To Steal a Stone

“Is nothing sacred to these criminals?” – Daily Mail
“Sacrilege at Westminster! A coarse and vulgar crime”. – The Times

Nothing to do with Wossy and Brand but headlines from Boxing Day, 1950. That Christmas Eve/Christmas morning four young Scots students – Ian Hamilton, Kay Matheson, Alan Stewart and Gavin Vernon - broke into Westminster Abbey and, depending on your viewpoint, carried out the crime of the century or restored some stolen property to its rightful owners.  Their mission was ‘to hurt no one and nothing except England's vanity, to save no one and nothing except the ruined hopes of their own country’. They stole (liberated) the Coronation Stone stolen from Scotland some 650 years earlier by Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, the same stone on which all of England and the United Kingdom’s subsequent monarchs had been crowned.

The four’s story is told in the film “The Stone of Destiny” and I’d recommend that you see it if you want to get the full flavor of their deeds.  The raid by the modern day cross border Reivers, was certainly audacious.  In the dead of night during an English Holiday (most Scots didn’t really celebrate Christmas then) a stone as big as a sack of potatoes and weighing four hundred-weight was pried out from below its throne in the Abbey, below the very noses of the police, and spirited away. It didn’t go perfectly as the stone broke into two pieces but that at least made it possible to carry. But why did the four do it and what effect did it have?

The late Morris Blythman, song-writer, anti-nuclear campaigner, socialist and independence supporter had no doubt about what had been achieved – “For the first time in generations Scotland had asserted herself in an active way. This was a departure from the passive whining about what England was doing to us and a real blow for freedom”.

Ian Hamilton the originator of the scheme had more doubts about his own motives but summed them up well – “Before that event became overlaid with publicity and hype it was a clear thing, yet intensely private. Since then it has become public, and not so clear. I quite simply wanted to make a gesture for my country, like a lover who sends flowers, however hopeless his love”.  

Or as he said on another occasion, “Young people should have dreams and our dream was to restore the lost soul of our country. We dreamt of a Scotland taking its place as an equal partner in the recently formed United Nations”. Before carrying out the raid Hamilton sought out Hugh MacDiarmid’s sanction.  MacDiarmid agreed that the action would be “poetic”.

Whatever the motive the theft captured Scotland’s imagination and exposed the English Establishment’s most grievous fault – the absence of a sense of humour!  Throughout Scotland the theft inspired amusement.  Even those who publicly had to deprecate it laughed privately at the skill and audacity of it all.

“Scottish newspapers published on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Since their English colleagues were on holiday there was only Scottish news for them to publish.  But when the English newspapers resumed publication everything else was banished from the front pages. Scotland had become news” - Hamilton.

The theft was regarded by many Scots as the righting of an ancient wrong and stirred their still re-emerging national identity. Scots nationalism as a political force pre-dated the theft but the raid gave much needed impetus to the wider nationalist movement.   It boosted the confidence of independence activists and created many more future ones. “We woke Scotland....Every Scot wanted it to stay in Scotland” - Hamilton.

It also resulted in the greatest manhunt in British history. Every police force in Britain was involved. Ports were closed, cars were stopped and searched and English policemen were sent to Scotland  - where technically they then had no jurisdiction - because of doubts about the Scottish forces’ application to their task.  One policeman summed up the Scottish attitude when he went on record as saying, 'Aye we're looking for them, but no' so damned hard that we'll catch them.'
Scots’ made up jokes and songs at the establishment’s expense. They were promptly banned by the BBC who proclaimed that the theft was a combination of sacrilege and treason and thus no laughing matter. 
Luckily a few have survived such as Johnny McEvoy’s “Wee Magic Stane” (to the tune of “The Ould Orange Flute”, see here for lyrics - www.scotsindependent.org/songbook/magic_stane.htm) with its great idea (based on fact?) of a multitude of stones being turned off a production line.

The following apocryphal tale was also widely told –  ‘One suspect was hauled in for questioning. After hours of fierce examination under a bright light he at last said wearily: 'All right, all right. Turn that thing off and I'll tell you who stole it.' The police leaned forward eagerly. 'Right, who stole it?' -  'Edward the First!' he replied.'

As Hamilton said - “They (the English authorities) were laughed at by the world, and laughter is a more potent weapon than armies”. The censorship lasted for years.  As late as 1959/60 ‘The Reivers’ folk group’s, recording of the “Wee Magic Stane” was banned by the Beeb.

Finally in April 1951, one hundred days after the theft, a stone covered in the Saltire was found on the altar of Arbroath Abbey. Police said that the Stone of Destiny had been recovered and it was returned to Westminster where it was used for the coronation of Elizabeth Windsor in 1952 (NB: Not of course Elizabeth II.  As a Scots poster of the period said - “£2000 reward for information leading to the identification of Elizabeth I of Scotland DEAD OR ALIVE”).

