The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 17 July 2005

Harry Potter, and the Treasures of Edinburgh Castle

This is being posted on the day after Harry Potter has burst anew onto the scene.  If all has gone as planned Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is now out, and I suspect that as some of you are reading this you may have other family members elsewhere in your house engaged in a marathon reading of the new release.  By the time you read this I, too, will probably be several chapters into the book, though at our house it is slower going since we read it aloud together. 

The plans for the official release festivities in Edinburgh have had me wishing I were young enough to qualify.  There were to be carriage processions through Old Town and up into Edinburgh Castle for a midnight reading by J.K. Rowling, and then on the following day a Hogwarts-style feast in the castle�s Great Hall.  (�Wicked!� as Ron Weasley might say.)  But as much as I love Rowling�s books, the castle itself has more than enough treasures and stories of its own, without really needing an invasion of young wizards.  So, for your enjoyment, here are a few tidbits from my version of Edinburgh Castle, A History.  I�m sure the Hermione Granger types among you will enjoy just a bit of light reading. 

The first time I visited Edinburgh the things I most wanted to see were the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Honours of Scotland, which are housed at Edinburgh Castle.  Unfortunately the Queen was expected at the palace within a day or two, so it was closed to tourists.  But the castle was open, and so that wish was fulfilled.  For those who don�t know, the Honours of Scotland are the regalia or crown jewels, mostly dating from the early sixteenth century.  First and foremost there is the crown refashioned for James V in 1540, though it is said to contain the fourteenth century golden circlet crown of Robert the Bruce as its base.  There are also the crystal-tipped scepter and the great Sword of State, gifts in turn from Pope Alexander VI and Pope Julius II.  At the time of my visit in the late 1980s � I don�t know if this is still the case � you could get right up to the case in which the Honours were housed, close enough to almost press your nose against the glass.  For me it was pure magic.  I�d put the Honours up against the sword of Godric Gryffindor any day. 

Unlike the heavy baroque crowns and such in the Tower of London � which, by the way, are displayed in a far more secure and far less intimate setting � the Honours of Scotland are wonderful early Renaissance items, and they carry their own special lore.  Twice the crown was used at the coronations of infants.  The first use of the remodeled crown in its present form was for the coronation of Mary Queen of Scots, who was born just a week before her father�s death.  Forty-five years later her son was crowned as James VI at a year old, following the coup which chased Mary from the throne and into the fatal embrace of Elizabeth of England.  Puir wee Jamie�s coronation at Stirling was marked by a lengthy sermon by the grim Reformer, John Knox, no less.  But the lad survived and grew up to become �the wisest fool in Christendom.�. 

In 1603 James VI headed south to London, where he gave his beheaded mother a belated state funeral and renumerated himself as James I of Great Britain.  The Honours stayed put back in Edinburgh, and were brought out for the Scottish coronation of Charles I in 1633.  That was a provocative service with full Anglican ritual held most deliberately �in the face� of the Scots Presbyterians.  Once again the Honours were stowed away, and then they were used again at the last Scottish coronation, that of Charles II at Scone on January 1, 1651. 

That last coronation was a somewhat grim and yet daring affair, an almost total inversion of the previous one.  Radical Presbyterians dominated both the Kirk and the country at the time, rather in the mode of the current governmental arrangement in Iran.   This faction�s principle marks on the ceremony were the omission of the �superstitious� rite of anointing, and a stern sermon by the Moderator of the Kirk of one and a half hours.  Though they had rebelled against Charles I�s attempts to make Scotland Episcopalian, these Presbyterians were still theologically inclined toward monarchy� albeit a �covenanted� and Calvinist monarchy under their tight control.  And thence comes the daring part of this episode.  For after Oliver Cromwell and his regicidal cronies judicially murdered Charles I, the horrified Scots had immediately and defiantly proclaimed young Charles II as king; and they had persevered in their resolve to crown him at the ancient ceremonial site of Scone knowing full well it could bring further war with the Puritan regime in London.  But it was a matter of national identity.  And so, on that coronation day the Lord Lyon King of Arms performed one of the most ancient and distinctive elements of Scottish ceremonial tradition, the recitation of the young king�s genealogy back to the fifth century Fergus, son of Erc, the first King of Scots in Scotland.  The crown was set upon the young king�s head by the Marquis of Argyll, one of the most ardent opponents of Charles I, but also a descendant (in the female line) of the hereditary �crowners� of Scotland, from Clan MacDuff.  It was definitely gutsy.  Unfortunately for Charles II, Cromwell�s forces soon came north and sent him fleeing to Holland.  And after the trauma of so many admonitory sermons on the sins of his late father, he never thereafter regarded Scottish Presbyterianism as a fit religion for a gentleman. 

(Oh dear, that last paragraph may have been a bit dense.  But as any good Hogwarts student is aware, history lecturers do tend to go on and on and on, particularly about folks who are long dead.  Hopefully some of you are of Hermione�s ilk, and find all of this quite fascinating.  It is, after all, terribly important.  So, umm, where was I�?) 

