The Stone of Scone Heist

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fryne. This episode's coming out on
Christmas Day twenty twenty three, so we are talking about

(00:21):
something that happens on a Christmas Day in history. That
is the nineteen fifty removal of the Stone of Scoon,
also called the Stone of Destiny, from Westminster Abbey. We've
also gotten some requests for an episode on the stone,
including from listeners Stephanie and Megan. And also it was
of course in the news earlier this year because it

(00:44):
was part of the coronation chair used for the crowning
of King Charles the Third. On top of all of that,
it almost made an appearance in one of this year's
installments of Unearthed because of some research that we will
eventually get to in this episode. Depending on whose perspective
you are reading, this was either a wanton theft, maybe

(01:05):
even sacrilegious or treasonous, or it was the justified liberation
of an artifact that England had stolen from Scotland. I
used the word heist in the episode title because there
are also aspects of it that feel kind of like
a heist movie, and there is in fact a movie
of this. It came out in two thousand and eight

(01:27):
and I did watch it over the weekend. So we're
going to start by talking about some of the background
on the stone itself. This is tricky to piece together
because there are multiple contradictory mythical origins for the stone,
and early accounts are simultaneously vague and contradictory. The stone
has even had a whole list of different names, so

(01:48):
the Stone of Schoon, the Coronation Stone, the Stone of Destiny,
the Stone of Scotland, and the Fatal Stone among them.
That last one comes from an obsolete use of fatal
that meant dec read by fate or destined. That sense
of the word fatal was declining by the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The two most frequently used names today are

(02:10):
probably the Stone of Scoon and the Stone of Destiny.
Scoon is a town in the historic county of Perthshire, Scotland.
Now it is in the Perth and kin Ross Council area.
For centuries, Scotland's kings were inaugurated on a hill outside
of Scoon, Abbey sitting on the stone. So Stone of
Scoon is a pretty straightforward descriptor of the stone and

(02:33):
its meaning. That name first appeared in writing in the
thirteen twenty seven Lanercost Chronicle. The name Stone of Destiny
was first coined in the sixteenth century, and it was
in fairly common use by the eighteenth century, but it
became a lot more popular after the stone's nineteen fifty
removal from Westminster Abbey. Among other things. Ian Hamilton, who

(02:55):
was one of the people involved with that removal, published
a book about it in nineteen fifty three titled No
Stone Unturned The Story of the Stone of Destiny. But
this name might actually stem from conflation with another stone,
the Leofoil, which is a standing stone on the hill
of Terra in Ireland that is also called the Stone
of Destiny. So Terra in County Meath is the seat

(03:19):
of the High Kings of Ireland and the Leofoil has
its own mythological origins, involving being brought to Irelands by
the semi divine tu Adidanan, and according to legend, the
Leofoil would cry out or roar or sing when the
Rightful King of Ireland placed his foot on it, So
there are some accounts that just confused these two stones.
They described Scotland's Stone of Destiny as the one that screams,

(03:42):
for example. But there are also accounts from the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries that claim that the Stone of Scoon
is the Leofoyil, that it was moved to Dalriata for
the coronation of Fergus McGirk, and then Kinade MacAlpin, king
of the Scots and the Picts, and Dalriada moved it
to Scoon in the ninth century. This would mean the

(04:04):
stone now on the Hill of Tara is a replacement.
Kenad McAlpin is also called Kenneth the First or Kenneth MacAlpin,
and was the first king to rule over most of
what's now considered Scotland, so he is generally recognized as
the first King of Scotland. To further complicate things, there
are also two more mythical origins for the Stone of Scoon,

(04:28):
one probably Scottish and the other probably English, but both
of them involved this stone arriving in Scotland by way
of Ireland. So in the version that probably originated in Scotland,
Scota the daughter of a pharaoh brought the stone to
Scotland from Egypt, traveling through Ireland along the way. According