In 1996 John Major and his Scots Baldrick, Michael Forsyth, came up with a cunning plan to save some Tory seats in Scotland. They decided to return the Coronation Stone to Scotland.  Just as Edward stole the Stone to quell rebellious Scots, Forsyth hoped to achieve the same result by returning it. In a service at St Giles's Forsyth accepted the Stone from Prince Andrew and promised to look after it until the Windsors wanted it back for a coronation.  After due pomp and ceremony the stone was then ensconced in Edinburgh Castle. As a political ruse it failed completely.  There were “No Tories in Scotland” after the ‘97 election.

The Coronation Stone has since been moved back to Scone but is this stone the real Stone of ‘Destiny’, the ‘Fatal’ Stone? The Stone of which it was said -

Unless the fates shall faithless prove and prophet's voice be vain
Where e'er this sacred Stone is found the Scottish race shall reign.

The question must be asked for a number of reasons. First copies of the Stone stolen from Westminster were definitely made.  The stolen stone may have been taken to Glasgow and given to Bertie Gray, a master stonemason and later Councillor.  Bertie claims to have made at least two copies.  Copies may also have been made by John Rollo, a factory owner who repaired the Westminster Stone for the raiders. Gray used to show people one stone which he claimed to be the original Westminster Stane in his yard in Sauchiehall Street.  He then gave this stone to a Dundee church (1970) where it was held for 20 years before being displayed in an exhibition at the People’s Museum in Glasgow. 

At that time the assistant curator of the Museum, claimed that it was one of the  copies that had been returned to Westminster.  There’s only one problem with this story.   Ian Hamilton guarantees that the stone left in Arbroath was the one that he and his comrades stole and he should know and has no reason to lie.  But Hamilton himself has posed another question - ‘Was the stone kept in Westminster for 700 years  the original Stone of Destiny?’

The original Stone was brought from Spain to Ireland and then Scotland sometime in the 9th Century. Called “Jacob” or “Columba’s Pillow”, it was of enormous sacred and cultural significance to the Scots.  In accordance with custom a King of Scots was not crowned at the beginning of his reign, but 'set upon the stone'. It supposedly groaned aloud if the claimant was royal but remained silent if he was a pretender. In 1292, John Balliol became the last Scottish king to sit on the stone.  It’s not hard to believe that it remained silent when “Toom Tabard” sat on it. After the defeat of Wallace’s army at Falkirk (1296) Edward carried a stone his troops found in Scone back to England.
The English first promised to return that Stone to Scotland in the Treaty of Northampton of 1328 - which to quote the late Margaret Ewing, “shows that it takes London governments 670 years to honour their promises to Scotland!”

The stone which the reivers took from Westminster was 11 inches high and made of coarse-grained sandstone fitted at each end with iron staples and rings, carrying fixtures which may have been added by Edward.  But the Ancient Scots Royal Seals show the Stone to be of seat height.  Early chroniclers also describe the Stone as being in the shape of a rounded chair, richly carved and made of “black merbill” (basalt?).  Was the stone which Edward I removed from Scone just a block of red sandstone dug from a local quarry, a dummy left at hand for the English invaders?  Scientific tests have since established that the Coronation Stone was indeed quarried in Scotland.  So how could it be the same stone which had accompanied the Scots to Ireland from Spain?

It’s just possible that the original Stone of Destiny was removed for safe keeping and hidden near Scone (or even on Iona or at Dunstaffnage Castle, two of its earlier homes). Then the few who knew where it was hidden may have been killed soon afterwards by the English, without ever revealing its hiding place to others. That might explain why the Scots never enforced that particular clause of the Treaty of Northampton when they did enforce others which secured official documents, compensation and the return of Scotland’s “honours”. But then why ask for the fake back at all?

So if the Coronation Stone was and is a fake does it matter?  Not really.  The symbolism of royal authority is already in decline - though it could pose a question mark over the legitimacy of all past English and UK monarchs if they were crowned on a fake. But the Stone whether real or fake is just that - a symbol of nationhood, not nationhood itself.  I’ll leave the last word with Ian Hamilton - “The only badge of nationhood worth having is the right to run our own affairs”.  Independence is the true magic talisman, not a stone.

For the whole wonderful story in more detail see the film and Ian Hamilton’s great book, “The Stone of Destiny”, foreword by the First Minister, Alex Salmond.  Ian’s both a marvelous writer and one of the truly great campaigners for Independence.  What more could you want? 

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