It was following the defeat of the Scots by Cromwell and company that one of the most heroic episodes of the Honours history occurred.  For safety the regalia had been taken and hidden at Dunotter Castle on the coast, and Cromwell�s lot was hot-to-trot to find them and melt them down as they had with the English regalia.  But they were saved by a conspiracy of three women.  During the siege of the castle a servant lass in the employ of the local minister�s wife managed to covertly rendezvous with the wife of the castle commander, who passed her the Honours hidden in a large basket of edible seaweed gathered from the beach. The crown, sword, and scepter were then buried under the floor of the parish kirk until the Restoration of Charles II.  The price of saving these national symbols was the life of the valiant wife of Dunotter�s commander � my books, alas, refer to her only as Mrs. Ogilvy � who did not survive the abuse she suffered at the hands of Cromwell�s men as they tried to make her reveal the hiding place. 

In 1707, at the time of the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England, it was stipulated that the Honours could never be taken out of Scotland.  And so they were locked away in a chest in a small room of Edinburgh Castle, and forgotten.  But in 1819 questions began to be asked and a search was authorized, headed up by no less a personage than Sir Walter Scott.  On the day the old chest was finally opened and the Honours found the Lion Rampant banner, the Royal Standard of Scotland, was run up over Edinburgh Castle to announce the news to the waiting city.  As I understand it, it is in that room and on that chest that the Honours of Scotland have been displayed ever since.  And since that time they have been brought forth only occasionally for royal and state occasions.   They were carried in state during the visit of George IV in 1822, and again for the service of thanksgiving at St. Giles Cathedral during the coronation tour of Queen Elizabeth in 1953.  In 1999 the crown was carried in state at the opening of the newly re-established Scottish Parliament, and in 2004 it was carried in state again to the opening of the new parliament building at Holyrood. 

(�Is he done yet?� asks a Ron Weasley sympathizer.  Nearly!) 

So much for the Honours themselves, but there is one more castle treasure that I simply must mention, though I�ve not yet been there to see it.  Along with the regalia there is now housed a relic more ancient than even the crown of Robert Bruce, something which was taken away for seven centuries but finally came home.  For on St. Andrew�s Day (November 30) in 1996 the Queen returned the Stone of Destiny to Scotland.  Also known as the Stone of Scone, it had been taken from the Scots in 1296 by the English forces of Edward I.  Appropriately enough, given the day, the deputy of the Queen of Scots for the ceremonial return was her second son, Prince Andrew. 

According to legend, the Stone of Destiny was used as the coronation seat for all Kings of Scots back into their prehistoric tribal wanderings.  Before being housed at Scone Abbey (after the union if Scots and Picts in the ninth century) it had been at Dunstaffnage in Argyll, and before that it is said to have been in Ireland, and the legends go on to claim that it was originally the stone pillow of the biblical patriarch Jacob on which he had his dream of angels descending and ascending.  Before the Scots High Kings were ever crowned or anointed, they were �en-stoned�. 

The traditional belief was that wherever the stone rested, there the Scots would rule.  In 1296 Edward I tried to turn that belief on its head when he took the stone as a spoil of conquest, and as part of his effort to establish himself as Lord Paramount over Scotland.  It was taken off to London, where Edward had the great oaken coronation chair made to house it in Westminster Abbey, and there it has been used for every English and British coronation since 1296.  Even Cromwell sat on it. 

It used to be wryly claimed by the Scots that when Edward took the stone, it became inevitable that a Scot would rule England.  It just took 307 years for the stone�s magic to work.  Others over time have claimed that the monks of Scone hid the real stone somewhere, and palmed a chunk of local sandstone off on Proud Edward.  According to them the stone in London was and is a fake.  (Someday, the modern heirs of these folks hope, the real stone will yet be found.)  Be that as it may, back in 1951 some young Scottish Nationalists kidnapped the stone from Westminster and briefly returned it to Scotland; but they had second thoughts after the death of George VI and returned it in time for the coronation in 1953.  In the future it is intended that it will occasionally return to Westminster and its old chair.  But that will be just for the days of the coronations of future monarchs of the �United� Kingdom, after which it will come back home to Edinburgh. 

In a way the Stone of Destiny and the Westminster chair have become symbols of the evolution of a more �federal� Britain, and of a more autonomous Scotland.  And, authentic or not, I have pondered over the last decade how that old legend of the stone seems to have had a new sort of fulfillment.  For it was only two and a half years from the time that Prince Andrew brought the Stone of Destiny home to Edinburgh until his mother returned to inaugurate the new Scottish Parliament.  Magical stones, indeed.  So if I were Charles, or William, I would make darn sure that when my time comes to be crowned that I am sitting on that rock! 

So there you are, all you Potterites, you should feel right at home at the castle this weekend.  I just hope you have brought Professor McGonagall along with you, hopefully in her best tartan dress robes and a thistle in her hat.  Have fun, but do look around a bit while you�re there.  It�s a magical place in a magical city.

Yours aye,

- Ken Cuthbertson