Scotland's Stone of Scone

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Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades.

We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

It's a cold and misty December. In the biting icy winds, two Ford Anglias are chugging discreetly south along the A74, passing through Carlisle and over the border into England. The drivers of these inconspicuous vehicles are treading a path that many Scotsmen have taken before them in the fight for independence. History is full of fierce examples.

1315 saw the siege of Carlisle in which Robert the Bruce plagued the borderlands. Life in the marches has been wrought with bloodshed and devastation. But the year now... It's 1950, and instead of spearmen and cavalry leading the charge, four ordinary University of Glasgow students sit behind the wheel as they trundle through the night towards their target, Westminster.

The paved A roads may now be less treacherous than those which saw the end of Alexander III and the beginning of the wars over Scotland's nationhood. They may still be less arduous than the road taken by the disgraced King John Balliol. But for the students, they may as well be those same dirt-trodden tracks. They make their journey with caution, full of anticipation. After 18 long hours...

The Ford Anglias weave their way into the capital and through the streets of London. The shadows of Aldgate, St Paul's and the Palace of Westminster fall across them. Kay Matheson, domestic science student and getaway driver. pulls into the cosy Lion's Corner house. Here, tucked in a corner and over a warm cup of tea, they begin to draw up their final plans. Along with Kay sit Gavin Vernon, Ian Hamilton,

and Alan Stewart. These daring students have come all this way for one purpose, ending over 700 years of Scottish subjugation and reigniting the petition for an independent Scotland. Looking over the Thames, you can make out the site of Westminster Abbey, which has stood for centuries. Its walls have borne witness to the shifting sands of time, where they gained through bloodlines of old, or by blood freshly spilt.

King after king have, in that very abbey, lowered themselves onto the coronation chair, crowned in sight of God. Down to the splinters, the coronation chair is the ancient heart of English sovereignty. Like the country around it, though, the throne hasn't been left unsullied by the tumult of time. 1914 saw the suffragettes place a bomb under the chair in a petition for their right to vote.

The bomb, filled with nuts and bolts, shook the walls of the abbey. But the throne survived. It's now Christmas Eve. And as the December light begins to dim into the early evening, staff usher out the last visitors and scurry home to their celebrations, leaving the abbey empty save for the watchmen. They pace up and down the long corridors, weaving between the tombs and reliquies of old kings and saints. All who remain in the abbey...

are under the eternal gaze of the Virgin Mary and Jesus cast into ornate stained glass. These apertures slowly lose their luster and darken to black as the sun sets, and evening transforms itself. into wintery night. The watchmen plod their same route, a route which had been carefully observed by our Scottish students the day before.

Avoiding the gaze of the guards, Ian, Vernon and Stuart slip into the works yard of the Abbey. Breaking into Poets' Corner, they're one step closer to the chapel and their prize. Another student in an unassuming Ford Anglia sits outside the abbey, engine humming as the three others creep up to the royal chair. Edward I's fine creation.

The coronation chair sits exposed, removed of all its pomp and magnificence, in the dark, silent night. But Edward's chair isn't the target of this break-in. Under the seat of the throne, surrounded... on each side by ornately carved lions is a stone a simple sandstone block large and ungainly you can still see the marks made by the tools used to carve it why would a king

Sit above this, something so plain, so out of place, against the fine, ornate, wooden throne. Filled with trepidation, the students manoeuvre their fingers around the stone, gripping as hard as they can onto the treacherously flat block. It's heavy and awkward as they pull. With some effort, they begin sliding the stone away from the throne and into their arms. As the three students grasp the coronation stone, a harsh sound suddenly echoes through the chapel.

A sound which stops them in their tracks and silences their frantic whispers. When the nuts and bolts of that makeshift suffragette bomb had ricocheted against it, a fracture had cut deep within the stone. This final moment of unrest had been enough. Even in the unlit chapel, the Christmas moonlight fell onto their precious stone. A stone that had been lying at rest for 700 years of British history. And now, it had split in two.

Hamilton, taking off his coat, has the solution. They lift the largest surviving part of the stone onto his jacket and drag it along the ancient floor. The smaller fragments can easily be carried out. Better, a broken stone. then no stone at all. Lurching out of the abbey, leaving the coronation chair behind, the students nervously make their way back to the cars, which are waiting in the streets of Westminster on what is now Christmas morning.

1950. The time is 5am and the ancient fragments are concealed, tucked up in the back. The weight of the stone sags the boot of the car as the Ford Anglia begins trundling back. Up north, the plan is nearly complete. This simple sandstone block, unassuming and unmoved for over 700 years,

What is it about this stone that caused these students to break into Westminster Abbey? When you look closer, you can see the coarse grain of the stone is stained with bronze or brass remnants from an earlier time. A cross, too, is there etched into the surface. It's not a grand or magnificent object with its tool marks and chipped exterior. And yet, as the students slip back into Scotland...

Headlines splash out on broadsheets and tabloids alike. They proclaim with great urgency the missing stone. For the first time in 400 years, the border between England and Scotland is shut in a frantic attempt. to retrieve the object. In the arms of four students, it could have disappeared into obscurity. However, on the 26th of December 1950, it was found. A Boxing Day gift.

to the people of Scotland had been delivered. Sitting at the altar of Arbroath Abbey, draped in a Scottish flag, the Stone of Schoon, also known as the Stone of Destiny, has finally returned to the lands where it was first formed. But what was so important about this stone? Why did it take four daring students to bring it back over the border after 700 years? And what does a 1950s heist have to do with Gone Medieval? Well, to help explain all of that...