(04:49):
to this legend, Scota was married to a Greek king
named Gethlos, so Scota is the namesake of Scotland and
the Scots, and Giethlos is the namesake of the Gaels
and the Scots Gallic language. The earliest written account of
this story is Baldrid Bissett's Processes in thirteen oh one.
The story that is most likely to be English in

(05:11):
origin is that the Stone of Schoon was the stone
pillow that the biblical figure of Jacob rested his head
on when he dreamed of a latter stretching up to
heaven with angels ascending and descending. In this version, the
stone was brought to Scotland from the Holy Land, again
by way of Ireland. The exact origins of both of
these stories aren't really clear, but there's some suggestion that

(05:34):
the one involving Jacob's stone pillow came from the monks
at Westminster after the stone had been taken from Scotland
to England. It was first recorded in writing by William Risheinger, Benedictine,
monk at Saint Albans in his chronicle, which dates back
to the thirteen twenties. But geological research on the stone
suggests that it was not brought to Scoon from somewhere else.

(05:56):
It was quarried locally. Its textures, colors and minerals are
similar to stone from the Schoon's Sandstone formation, which dates
back to the Devonian Epoch roughly four hundred million years ago,
so while the stone itself is hundreds of millions of
years old, it was quarried a lot more recently. There
are obvious tool marks suggesting how it was shaped and finished.

(06:19):
It's possible that this was always meant as a seat
for inaugurating Scotland's kings, but it may have originally been
meant to be part of a building, like maybe a church,
or it may have actually been used as part of
a building and then later repurposed. Today, the Stone of
Scoon is an oblong block measuring twenty six inches by

(06:39):
sixteen inches by eleven inches that's sixty six centimeters by
forty one centimeters by twenty eight centimeters. There's an iron
ring on each end, connected to an iron staple via
sort of a twisted figure eight link. These iron elements
date back to the medieval period, but we don't know
exactly when they were put into the stone. The first

(07:00):
written mention of them as from eighteen twenty three, but
they were definitely there before that. One common idea is
that the English put them on the stone while it
was still in Scotland, so they could carry it suspended
from a pole, but there would have been a much
easier way to carry it, like cart or a wheelbarrow.
Another possibility is that they were added after the stone
was taken to England, and that they were meant to

(07:21):
help lower the stone into the coronation chair, or perhaps
they were meant to fasten the stone to something else
so that it could not be removed from the chair.
To add to all the things we don't know, we
don't entirely know what the stone looked like before it
was taken from Scotland. Some early descriptions of the stone
actually describe it as marble, not sandstone. One such account

(07:44):
as Baldred Visits thirteen oh one Processus, which calls it
the quote Royal Seat of Marble. Medieval accounts are pretty
consistent in their descriptions of the stone as made from marble,
but these accounts were mostly written by people who had
never personally seen it, so we're picking up that marble
descriptor from other earlier work. There are also accounts that

(08:05):
describe it as basalts or Meteoric in origin, and a
lot of these early descriptions are also just really vague.
They don't give a lot of specifics about what the
stone looked like or what it was like for the
king to sit on it. Some early illustrations of the
Stone of Schoon show it as part of a throne,
or as an entire throne carved out of stone. That

(08:26):
seems to have come from the assumption that if it
was being used as part of a coronation, it must
have been shaped like a throne. In the fourteenth century,
sources also started recording a prophecy associated with the stone,
usually written in a couplet in Latin. We are not
going to try to mangle that Latin, but it roughly
translates to wherever the stone goes, Fate has decreed that

(08:49):
the Scots shall reign. And after we take a quick
sponsor break, we're going to talk about how this stone
was taken from Scotland to England. A series of Scottish
kings followed Kenneth the First, and according to tradition, they

(09:12):
were all inaugurated at Scoon Abbey on the Stone of Scoon.
I'm saying according to tradition because in a lot of
cases it's just not documented, and that is also true
a lot of the English monarchs, and whether or not
they sat on the coronation share while they were being crowned,
I think this just wasn't something that people thought needed

