Unruly History in the News #23

Yes, this is Coronation-themed too

Listen, the internet has been holding me hostage over the coronation of Charles and I am doomed to cover it, if not directly then at least obliquely. It may be the only coronation in my lifetime! Even if I don’t particularly care about him or the monarchy, I love a ritual and a spectacle.

So, this week, in history acting royal…

• First up: If you don’t care about any of this, I’ve got you. Here’s a strange little town in England that’s dedicated to Scientology.

• I also want to shout out

  Florence H R Scott
  and her history of Coronations and Queen Consorts. If this weird Medieval ceremony intrigues you, you’ll like her history of it.

• Want to watch the ceremony itself? You can do so on NPR.

• At Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, camera crews were not allowed to film directly above her (and 50 years later they weren’t allowed to film the tops of her crowns for a documentary), because “that is the vantage point reserved for God.” Since I’m writing this on Friday, I’m interested to see if that’s the case again this time around.

• Speaking of Elizabeth’s coronation—the moment she was anointed with oil was not caught on camera because it was considered too holy. The same hidden curtain tactics were used with Charles.

• Calls to return the Cullinan I diamond, also known as the Great Star of Africa, to South Africa have been getting louder every day since Elizabeth II died last year. The diamond is currently part of a royal scepter that Charles held during the coronation.

  • It’s called Cullinan I because there are actually 9 Cullinan diamonds and a dozen smaller diamonds that were all carved from the largest diamond ever found. The 3,106-carat diamond was found in South Africa in 1905 by Frederick Wells. (Cullinan II is in the Imperial State Crown.) Because South Africa’s Transvaal government was controlled by Britain at the time, the diamond was “gifted” to King Edward VII. This is the legal basis of South Africa’s call for the return: It was not given by a legitimate government of South Africa, so the gift is void.

• Calls for the Koh-i-Noor diamond to be repatriated have also gotten louder. Part of the resistance to the repatriation of this diamond is that we don’t 100% know where it came from. We think it was initially pulled from a mine in southern India, but the name is Persian; it was owned by several empires over several centuries before the British Empire invaded the weakened Punjab region and took the diamond as part of the 7-year-old ruler’s surrender. It might make sense to return it to Punjab… if Punjab wasn’t today split between India and Pakistan. Afghanistan, Iran, and Bangladesh also have good claims to the gem. The situation is fraught.

  

  A replica of the Koh-I-Noor diamond. Source.

• The Sovereign’s Orb is a weird title that I hope someone uses for a fantasy book. It’s got to involve an evil wizard who maybe isn’t as bad as he seems, somehow. Also, it was designed in 1661 to represent God’s dominion over Earth and the sovereign’s responsibility to honor God’s rule. The jeweled band on the outside divides it into three sections, representing the three known continents at the time.

• The Stone of Scone is mysterious in more ways than one. We know it was stolen from Scotland in 1296, but legend has it that it originated in Palestine 3,000 years ago. (It’s more likely that it was quarried in Scone, Scotland in the 1600s and has been struggled over by the English and the Scottish for centuries as part of long wars for dominance on the British Isles.) When Scots rulers were crowned, the stone was said to groan if the claimant was of royal blood. It was stolen by University of Glasgow students in 1950 as part of a Scottish independence protest. However, it returned to Westminster until 1996 when it was given back to Scotland and housed at Edinburgh Castle. However, it’s returned to Westminster this weekend, a fact firing up Scottish independence activists. For them, Charles sitting on top of it (the stone rests under the Coronation Chair) represents English suppression of Scotland.

• The Imperial State Crown is heavy enough to break your neck if you move incorrectly and, honestly, that feels like the kind of symbolism an editor would ask any writer to edit out for being “too on the nose.”

• The Coronation Spoon is the oldest part of the coronation regalia (assuming that the Stone of Scone isn’t actually from 1000 BCE Palestine). It also has a wild history, including only surviving the English Civil War because a member of Charles I’s staff bought it for 16 shillings in 1649. He then gave it back when Charles II was brought to the throne in 1661.

  

  The two-chambered gold coronation spoon dates back to at least the 13th century. Photo credit: H. Shaw/Alamy.

• Underneath Charles and the Coronation Chair is the Cosmati Pavement, which is a very strange bit of tilework to end up in Westminster. It dates back to 1268, when the Abbey was being rebuilt by Henry III; he hired Italian craftsmen to come design and build it. It is abstract and symmetrical in design, which differs dramatically from all the other floors in the Abbey, which are done in the English tradition. According to Westminster’s website, “the complexity and subtlety of the design and workmanship can be seen nowhere else on this scale.” It also contains very foreboding predictions about the end of the world set into it in brass; it’s unclear when these were added. According to the mystery prophet, the world will only last 19,683 years, though we don’t know when that countdown started.

• The Coronation Chair has survived 700 years, 26 reigning monarchs, 16 military conflicts, and 1 political bombing. (Source for military conflicts, then I’m adding WWII, since the UK was bombed even if it wasn’t a land war.) It was designed around the Stone of Scone by Edward I. In 1913, the space designed to accommodate the stone was used by suffragettes to hide a bomb intended to blow up the Chair; it wasn’t strong enough to destroy it or hurt anyone, but it did do some structural damage. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, schoolboys graffitied the chair; most of that has been cleaned off during a long period of restoration in time for this coronation.

• Three swords were used during the coronation: “the Sword of Temporal Justice, signifying the Monarch’s role as Head of the Armed Forces, the Sword of Spiritual Justice, signifying the Monarch as Defender of the Faith, and the Sword of Mercy or Curtana, which has a blunted tip, symbolising the Sovereign’s mercy.” (Source.) The swords were first used during the coronation of King Charles I in 1626.

• One thing we didn’t see on TV is the Royal Coronation Bed at Westminster Palace. British monarchs have traditionally slept in it the night before their coronation, though Elizabeth II didn’t and neither did her father. The bed disappeared from Westminster under murky circumstances and spent 15 years in the home of Wendy and Richard Martin of Northamptonshire, where they used it every day (even giving birth to a son in it!) before returning the bed in 1979.

• Wondering why almost all of the Coronation Regalia date to the 17th century? Here is a short primer on the destruction of the Crown Jewels during the English Civil War and the Interregnum.

• A few years after the Restoration, a man named Thomas Blood tried to steal the regalia that had been salvaged or remade.

  

  More information and a transcript are in the UK National Archives. Source.

• And if coronations and people acceding the throne interests you in general, here is all of National Geographic’s coverage of royal coronations around the world since the early 20th century.