I'm joined by Dorvit Broon, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, to explore the legends and the legacy of the Stone of Destiny. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Dov. It's great to have you with us again. Pleasure. And I'm looking forward to getting stuck into exactly what the Stone of Schoon is and what it means to Scottish nationhood, I guess.

But to start us off with, could you tell us a little bit about what the stone is? If you and I were looking at it right now, what would we see? Well, so if we were looking at it, I think we'd be surprised that there was such a fuss made of it because... It looks very plain and a little bit bashed up. It's not very big, oh dear, I'm not very good with sizes, but size is something we'll come back to. But let's say...

It's a slab which you could imagine a child sitting on. And what you'd see is two metal rings. That's the first thing you notice that's a little bit odd. Two metal rings on either side. the sort of joins you know where they are joined into the stone that's been shaved down a bit and but there they are so so it's obviously designed to be carried at some stage and you'd also notice

There's a very crude sort of rectangle etched on the top, which doesn't look very professionally done, shall we say, but it's definitely a feature. And otherwise, it just looks a wee bit bashed up. And there it is in its glory. So I guess we might be surprised that it's not some kind of pristine, sharp, cornered piece of precious stone. It looks like it's been bashed around a little bit, maybe. It does. However...

There is something always to bear in mind, which is that I find it very difficult to think of a situation in which anybody would actually see it naked, as it were. The earliest account, the only really. Detailed account we have of it being used in an inauguration ceremony, so that was when Alexander III was inaugurated on 13th June 1249, we're told that it was covered with silk golden.

cloths. So it was not on sight. It was not on view for anybody. And of course, once it's in the chair of Edward the Confessor... in Westminster Abbey, you can see a wee bit of it, but really not much. So... It's an interesting question. If we want to be authentic about this, how far we're being authentic by revealing it in all its naked, rather unprepossessing state. No one was meant to see it like that.

It's interesting then that the first record of it being kind of used is as late as 1249, because I think we probably think of it as a more ancient thing than that. How do we get a sense of how it's used in that inauguration ceremony for Alexander? Yes. So the inauguration ceremony, I mean, just to start with, I mean, historical records are very hit miss because things survive, things don't survive.

things just don't get noted down so there's just one thing we need to bear in mind is that things that are routine tend not to get noted down because nobody thinks they're kind of special and That is important for this ceremony, Alexander III's inauguration, because it was a bit special. His dad, Alexander II, had gone to quite a lot of trouble and effort.

to try and get the inauguration ceremony changed radically because he wanted to be crowned and anointed like the very best kings in Latin Christendom were. like the King of England and the King of France. And other kings were getting this privilege from the Pope. The King of Norway had been granted it in 1247.

It's something that other kingdoms in Latin Christendom are aspiring to, and Scotland is no exception. The problem is that the Pope is getting... quite a lot of noises off from the King of England. saying, don't do that, because really, Scotland isn't the proper kingdom. Really, the king is a vassal, and therefore, you know, please don't do this. Now, the Pope doesn't...

want to agree or disagree. Popes are very good at that, aren't they? Not really taking a position and just sitting somewhere in the middle and never quite making a decision. Exactly. And in practical matters... The Pope actually was quite, at about this time, innocent the fourth, he basically was very blunt when Henry III suggested that a papal tax, that he collect a papal tax from Scotland as well as from England. And he was told rather...

brusquely by Innocent the Four that it's almost unheard of for a king to do that in another kingdom. So when it came to practical things, then of course Scotland functioned as an independent entity. But when it comes to these symbolic things, you know, the... Pope, just why make an unpleasant scene with the King of England when it's not straightly necessary? So that's a rather long way of saying that Alexander II, he'd been trying.

to get the ceremony changed. And he failed. Now, it isn't just Alexander, this becomes very clear, isn't just Alexander II that's keen on this. It's the people who are closest to the kingship itself, the government, if you want people like the chancellor, the chamberlain, and other household officials.

And we may be sure the leading bishops as well, because, well, there are two things they do. One is that the most important symbolic object for a king, for a government indeed, is what they call the great seal it's not a stone or a throne it's the great seal so this is the the sort of impress that you use on wax

that gets dangled down any official document and shows it's authentic. So this is extremely important. And they change the design in an important way, and that is they add a crown. Because they're not crowned, you see. So all the way since Alexander I, who was 1107 to 1134, all the way since then, the great seal had shown the King of Scots with nothing on their head at all.

or perhaps a cap. It's really difficult to tell, of course. Not a crown. But they'd lost no time in saying, right, we're going to have a crown now. And why this was their decision is because... Alexander III was not quite eight years old. So they also changed the inauguration ceremony, probably. It's very difficult to tell definitively because we don't know what it was like before.