(09:32):
to be written down as part of the account. The
earliest written description not just of the stone's existence but
also of its use in this way is in reference
to the inauguration of King Alexander the Third of Scotland
in twelve forty nine. Alexander the Third died in March
of twelve eighty six, either he fell off his horse

(09:54):
or his horse fell off a cliff. He had only
one living descendant, and that was his granddaughter, Margaret. Margaret's
father was Eric, the second King of Norway, and Margaret
was known as the Maid of Norway. There were already
power struggles going on between England and Scotland. Alexander the
Third had become king at the age of only seven

(10:15):
and his first wife, Margaret, had been the daughter of
England's King Henry the third. Henry had tried to get
Alexander to recognize him as sovereign of Scotland, and Alexander
had refused. This all happened alongside an ongoing rivalry among
pro and anti English factions in Scotland, and at one
point Alexander was even taken captive. So it's not really

(10:38):
surprising that when a marriage was arranged for Margaret made
of Norway, it was to King Edward, the first of
England's son also called Edward, although it was under terms
that would maintain Scotland as a separate kingdom. However, when
Margaret was traveling from Norway to England in twelve ninety,
she got sick and died at the age of about seven,

(10:59):
without ever having having been formally inaugurated as Scotland's queen.
This sparked a succession crisis, with thirteen different claimants to
the throne. King Edward the First, also known as Edward
Longshanks and later as the Hammer of Scotland, established himself
as a judicator to sort out all of these claims
during proceedings that took more than a year, it became

(11:21):
clear that whoever became the next King of Scotland would
be expected to be subservient to England. Ultimately, John de
Balliol was selected as king. His paternal grandfather was David,
Earl of Huntington, brother of Scottish King's Malcolm the fourth
and William the First. Edward the First confirmed the decision
on November seventeenth, twelve ninety two, and then John was

(11:43):
inaugurated at Schoon on November thirtieth. On December twenty sixth,
he swore homage to Edward the First. Some in Scotland
were outraged over an English king's involvement in selecting the
next King of Scotland and in this whole swearing homage
to England. A Scottish Council of War was established to
try to mitigate John's deference to Edward. Then, when England

(12:05):
asked Scotland for military aid to support a campaign against
Gascony in what's now southwestern France, Scotland instead made an
agreement with the French, forming what came to be known
as the Old Alliance. In twelve ninety five. If England
invaded France, Scotland would invade England and France would also
defend Scotland against English advances. This became the start of

(12:28):
the Scottish Wars of Independence, also called the Anglo Scottish Wars.
England invaded Scotland in twelve ninety six, sacking the town
of Berwick upon Tweed and defeating Scotland at the Battle
of Dunbar. After the Battle of Dunbar, Edward's troops removed
the Stone of Scoon and took it to England, probably
as they were returning home after the battles. It was

(12:51):
most likely taken over Lands because of the risk of
it being lost if there were a shipwreck. Not long after,
Edward ordered a chair to be built to house the
Stone of Schoon, with the stone functioning as its seat.
The initial plan was to have this chair cast in bronze,
but that was abandoned, probably because it would have been

(13:11):
very expensive and Edward needed the money for his ongoing
military campaigns. In the end, he commissioned the carving of
a wooden chair in twelve ninety seven and it was
finished in thirteen hundred. That might seem surprisingly long given
what the chair looks like today, but at the time
it was covered in ornate gilt decorations and colored glass

(13:32):
which are no longer visible. Although the chair was made
to house the stone of Schoon, the stone was also
reshaped somewhat to fit the chair, and as we said earlier,
this may have been when the iron rings were added
to it for the purpose of lifting it in and
out of the seat portion of the chair. Once it
was finished, the chair with the stone of Spoon as
its seat, was presented to the shrine of Edward the

