace of this had been lost until, in 1892, the Rev. S. Ogilvy-Baker, Vicar of Muchelney in Somersetshire, communicated with the Queen's Remembrancer in Scotland and told him«that the belt was in his keeping. It appeared that in 1790 Sir David Ogilvy, a descendant of the gallant captain who held Dunnottar so stoutly in 1651, discovered it built into the garden wall at his house of Barras. On Sir David's death the belt passed to his son, the last baronet, and from him to his sister, grandmother of the reverend gentleman who has so faithfully discharged a trust imposed on his ancestor more than 250 years ago, by restoring this venerable relic to its place among the Regalia of Scotland.

That we have here the genuine original there cannot be a shadow of doubt. The belt consists of woven lace in five colours —gold, silver, blue, crimson and brown, displaying the Papal arms and tiara, alternating with the personal arms of Julius 11. Both the belt, and the sword from which it was so long separated, correspond very nearly with a similar sword and belt presented by Pope Julius to the Confederated States of Switzerland i_ 1512. The most notable part of the Scottish swordbelt is the clasp, or rather, the buckle, which is evidently of older manufacture than the belt. It is admirably wrought in high relief, and seems to date from the early part of the fifteenth century ; whereas the belt itself was probably woven to fit the buckle at the beginning of the sixteenth century.