But there is one thing that looks really odd, which is that instead of taking Alexander to be enthroned on the stone, so this is where the stone comes in, on the moot hill of Scun, which was more impressive then than it looks now, because it's been shaped and things by the Earl of Mansfield a couple centuries ago, because it's in its property. Instead of taking it to the Moot Hill, which is what you'd expect, they go to a...

cross. It must have been a very fancy looking cross in the graveyard of Schoon Abbey and he's enthroned there. He's put on the stone of Schoon there. That, at least it seems to me, is them trying to invoke what anointment would have done that anointment symbolizes the grace of god coming and transforming you into a new being which is a king so they're trying to get as close to the grace of god as they can that way something else they do is that they

take a wee ceremony from the Book of Kings in the Old Testament, where the Lord's anointed king of Judea is... enthroned and then all the important people come and throw their cloaks at his feet. So that's what is described in the Bible and that is what they do. in the ceremony. So they're trying to trigger, you know, all these many symbols as they can, I think, to say, okay, we're not able to do coronation and anointment, but he is actually...

King, fully and by the grace of God, as he would have been had he been anointed. It's fascinating how they're kind of bending what they're doing to try and make it as close to a coronation as they can get without kind of calling it a coronation. Exactly. I think it's very impressive. I mean, it's very ingenious. I dare say a lot of this may have been lost on the people, you know, anybody who come more or less.

try and get a view of what was going on. But we shouldn't forget that there would have been a mass said and, of course, a sermon from the Bishops and Andrews, and I'm sure he would have explained what they'd just seen. So the message would have got through fairly clearly. They also, by the way...

this is quite significant, I think, is that he was, Alexander III was inaugurated a week after his father died. And when you bear in mind that his father died unexpectedly on the island of Kerera, which is not too far from Oban. And if you were to walk from there, it would take you three days to get from there to Schoon. So they've put this together pretty hastily.

which makes me wonder whether they were making it up. I mean, it'd be very impressive if they were, but I do wonder if, you know, there have been a lot of thinking. in advance. However, just as I say that, I realize that, of course, Alexander II, nobody expected him to die, but I suppose final thought is that...

To go back to Alexander II himself wanting to have coronation anointment, this was something on people's minds. You know, what do we do? Yeah, so Alexander II might have been making preparations for the next coronation, whatever that might look like to get it more...

more like a coronation that other people would recognize. So there were sort of plans there that everyone was able to pick up and put into action quite quickly. Well, exactly. I mean, there's total speculation. I mean, it could just have been something they talked about over dinner. I mean, you know. What do we do as the latest rejection came in from the Pope? You know, okay, what do we do if we, you know, we don't expect you to die soon, Your Majesty, but...

you know, let's just think about this. Or maybe it's lovely to imagine these sort of conversations. Yeah, it's funny to think how much of these things that we think are very carefully planned out and thought out and incredibly symbolic.

are maybe just made up on the fly by people doing something in a hurry exactly and do we get a sense of the role that the stone plays does alexander sit on it stand on it is there something placed above it exactly so the stone plays a critical role because in the account that we have which is ultimately a contemporary account he is described as as he's led to the stone which is covered with these silk gold cloths by this impressive

cross in the cemetery as he's led there he's described as the king that's soon to be rex box futurus the king that's soon to be and of course once he's put on the stone he then is the king so the That moment, it's equivalent of an ointment, you know, that moment when he's placed on the stone, which nobody can see. All they can see is this, something hard underneath silk cloths. He becomes king and he's placed on the stone.

Not by the Bishop of St Andrews, but by the Earl of Fife and the Earl of Strathairn. So they are the most senior nobles. It's fascinating that that becomes the moment, sort of the equivalent of the Becketts. anointing oil in an English coronation kind of thing. That is the moment that transforms him. His contact with the Stone of Schoon is what makes him a king. Yes, exactly. And do we get a sense then of when...

If we're on the first recorded use in 1249, do we get a sense of when myth and legend tells us the stone originally came into use and perhaps where it came from? Yes. So there are legends and... Something just to bear in mind is that whenever we're thinking about the stone being used, whenever we're thinking about legends being there, they have to start sometime in reality.

You know, somebody has had to decide to use the stone for the first time. Somebody has had to decide, well, how are we going to talk about this? What's the story that's being told?

And I'm seeing all this because there is a puzzle about the stone, which is how small it is. And my own personal hunch... is that it was bearing in mind how quickly they had to put things together for Alexander III, that they came up with this idea and it was really, they were just thinking about him because, you know, nearly eight years old.

If you're sitting on it, you look fairly dignified. If you're a normal-sized man, you wouldn't. You're squatting. It looks terrible, which is why, of course, it gets stuck in a chair and, you know, it's never... There's no mention of chairs or anything like thrones or anything like that. There wouldn't be time to put it together for 1249. So my hunch is that that description was actually the first time it was used.

And then they would have to explain what it was. Now, there is a legend which is repeated in Scottish sources, and it can be traced back to a sort of compendium of texts. brief text about the kingdom's history. So it gives an account of Scottish origins and it gives a list of kings of Scots, kings of Picts and so on. So it gives you a potted history of the whole kingdom.