(13:55):
Confessor at Westminster Abbey, so it sometimes also called Saint
Edward's Chair. We should take a minute to talk about
some of the symbolism involved in this. The most straightforward
part is that after defeating Scotland, Edward the First had
taken the stone that was used to inaugurate Scottish kings,
and he had put it into a chair that he
could sit on. That was an obvious insult, and it

(14:18):
was also meant to reinforce Scotland's place relative to England,
but this also served as a symbol of England's right
to rule over Scotland and establishing that England's king was
also King of Scotland. Placing the chair in Westminster Abbey
in the shrine of the King, who was at the
time regarded as the patron saint of England, gave the

(14:40):
chair a religious significance, and being home to the chair
also elevated the significance of Westminster Abbey. So you may
have noticed earlier that when we talked about the origin
stories for the Stone of Schoon, the first written record
of each story was from the early thirteen hundreds. This
was also related. Each of these nations was using the

(15:01):
stone's origin story to reinforce an idea about itself, England
that it had the right to rule Scotland and Scotland
that it was an independent nation. Scotland had also taken
this matter to Pope Boniface the Eighth, who issued a
papal bull ordering Edward to explain England's claims over Scotland,
and both of these stories were part of the two

(15:22):
nations respective cases. Scotland started demanding the return of the
stone during its ongoing fight for independence in the fourteenth century,
including in thirteen twenty four during negotiations for Edward to
recognize Robert the Bruce as King of an independent Scotland.
One of the interpretations of that Latin couplet that we

(15:42):
talked about earlier became that Scott's would rule wherever the
stone was, meaning that Scotland would one day rule England.
There is a whole history involving the Scottish Wars of
Independence that we're not really getting into here, including everything
involving William Wallace. But in thirteen twenty Scotland issued a
declaration of are Growth, asking Pope John the twenty second

(16:02):
to recognize Scottish independence. The Pope encouraged English King Edward
the Second to work toward peace, and Scotland's independent was
recognized in thirteen twenty eight, but the Stone of Scoon
remained in England. Although the coronation chair is believed to
have been used in the coronation of every English monarch
after Edward the First had it built, it is not

(16:24):
specifically mentioned until the coronation of Henry the Fourth and
thirteen ninety nine, skipping massively ahead. The next time a
Scottish king sat on the Stone of Schoon was when
James the sixth of Scotland also became James the First
of England in sixteen oh three. People who believed that
Latin couplet was prophetic probably felt very vindicated. Then in

(16:47):
seventeen oh seven, the Acts of Union united the two
nations into one country. A couple of other moments from
the stone's history after this point until it was removed
in the nineteen fifty highst The only time the stone
is known to have left Westminster Abbey was in sixteen
fifty seven, when Oliver Cromwell was reinstalled as Lord Protector

(17:07):
in Westminster Hall. By eighteen sixty eight, a visible crack
had developed in the stone, probably following a natural fault line.
You can see this crack in the first known photograph
of the stone, which was taken that year. Samples were
collected from the stone for study in the nineteenth century,
including in advance of the coronation of Queen Victoria. In

(17:30):
eighteen eighty four, British Army intelligence intercepted a plot by
the Irish Fenian Brotherhood to steal the stone, and in
nineteen fourteen the Coronation share was damaged when suffragists placed
a bomb under it. By the nineteenth century, a Scottish
nationalist movement had started to coalesce as people advocated that
autonomy or independence be returned to Scotland, and that is

(17:53):
where we finally get to the heist, which will do
after a sponsor break. The Support for Scottish home rule
grew after World War One, and in the nineteen thirties,
Scottish nationalist and Stonemason Robert Gray also called Bertie, came

(18:16):
up with a plan to swap the stone of Schoon
for a replica he had made. He reportedly made a
special wheelchair with space for the stone to go in
and practiced using it. This plan doesn't ever seem to
have really gone farther than that. Also, the stone weighs
three hundred and thirty six pounds or one hundred and
fifty two kilograms, so I think this idea also had

