QUEEN'S SILVER CASKET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23637, 22 October 1938, Page 15

QUEEN'S SILVER CASKET

PRESENTATION AT LAUNCH HISTORIC TREASURE (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Sept. 29. Mr A, C. R. Carter, the eminent authority on art and treasures and \yriter for the Daily Telegraph, says to-day in that journal:— The presentation to the Queen of an Elizabethan silver casket on the occasion of the launching on Tuesday of the Queen Elizabeth should recall to silver lovers the appearance at Christie’s, 19 years ago, of a very memorable, casket. It was the historic receptacle in which the famous casket letters had been conveyed between Mary Queen of Scots and the Earl of Eothwell. The casket has long been carefully preserved at Hamilton Palace. When it was offered for sale on November 4, 1919, and fetched 2700 guineas, it was believed that it would go back to the family. It is of French sixteenth-century design, with the crowned fluer-de-lys and cross below. It was 4Ain high and Bin by Sain. The dome was slightly curved and decorated

with 12 panels of Gothic tracery pierced in gilded silver and divided by fluted bands studded with small cinque-foils. . ■ 4

DELICATE CRAFTSMANSHIP-' The side panels were delicately pricked with birds, a stag and hounds, and scroll foliage. • In the centre panel on one side was engraved the Hamilton arms. At one time the casket bore the arms of Mary Queen of Scots and those of the Douglas family, as explained in the quaint old document which accompanied the casket at the sale. The document read: “ This silver box guilded and carved with the arms of her Grace Anne, Dutches of Hamilton on it, was tlie box that carryed letters and tokens by messengers to and againe between Queen Mary of Scotland and the Earle of Bothwell, which my Lady Marquis of Douglas mother to William, 3rd Duke of Hamilton bought from a papist having then the Queen’s arms upon it and put her own arms theron, and afterwards having left all her Exere to her son Lord James. Her plate was all sold to a goldsmith, and tR6 Dutches of Hamilton, being told by my Lady Marquis that the said l)oJC did once belong to the Queen her Grace bought the same from tl>e goldsmith, and att the Dukes desire putt out my Lady Marquis arms and put her own arms on the same. . , The box had two keys whereof the Queen kept one and the E of Bothwell the other, but her grace only received one of them and beleives my Lady Marquis had never the other."

The loch-nlate of his precious casket was covered by a sliding panel, surmounted by a chased crown in Gothic ornament.