So the legends, so that compendium, you can trace it back to the reign of John Balliol, so that's sometime between 1292 and 1304, which is when the last government in his name... finally collapsed. But it's going to be older than that because that's just when it gets put into the compendium. What is striking about it is that it ends, the legend ends, with the Stone of Scone.

being brought to Scone by the first ever King of Scots. And we're told it's there forevermore. Now, there's actually a manuscript. It's an early 16th century manuscript. which has recently come to light, it seems to have preserved the earliest version of this compendium and therefore give us the earliest version of the legend itself. So just to...

give you the story and outline, it explains that a certain king of Spain had many sons and there was one who he was particularly keen on called Simon Brecht. That's a figure from the royal genealogy. So that's not made up from scratch. So this king of Spain liked his son. The son wasn't his heir. So he gave him...

a certain stone on which all the kings of Spain were accustomed to sit. And this was, and I'm just reading it here, it's like an anchor for the kingdom. Anyway, he gives this to Simon Breck. sets off with an army to Ireland, takes Ireland and sets up the stone in Tara, the most eminent place of that country, we're said, which is called...

place of kings up to the present day. So they know about Ireland and they know about Tara as the most sacred site of kingship. And then they say, after a long time, descendants of Simabrek came from Ireland. somebody called Ferragus, son of Ferragher. And he took the stone with him from Ireland to Scone. And then this is the interesting bit in this version, in this manuscript that's just recently come to light.

And it says, placed it in Schoon, and it is there up to the present day, and is the royal stone, as it always was, and the same place is the royal place, and will be forever. And then it finishes with the... famous verse, unless the fates be false, wherever the Scots find the stone is placed, they are held to reign there. That's my sort of rather clunky translation. That's why it's called the Stone of Destiny, because of that sense of...

the prophecy that wherever it will be, the Scots will reign, which of course was a comforting thought when Edward I took it down to Westminster. Now we're back into speculation here, but you'll notice they're protesting very loudly about... how important the stone is and how it's always in scone and now scone has definitely been the inauguration the place of inauguration for quite a while difficult to say how long but it first gets mentioned as a royal

at the beginning of the 10th century. So we're looking at something that's been part of the pattern of inauguration for a very, very long time. But that doesn't mean the stone was there at all. So one way you could make sense of this... is that, you know, in the effort that they were putting to make this inauguration as special as they can, they have come up with this piece of local sandstone.

and repurposed it, remembering nobody's going to see it. They repurposed it and put the story along with it. Now, the idea of the kings coming and the Scots coming from Ireland and eventually... from Greece and Egypt and so on is well established so that's not new but they've added all this and via Spain that's not new but this

they really added this extra dimension, which is the stone. So they're wanting to project this image of the Scottish kingdom having been there from the... ancient ancient ancient times and it's like they're giving a tangible very tangible symbol of that antiquity and i guess it's interesting to wonder whether you know around 1249

They may be feeling the need to create this physical connection to the past of the Scots kings. You say there's this history from Spain, Greece, Egypt, going back to the times of Moses. They want to trace their roots there. And this is almost like putting a piece of stone in front of someone and saying, there you go, there's the proof. Exactly, exactly. It sort of brings it alive. Goodness knows how well known the...

Origin Legend was. I mean, it may be something that clerics would know a lot about, but not other people particularly, I'm guessing completely. But my goodness, they're making this something that nobody will forget. And I guess there's something of a Gaelic connection in here. The Leofail is there at Tara, which is the...

singing stone of kings, a kind of stone of destiny in Ireland. Is there any connection between the two concepts of a stone that identifies or makes a king? Yeah, well, in probably an indirect way, to be honest. Obviously, as soon as you've got the legend of the Stone of Schoon articulated and taken up enthusiastically, it becomes very well established. And then, of course, because it mentions Tara, it's very easy for people to make a link.

later on to make a link with the Leofal. But I don't think, there's no trace of that being in their minds, at least if they really wanted us to know that, they would have told us, I think, in the legend. The world is buzzing with AI tools, but instead of making things easier, they've made things overwhelming. There's a better way. Meet Superhuman, the AI productivity suite that gives you superpowers so you can outsmart the work chaos.

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Yeah. And I guess the thing that people in a medieval sense, perhaps outside of Scotland, will know best about the Stone of Schoon is the story of it leaving Scotland. Could you just set the scene for us around... The situation in which Edward I comes to Scotland and identifies the Stone of Schoon as something that he is going to take away from Scotland, he must have thought it was something of critical importance to Scottish identity for him to want to take it away.

Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, it starts, I suppose, with Alexander III, Edward I. They are closely related and get on very well. You know, there's no sign of trouble there at all. But when Alexander III dies unexpectedly, 19th of March, 1286, leaving his granddaughter, who is in Norway, as his only heir, you can see sort of Edward I perfectly naturally wanting to make the most of any opportunity he can because he'll have been acutely aware, as everybody was.

of other legends, if you like, which proclaimed a very ancient history of Britain as a single kingdom. And I mean, this was elaborated in the 1130s.