(18:39):
some logistical problems, going from you know, not using a
wheelchair to using one that had an additional three hundred
and thirty six pounds in the seat. Support for Scottish
self government grew again after World War Two. John McCormick,
lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, established the Scottish
Convention to camp paying for home rule, including drafting a

(19:02):
petition called the Scottish Covenant that garnered about two million signatures.
McCormick and Robert Gray were two of the people who
provided funding for the Stone of schoon Heist. William Craig,
president of Glasgow University Union, also helped Planet, but did
not personally take part. Instead, there were four students from

(19:22):
Glasgow University, Ian Hamilton, Kay Matheson, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stewart.
Stuart was the youngest of them at the age of
twenty and Matheson was twenty one. Hamilton, who was twenty five,
had served in the Royal Air Force, and Vernon, who
was twenty four, had served in the Royal Corps of
Signals before going to the university. So while these four

(19:44):
folks are often described as college students, they were not teenagers.
Hamilton made a trip to London in November to case
Westminster Abbey, and then Hamilton, Matheson, Vernon and Stuart all
left Glasgow for London on December twenty second. They were
in two Ford Anglias, one belonging to Stuart and the
other rented. The trip took eighteen hours, which is much

(20:08):
longer than it likely would take today because they were
mostly on secondary roads that were not being plowed or
otherwise treated for ice and snow. The plan was simple.
One of them would hide inside Westminster Abbey until it
had closed for the night, and then let the other
ones in. They would take the stone out of the
coronation chair, put it in one of the cars, and leave.

(20:29):
Things did not go according to plan, though. On December
twenty third, Hamilton hid inside Westminster Abbey, but a night
watchman caught him. Hamilton told the guard that he had
been locked in by accident, and the watchman, who seems
to have thought he was down on his luck and
looking for shelter, offered him some money before escorting him out.
On Christmas Eve, Vernon and Stewart tried the same thing,

(20:51):
but they were also caught, so in the very early
hours of Christmas morning, the four of them returned to
Westminster Abbey and waved outside with one of the cars,
while the others used a crowbar to force open a
door to Poet's Corner. According to an account written by Matheson,
there was some brief confusion when they realized they had
accidentally left that crowbar back in the car. Most of

(21:14):
the abbey's doors were made of oak, but this one
had been damaged during the war and replaced with pine.
This made the door relatively less sturdy than the other ones,
but the participants described this break in as incredibly loud.
It probably seemed even louder considering that they were trying
to be quiet. Once they were inside, they made their

(21:36):
way to the coronation chair and again used the crowbar
to remove one of the panels so that they could
get the stone. They damaged the chair in the process.
They had planned to put the stone onto one of
their coats that was on the floor and then drag
it out of the abbey, but either when the stone
hit the floor or when they pulled on one of
the rings, it broke along the existing crack. So Hamilton

(21:58):
picked up the smaller piece, which weighed about ninety pounds
or forty kilograms, and took that out to the car.
As he was getting to the car, Hamilton saw a
police officer, so he threw the piece of the stone
inside the car, put his coat over it, and started
making out with Matheson. When the officer interrupted them, they
told him that they had just gotten to town and

(22:18):
could not find a hotel room. The officer told them
they had to move along, and they drove away. Vernon
and Stewart were still in the abbey, and they thought
Hamilton and Matheson had fled, so they left on foot,
but by that point Hamilton had realized he'd lost the
keys to the other car somewhere and was on his
way back. Once Matheson got back into the abbey, he

(22:41):
managed to find the keys on the floor near the door.
He also managed to haul the other piece of the stone,
which weighed roughly two hundred and fifty pounds that's one
hundred and thirteen kilograms, out of the abbey and into
the trunk of the other car. I marvel at his strength.
On his way out of London, he spotted Vernon and Stuart.
He picked up Stuart, but the stone was so heavy

