65 years on, how important was the audacious removal of the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey?
“You sort of know that when you take a crowbar to a side door of Westminster Abbey and jemmy the lock that there isn’t really any going back,” the eminent Scottish QC Ian Hamilton told the Daily Telegraph in 2008.
Not that Hamilton believed he was committing robbery when he broke into Westminster Abbey in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1950, intent on liberating one of the relics held within its walls. For him the real theft had taken place centuries earlier.
In 1296, the self-styled “Hammer of the Scots” Edward I seized the ancient Stone of Scone, the block of red sandstone upon which a succession of Scottish Kings had been crowned. Carrying this emblem of national independence back down to London, he placed it underneath St Edward’s Chair – the throne upon which all subsequent English, and British, monarchs have since been crowned – as a deliberate symbol of Scotland’s supposed subservience to England.
And there it remained, at least until Christmas 1950.
Indeed, the Stone of Scone – also known as the Stone of Destiny or the Coronation Stone – had previously been moved only once from the Abbey, as part of the Westminster Hall installation of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector in 1657.
Even during the darkest days of 1940, when invasion by Nazi Germany had seemed highly likely, Abbey authorities had opted to bury the Stone within the building itself rather than risk moving it, along with the Coronation Chair, to Gloucester Cathedral for safekeeping.
So when, in January 1949, an anonymous letter-writer in Glasgow threatened to damage or steal the Stone unless it was returned to its native Scotland, the Abbey authorities – while believing the letter to be a student prank – nevertheless took the precaution of requesting a police guard, which was maintained within the Abbey for the best part of three days.
In an act arguably as amateurish as it was audacious – famously, the Stone broke in two when they dropped it on the floor – Hamilton and fellow Glasgow University students Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart nevertheless later succeeded in “liberating” Scotland’s most important national relic, causing national outrage.
If it seems strange – at best romantic – to place so much importance on a roughly hewn lump of stone, the response of the British establishment shows that nationally-inclined Scots certainly weren’t alone in doing so.
It went to the very top. King George VI, according to the then Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev Dr A C Don, was “greatly distressed” at the news. Given that this was just 14 years after the abdication crisis, it’s certainly understandable how the King – his health already failing – might have been concerned about anything that could undermine the continued legitimacy of the British crown.
So Police forces the length and breadth of mainland Britain were mobilised. On the assumption that the “thieves” might be heading north immediately, the Border between England and Scotland was even closed for a time.
In addition to numerous road blocks, a special watch was kept at docks and airports, while hundreds of CID officers checked hotels and B&Bs in the North of England. Following the delivery of an anonymous petition promising the “return” of the Stone – on condition that it would remain in Scotland – to a Glasgow newspaper, Special Branch officers soon started making enquiries about student political bodies at Glasgow University.
All four participants in the Christmas break-in were eventually interviewed by the police. With the exception of Hamilton, they each admitted their roles in the Christmas Eve break-in. None, however, were charged.
Politics undoubtedly played its role in this. Five years after the end of the Second World War, wreathed in post-war bleakness and austerity, Britain still felt much like a cohesive nation. Yet wise heads must have recognised how a court case would have turned an easily dismissed “student prank” into a focus on the growing calls for a new constitutional settlement for Scotland. Not least those from the non-partisan Scottish Covenant Association, of which Hamilton and his friends were members.
At the time the Association’s leader, historical novelist Nigel Tranter, insisted: “This venture may appear foolish and childish on the surface, but it will have the effect down South of focusing attention on Scotland’s complaints. It takes a lot to get any news of Scotland’s national existence into the English Press, and this sort of thing is the only type of Home Rule story that gets a break in the English newspapers.”
Symbolic the Stone might be, but that mattered. The Earl of Mansfield, whose family seat was at Scone Palace – built near the site of the Stone’s original resting place – added to the pressure when he admitted how he would be “extremely reluctant” to hand the Stone “to the English authorities,” assuming it should be returned to his property.
“In view of the fact that the Stone undoubtedly pertains to the line of Scottish kings, it belongs to the King as King of Scotland, not as King of England,” he said. “In the future the Stone should be kept at Scone or Holyrood instead of Westminster.”
Despite their best efforts, the authorities on both sides of the Border were unable to trace the Stone, at least until April 1951 when – draped in the Scottish Saltire – it was ceremonially deposited at the site of the high altar within the ruins of Arbroath Abbey. The Stone was accompanied by two unsigned letters, one addressed to the King, the other to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, described as “successor to the Abbots of Scone” and therefore the Stone’s “natural guardians”.
Both letters highlighted the “widely expressed demand of the Scottish people for a measure of self-government”, and the hope that this “most ancient and most honourable part of the Scottish regalia” would henceforth remain in Scotland.
It didn’t, of course. The Stone of Scone was returned to Westminster Abbey, in good time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It would be a further 43 years before a UK Government agreed that the Stone could be kept in Scotland when not required for use in such ceremonies.
So it was that, on St Andrew’s Day, 30 November 1996, some 10,000 people watched a procession of dignitaries and troops escort the Stone from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to its new home in the Crown Room within Edinburgh Castle, where it took its place alongside the Honours of Scotland, the country’s crown jewels.
Hamilton had wanted nothing more than to “waken the Scots up”. It certainly can be argued that, while the publicity boost his actions gave to Scottish nationalism was short-lived – Conservative and Unionist MPs gained the support of more than half the Scottish electorate in 1955 – “the repossession” nevertheless lit a slow-burning fuse in terms of sense of nationhood and what can be done.
Church-bells across Scotland probably didn’t ring out in celebration – as portrayed in the 2008 film, The Stone of Destiny – yet Hamilton and his friends nevertheless showed how what had seemed permanent and immutable could be changed.
Article first published in The Scots Magazine, December 2015.