And so they really took this to heart. So, you know, at the back of everybody's mind, and then I remember I've said that, so this was Henry I's father, Henry III, you know, I'd said to the Pope, don't give them coronation of Rhymen because really they're... my vassals this is the sort of idea that's at the back of their mind trouble is it's not something if you're a king in those days that you just have at the back of your mind is something to talk about it's it's it's sort of broods they are

you know, this is my inheritance and I've really got to live up to it. But he does this in a very pragmatic way to start with. He thinks about Margaret's her name, the granddaughter of Alexander III, marrying... Edward I, eldest son of heir, the future Edward II. I mean, they're, goodness me, how old are they? But they're, you know, in primary school age. They really are very, very young. But that looks like it's going to happen. And they get as far as Margaret's coming.

from leaving Norway in September 1290, and she dies en route. Because you can see that Edward is very practical, because of course, any kids that Margaret and Edward II would have had would have been... kings of both realms, and you'd have ended up with one kingdom. So the union of crowns, just like eventually happened in 1803. He then makes a fateful decision, and it actually takes him quite a few months to do this. You know, what to do now with Margaret's...

dead. That plan is finished. It's very unclear about who the next king is going to be. There's no obvious heir anymore. Robert Brew's grandfather of the future king says it should be him. And John Belial says it should be him. And there are a few others who pop up and say, you know, try and get a bit of the action. But they're the two main ones.

And it takes out of the first about six months to make up his mind what he's going to do. And in that time, again, if you'll allow me to speculate, in that time, he, his wife, Eleanor of Castile, dies.

And I do wonder, because there's a big change, I'm afraid, in... It's like he loses his practical acumen and, you know, just common sense, really. And he just... pushes the red button, if you like, the Exocet missile, I'm afraid, which is what we've had to live with ever since, which is he decides that he's actually going to go to the, well, tell the Scots leaders.

the people governing Scotland at the time, to meet him and be told that actually Scotland, because, you know, basically it's a vassal country, He is going to now be the overlord, and he's going to decide who the next king is going to be. The context here is that the government at the time, the Scottish government, the Committee of Guardians, had asked Edward I to come and help them because they needed somebody powerful to arbitrate between Bruce and Balliol.

This is not uncommon. Henry III got into terrible difficulties with his barons and he invited the King of France to come and arbitrate. So if you're a king or a kingdom in trouble, this is what you do. And you need a powerful neighbor because at the end of the day, They've got to be able to knock heads together if that's required. So that was a perfectly natural thing to do. And Edward I could have done that. He could have come as arbitrator, gone through a process, declared, but he didn't.

And he made the fateful decision to claim overlordship. And I'm afraid that then is the moment where you lead up to the Stone of Scone ending up in Westminster. Because... At the end of the day, we end up with John Balliol being inaugurated king, and that's using the Stone of Scone. However, unlike any of his predecessors, he is... vassal king unambiguously because he has to do homage to Edward I before he has to do homage immediately afterwards he also has to renounce

Edward I's promises that he'd given the Scottish leaders in the run-up to the anticipated marriage between Alexander III's granddaughter and Edward as heir, promises about how Scotland would be governed in the event of, you know, the marriage and there being one monarch and the promises are all about respecting Scottish independence.

So John Balliol then had to renounce all that. So Edward I took full advantage of the situation to make it clear not only that he was an overlord in some sort of soft, fuzzy sense, you know.

come and do homage now and again, but I'll leave you in peace. He wasn't going to do that. He was going to be overlord fully, which meant that for the first time, decisions made by the Scottish King, judicial decisions made by the Scottish King, indeed by the Scottish Parliament, could be appealed to the King of England. So this is full jurisdiction. That's extremely unsettling if you are a Scottish nobleman or anybody who has lots of lands and privileges and possessions.

Because up to then, the King of Scots had been your guarantee. Now it's the King of England. And the King of Scots was a very light touch kind of kingship. The King of England is not, never has been since the conquest of 1066, much more intrusive. So this is very unsettling. And eventually, when Edward I... assumes that they're all going to turn up for his army to invade his war with the King of France in 1295-1296. The Scottish leaders refuse.

and they get John Bailey to refuse. So that triggers, eventually, Edward I in March 1296, comes north, and he conquers Scotland. It's a fairly straightforward business militarily, and... Now he's got to the point, so he's tried having Scotland initially, he's tried having a union of the crowns, that's just not happened for natural causes. He's tried having the King of Scots as a vassal.

And him exercising jurisdiction as a court of appeal, that now hasn't worked. So he's now taking the step of abolishing the kingdom altogether. So he's saying there's now no longer a kingdom of Scotland, it's just a land. He's going to rule it directly. So all the Scottish sheriffs and everybody else are dismissed and he puts in his own people. And it's in that context that of course he...

takes away the Stone of Scone. So the Stone of Scone symbolizes the ancient kingdom that Edward I is now abolishing. So off it goes to Westminster to become part of the English coronation throne. Yeah. And it's so fascinating to think about, as you mentioned, the timing of the death of Edward's wife. And, you know, we have the Eleanor crosses as a symbol of his his love for her, I guess, and how much that.

personal loss may have affected huge political events that we're still feeling the the aftershocks of today you know they've they've set politics in motion for 800 years because of edward's loss and and grief at the time perhaps yes but also interesting that to think if the stone of scone was invented as this coronation stone in 1259 that that becomes a little bit of a trigger for edwards action you know there if the scots are going to take a step closer to

identifying themselves as a kingdom on a par with england then he's going to have to to step up and deal with that directly so almost a stone of scone causes edward to feel like he has to confront the issue of what kind of kingdom scotland is Well, exactly. But I think, as I say, when he is confronting the issue of the Stone of Scone, it's because he's actually wanting to rob out the Scotch kingdom definitively. And I mean, it's interesting just to go back to before.

any of this kicked off and Alexander III and Edward I had a very good working relationship. There was, I mean, there was only a little bit of tension when Edward I became king and then because Alexander III... has significant lordships in England. He had to do homage. And, you know, Edward I tries it out to say, you know,

how about he gets the Bishop of Norwich to do this for him, to sort of, in the middle of the ceremony, to sort of say, wait a minute, aren't you King of, you know, Your Majesty King of Scots, aren't you doing homage for Scotland? And he gets told very quickly. No, I owe homage for Scotland to God alone. And they just let the matter rest. They're not going to make a hoo-ha about it. It has taken four years for them to do the ceremony.