(23:03):
they thought the car wouldn't make it with all of
them inside, so Vernon went home by train. Matheson, traveling
by herself, made her way back to Scotland without much trouble,
although I did find one account that said that she
was pulling away from the stoplight outside Herod's Department store
and the stone fell out of the trunk of the car,
or as they call it in England, the boot. She

(23:25):
noticed that this was happening. If this really it does
sound very dramatic, but she heard it fall put it
back in the car and then later left the piece
of stone at a friend's house. Hamilton and the other
men ultimately made their way to a field in Kent
where they covered up the stone in soil and vegetation,
and then they started making their way back to Scotland
as well. The theft of the stone and the damage

(23:48):
to the coronation share were discovered at about six fifteen
am Christmas morning. The Dean of Westminster described this as
a sacrilege, and in general the sense in England was
that this whole theft was shocking and appalling, and responses
in Scotland were mixed. Some of the more radical Scottish
nationalists were excited about it, but even among nationalists a

(24:11):
lot of people were more tempered. They thought the stone
belonged in Scotland, but that it should not have been
stolen that way. Of course, there were also people who
were very critical. In the words of a piece in
the Glasgow Herald quote, pilfering from a church on Christmas
Eve or Christmas Day is not an achievement to be
proud of. None of them even knew it had been

(24:32):
broken in the process. It was immediately taken for granted
that the stone had been stolen by Scottish nationalists, and
words spread about the suspicious persons caught in the abbey
on December twenty third and twenty fourth and the couple
with the Ford Anglia. In the early hours of the
twenty fifth, authorities started a search for the stone and
closed the borders to Scotland and Wales for the first

(24:54):
time in centuries. A reward of two thousand pounds was
offered for the stone's return. The plan had been to
leave the larger piece of the stone in Kent until
the furor died down, but Hamilton went back for it
within about a week. Over the years, he gave multiple
reasons for doing this, including worrying that the stone could

(25:15):
be damaged by the elements since it had been indoors
for centuries, worrying that it would be lost somehow, and
realizing that a lot of people in Scotland were concerned
about where it was. So he Alan Stewart and two
others went to Kent to retrieve it on New Year's Eve.
This also did not go according to plan. When they

(25:35):
got there, a group of Irish travelers were encamped over
the spot where Hamilton had left the stone. Hamilton and
the others convinced them to move so that they could
get the stone and take it back to Scotland. To
be clear, we don't know if they let on that
this important artifact was underneath their camp or not. It's
all a little bit fuzzy. Yeah. Everything that we have

(25:56):
about these details comes from a written by the people involved,
some of them intentionally written in a pretty dramatic cinemagraphic
almost way in the In the movie version, there is
a very stirring speech about how you know travelers are

(26:16):
discriminated against and so are Scots, and we need to
get this stone out from underneath you, in pretty colorful language.
To move on. Hamilton took the larger part to members
of the Scottish Covenant Association who hid it under a
floor of a factory in bonnie Bridge, and then later
it was moved to Sterling. Eventually both pieces of the

(26:38):
stone were taken to Robert Gray to try to repair it.
He did this using three metal dowels and Portland cement,
and you can still see this repair today. There are
rumors that the dowels were hollow and that he hit
a message in one of them. Eventually, the Scottish Covenant
Association decided to return the stone to England. Various different

(27:01):
reasons have been given for this, but they all sort
of boiled down to feeling like they had made their
point and they were thinking that continuing to try to
hide the stone in Scotland was a risk. By this point,
Hamilton was facing suspicion for his involvement, among other things.
Authorities had gotten access to library records from the university
and found that he had checked out every book they

(27:24):
had about the Stone of Scoon. The stone was left
at our Broth Abbey, where the Declaration of Our Broth
had been drafted in thirteen twenty. Gobby custodian James Wishart
found it on April eleventh, nineteen fifty one, draped in
a Scottish flag. While officials wanted to get the stone
back to England as soon as possible, they also did