And interestingly, Edward I comes back from crusade and becomes king in 1274. This is 1278. And they have sort of attempts to do it. So everybody knows this is highly charged. But it's like... Nobody's going to really, it's already very sensitive. They're not going to make it worse than it has to be. And they end up doing it in private. Well, not totally in private, of course. It's in Westminster Hall.

But the point is, it's invitees only. Unlike, for example, Alexander III's grandfather, who when John became king of England, I mean, William was perfectly happy to do this. in the open air in a mound in Lincoln, which that must have been seen by anybody that wanted to be there. So, you know, there was no, I mean, there was no preciousness about it at all. So things have changed. The whole idea about what kingship is has changed.

And this is very touchy matter, but they just get on with life. You know, they get over that and then get on with it. So that is how things could have been. And, but unfortunately, as I say, Force of circumstance, as we've described, leads ourselves in a position where Edward I just makes that awful decision. And there we are, we live with it too. Now, when I say he was trying to rub out the...

King of Scotland. He knows this is tricky in terms of public opinion in Latin Christendom, the equivalent to the UN, if you like. He knows this is tricky because what he's done is he has conquered and is now trying to erase. a Christian kingdom. And so he's got to justify this. So what he does is, it takes a few years to do this, but he puts together, basically rewrites history. He takes on account of all the things that have happened, particularly

in deciding how John Belial was going to be king. And he rewrites this in the most legally authentic way he can. And this is then, this is still there in the National Archives in queue. It's very, very impressive. But it is a rewrite, and the original documents about what actually happened survive, so historians have been able to piece together.

Well, Archie Duncan was the main person who really cottoned on to this and was able to piece together what actually happens, and it's not the way. Because what Edward I wanted to prove is that the Scottish leaders recognised immediately that he was the overlord. They didn't put up any resistance. They just said, of course you're the overlord. Because then everything flowed from that. Because then he could say, when they refused to come and fight for me in France,

And they renounced their homage. Well, that was them. They therefore renounced their lands. So the kingdom was forfeit, basically, treated like any lordship. And therefore it was his to wipe out if he wished. Tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease.

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Fascinating, complex game of 3D chess that everybody's playing with very important concepts here. I guess we ought to as well deal with some of the theories that... The real Stone of Scone was never actually taken, that it was hidden. Where do you stand on some of those ideas? Well, yeah, I mean, when you look at it, it's difficult to see how it couldn't be the one that Edward I took away with him.

But also, you know, at the end of the day, it's nothing on its own. It's only something because we think it is and because they thought it was, because they created the stories about it. Intrinsically of itself, it is nothing. So... If you bear that in mind, then actually what they've got in Perth, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, really. Because as long as it's credible, as it's a credible thing that this is the one.

It's a really good exhibition, by the way. I would encourage anybody to go. It's really, really wonderfully done. And you can just see how... insignificant thing actually is as an object. Yeah, so it almost doesn't matter whether what Edward took was the real Stone of Schoon or not. It matters that he took the idea of the Stone of Schoon away from Scotland. That's a brilliant way to put it, yeah.

And you did kind of allude to this a little bit earlier, but what does Edward do with it? And what is he trying to convey? What message is he trying to give by what he does with it? I mean, it's a very symbolic object, so he's very aware of that. So by creating this... new coronation throne for future kings of England, which includes the Stone of Scone. It couldn't be more tangibly obvious that...

that the kingdom that the stone used to represent is now completely incorporated into the kingdom that the future kings of England reign over. So it's pretty unsubtleism.

Not an appropriate way, because it is. It's impressive. It's an impressive statement. And there it was until 1996. And I guess something that everybody who... needed to understand it would clearly understand you know a modern audience might need a little asterisk next to it to explain that the stone of school is underneath here because that's important to scotland and here we're symbolically putting the king of england sitting on top of the the stone of scone of scotland

But a medieval audience would have been entirely clear what message Edward was sending by doing that. I think so. And by the way, sort of interesting thing, eventually, eventually... End of the Third, it is, recognises Scotland as an independent kingdom. That's right towards the end of Robert Bruce's reign. And by the way, as a consequence of that, the Pope...

awards coronation and anointment to the kings of Scots. So after 1329, well, the first king to have this is David II in 1331. Thereafter, they're crowned and anointed. But... This wasn't written into the treaty, but there was a suggestion, you know, that the stone might be taken back to Scotland. And the people of London rose up in... outrage of this. They identified very much with them being at the heart of the Kingdom of England and they weren't going to have it.

denuded of any of its trophies yeah so interesting that as as scotland might have felt like it's it's won that almost 100-year battle to become a kingdom that has the anointing ceremony and is recognised as that kind of top tier of kingdom. They've almost won that with the Stone of Schoon having played a part in perhaps bringing it towards a crisis. But now they...

can't get it back. Well, but they don't really make an effort, to be honest, because it's not important. Which perhaps leans into what you're saying about the fact that this isn't quite the... centuries-old, vastly important thing that everybody is claiming it to be. They're actually quite happy for it not to be there for a while. Well, and I think, because it just doesn't come up as an issue, and I think it's because they've got colonization anointments.

They've got this idea very firmly established that they are an ancient kingdom. So much so that in the late Middle Ages, although Scotland was... Not a wealthy country. Well, just to be clear, the kings were not wealthy because they didn't have the means to, shall we say, exploit their subjects to the same extent that a king of England or a king of France could.

So the kings weren't wealthy. So if you imagine in Latin Christendom and you're a royal family, you know, why would you marry into the Scottish royal family? And in the 15th century, James I, he has lots of daughters. So this becomes a bit of an issue. And the reason they do is because it's regarded as one of the most ancient kingdoms in Latin Christendom. That's...

Propaganda is a very easy word to use, but that suggests something that's very deliberate and trying to fool people and all the rest of it. It's actually, when you trace it, you can see it's just a sort of development of textual... accidents, if you like, that ends up with this sense of being, you know, as the Declaration of Rebirth puts it, 113 kings without the intervention of a foreigner. So without any foreigner sort of among them.

So that sense, and this was particularly felt by somebody like the Duke of Burgundy in the 15th century. They were the most wealthy. Well, I suppose they're the exception of the King of France, perhaps. But they do. They're immensely wealthy and powerful in Europe, North of the Alps, you know, controlling the low countries where, which is the...

economic hub of Europe north of the Alps. And yet, they're dukes of Burgundy. They're not kings. They try, but you can't just make yourself king. You've got to get the Pope or the Emperor to... cooperate. And so they try. And all they end up with, by the way, is a sort of hat that sort of bejeweled and got some feathers. It looks very weird. But, you know, they're keen to marry into the, you know, have dealings with the Scottish family and think about marrying in and so on because...

of this business of being the most ancient kingdom. And there is a manuscript. It's a manuscript book, which is an account of Scottish history that belonged to the Duke of Burgundy. It's still there in Brussels. And if you go and see it, it includes a copy of the Declaration of Our Broth. And it has this statement about 113 kings. And somebody in Burgundy in the 15th century has written in the margins, you know, pointing this out, how significant this is.

So this mattered. This is something that really Scotland had to offer, even though it most certainly didn't have the kind of riches that a royal family would normally have elsewhere. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, it sounds an awful lot like the Stone of Schoon, without wishing to diminish its importance. The Stone of Schoon was effectively, I'm trying to say, not say stepping stone, but I'm going to say stepping stone, towards the anointment, at which point it...

could have become irrelevant and it almost physically becomes irrelevant to the Scottish ceremony at least because it's no longer in Scotland. But symbolically it still does remain important, doesn't it? And I wondered if we could step... Slightly outside of our medieval period, we dare sometimes to venture forward. I'm wondering about the people's views of the Stone of Schoon when James VI...

becomes James I of Scotland. Is there some sense that the Stone of Destiny has worked? The Scottish king is now ruling in London where the stone is? Oh yes, because they haven't forgotten the legend. The legend gets repeated and... They're particularly keen on the destiny part of it, that sort of prophecy. So it's very easy to then view this as the prophecy coming alive. I mean, Scottish kings and...

some elements of Scottish opinion, had for a while had this idea, actually, that their king should be the King of Britain anyway. This is because of being descended from the... Anglo-Saxon kings of England through St. Margaret, you see. So, you know, William I and the Normans and all the rest of it, everybody since 1066 were conquerors, illegitimate. Really, it should be the king of England.

King of Scots. So that's an idea that was becoming quite active at the point when James IV married Margaret Tudor. And there's that union which eventually means that James VI ends up as the heir to Elizabeth I. So even 100 years earlier, there was this excitement about the prospects of the King of Scots becoming King of England.

and fulfilling this other destiny of being the descendants of the old English kings, pre-conquest kings, and coming back into their inheritance. So it wasn't just about the Stone of Scone. And how significant...

Was it when the stone was eventually returned to Scotland? What did that mean for Scotland? That's a really interesting question, and you'd want to ask more than one person about it, I'm sure. I remember it vividly, and what struck me at the time... was that, you know, I mean, remember, this was the dying days of the Tory government, which had real trouble convincing people in Scotland to vote for them.

And for quite a while, they were down to 10 MPs for a while. And then, oh no, it was after 97, they were wiped out. Anyway, it was looking very serious for them. So Michael Forsyth, the ingenious Secretary of State for Scotland at the time, sort of came up with this idea, basically, that's, you know, show that they're really patriotic. for Scotland. So there was a hoo-ha done about it. There was a wee ceremony as the stone crossed the border at Coldstream and then a sort of ceremony was laid on.

in edinburgh as it was taken up to the castle which is where it was put at that stage i don't remember there being huge crowds of people coming out to see it to be honest and in a strange way it was almost like The significance of it for everybody, because we'd grown up with it, was the fact that it was in Westminster and how terrible that was. No, it wasn't there anymore. It was like, well, okay. Just taking away a chance to complain about something.

Yes, exactly. But that's why I think it's lovely what they've done in Perth. You know, the way they displayed it and the stories that they attach to it and explain is, I think that's now something which is... bringing it into the 21st century and making it something which is just a point of reference to reflect on Scottish history.

And does it play any role in sort of modern Scottish nationalism? We've had, you know, kind of referendums about Scottish independence and things like that. Does the Stone of Schoon crop up in arguments about that kind of thing? It mattered way back in 1950, you know, when it was... Not in Scotland. But there is a fascinating project that Sally Foster in Stirling University has been doing for a couple of years.

which is just getting a lot of different perspectives on how people feel about the Stone of Scone, the stories associated with it, and, for example, tracking the 34 fragments. that were kept and carefully numbered when it was repaired. Because when it was taken from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, was it, in 1950, it actually fell.

There was a crack already and it just, you know, the strain of moving it, it fell into two. So they took it to somebody who, a stonemason who had been one of the founding members of the SNP. And he knew what to do and he put it together, restored it. And in the process, you know, there are bits that will fall off or just chip off. So he kept them all.

And he gave them to family members and he gave them to people, prominent people who he thought appreciated. So it is, for some people, it has this iconic status still. We should probably just mention that that effort to take it in 1950 was kind of a group of students from Glasgow University who decided they were going to liberate it from Westminster and take it back to Scotland.

an amazingly audacious move, which they were successful, which is extraordinary because the newsreels at the time, I mean, it felt like the whole UK was in... as they tried to sort of find the dastardly people who had taken it away. But yes, indeed. So yes, it was a group of students inspired by, at the time, there was a movement.

called the National Covenant, led by somebody called John McCormick. And they were trying to have a measure of home rule. Because remember, the Scottish Parliament didn't exist until 1999 as a result of the referendum in 97. So just a measure of home rule, and was it a million people signed the petition or something? It was a big movement at the time, and of course that got nowhere. So it was in that context that they thought it was appropriate.

step things up a bit fascinating I mean to try and sum up I don't want to put words in your mouth so tell me if I'm wrong here but it sounds to me like you think The Stone of Schoon probably isn't the ancient artifact that it's often claimed to be, that it's maybe just a random 13th century lump of sandstone. Yeah, I mean, how random it is, I'm not entirely sure, but it's not purpose-built. No, no, it's had a previous...

which may not have been a particularly distinguished previous life. And there's sort of wear and tear. It looks like it might have been a step. Some people think it might have been a step somewhere. Anyway, whatever it was. Originally, it was then repurposed. But that's right. And I think, I mean, it is ultimately speculation. But at the end of the day, somebody has to have...

Because it's local sandstone. So somebody has got to decide at some point, we're going to use it as the throne for inauguration. And then somebody at some point has to... developers the stories don't just happen you know out of nothing somebody has to put them together yeah and then you think you would say that the stone that edward the first took is the stone of schoon and kind of even if it wasn't it doesn't really matter

Yeah, that's basically it. I mean, I'm sure it was the real thing, as it were, and it's the real thing there in person. I have no reason to suspect that it isn't. But at the end of the day, it's the idea that it's the stone that counts most of all. And the idea that it is the stone that was taken from Spain to Ireland and then from Ireland to Scotland by the very first king of Scots, Fergus, son of Ferrecher. Yeah.

And just to end on, just to think a little bit about the legacy of the Stone of Schoon. You know, someone in July today, I think an Australian, broke in and tried to break the glass around the Stone of Schoon. So people are still... looking to to interact connect with that stone in in various ways never going to condone trying to smash the case around it or anything like that but

people still feel a connection to it today. What would you say is the legacy of the Stone of Schoon in 2025? Well, yeah, very good. Very good question. Nations are strange things, products of history. circumstance, all sorts of things. And we need, if we want to have something, some way of feeling that we belong together, there are all sorts of different ways of doing that. But one of the ways is to have points of reference.

And these are usually symbolic. And I think it's quite nice that we've got something as sort of nice and ordinary and not very ostentatious like this lump of stone, which we have made precious by. the stories we tell. And that really comes back to ultimately what any sort of sense of identity, nationhood, et cetera, is about, is about the stories that we, we tell about ourselves because it's through stories that we have meaning.

In the world we live in, stories are not just ephemera in fiction. They are what give us meaning, particularly as society as well as individuals. And I guess, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, if the idea of the Stone of Schoon was to create a physical representation of those stories, myths, legends about the Scots people and the emergence of the Scots nation, then...

It's worked. 700 years later, it still represents a degree of that to a lot of people. So it worked as a physical embodiment of that history and those stories. Definitely. That's a really good way to put it. Yep.

Wonderful. It's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you, David. I feel like we could do this all day. There are so many different ways to think about the Stone of Schoon and its connections to all sorts of things. But it's been fascinating to try and dig into this with you a little bit deeper. Thank you very much.

It's been a great pleasure. I hope you enjoyed hearing about this fascinating relic. There are episodes in our back catalogue on the declaration of our growth, which Dorvit also features in, as well as on William Wallace and Edward I too. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history.

Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Anyway. I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with History Hits. Whether you're sending an unforgettable gift or treating yourself to everyday perfection, Omaha Steaks delivers the world's best steak experience. Gift USDA certified tender steaks, juicy burgers.

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