(27:44):
not want to make a big deal about it, and
they also wanted to prevent the possibility of it being
stolen again on the way, so the stone's return was
simultaneously high security and low key. A limousine and a
jaguar meant to serve as place lease escort, were driven
to the abbey, but the stone was loaded into the jaguar,

(28:04):
not the limousine. As a crowd gathered around the limousine,
the jaguar left with the stone, and then the limousine
left after that, at a high speed and going in
a different direction. Once the stone was back in England,
it was initially placed in a vault for security reasons,
and then it was returned to the coronation chair for
the nineteen fifty three coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. There

(28:28):
were some other attempts to steal the stone after this.
In nineteen sixty seven, John Patrick O'Byrne set off the
alarm trying to remove the stone from the chair because
unlike in nineteen fifty there was an alarm now. He
was convicted of larceny. In nineteen seventy four, David Carmichael
Stewart plans to remove the stone using a canvas sling

(28:50):
and a homemade cart, but the cart collapsed when he
put the stone into it. He was arrested, but charges
against him were later dropped. In the idea of returning
this tone to Scotland was renewed in the nineteen nineties,
thanks in part to the publication of a new book
by Ian Hamilton and increasing calls for Scottish home rule.

(29:12):
Scottish campaigner Robbie the pict also attempted a series of
legal actions, including reporting the twelve ninety six theft of
the stone to the police and going up the chain
from there, including to prosecutors, the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister,
the Dean of Westminster, and Queen Elizabeth the iond. On
July third, nineteen ninety six, Prime Minister John Major made

(29:34):
a statement to the House of Commons that began quote
the Stone of Destiny as the most ancient symbol of
Scottish kingship. It was used in the coronation of Scottish
kings until the end of the thirteenth century, exactly seven
hundred years ago. In twelve ninety six, King Edward the
First brought it from Scotland and housed it in Westminster Abbey.
It remains the property of the Crown. I wish to

(29:57):
inform the House that, on the advice of Her Majesty's ministers,
the Queen has agreed that the stone should be returned
to Scotland. The stone will of course be taken to
Westminster Abbey to play its traditional role in the coronation
ceremonies of future sovereigns of the United Kingdom. Their response
was again mixed. Some Scottish members of Parliament praised the

(30:19):
return of the stone, but this was not unanimous. For example,
Sir David Steele stated that the people of Scotland wanted
quote not just the symbol, but the substance, the substance
of the return of democratic control over our internal affairs
in Scotland. May I tell the Prime Minister before he
comes north on Friday that I hope he will not
continue to insult us by suggesting that although other countries

(30:42):
can organize decentralized government, most recently in Spain since the
death of Franco we are somehow incapable of doing the
same in the United Kingdom. And there were people in
England who were deeply critical of the decision, including the
Dean and Chapter of Westminster that's the ecclesiast bastical governing
body of Westminster Abbey. The Dean and Chapter had not

(31:04):
been consulted on this decision. They did not agree with
it at all. Queen Elizabeth the Second issued a royal
warrant on the return of the stone on November twelfth,
nineteen ninety six, and a team from Historic Scotland arrived
for the stone two days later. As with the Return
of the Stone in nineteen fifty one, this was both
low key and high security on England's end, done under

(31:27):
cover of night, with minimal fanfare, but with emphatically disapproving
expressions on the faces of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
The stone again traveled over land with an army escort,
crossing the border into Scotland at eleven oh five am
on November fifteenth. There was more fanfare in Scotland, including
a land rover with a clear enclosure so people could

(31:50):
see the stone inside, and a pipe band playing a
march called the Return of the Stone. Scoon Abbey is
no longer standing and Scoon Palace is privately owned, so
the Stone of Schoon was taken to Edmurrag Castle, where
it arrived on November thirtieth. The stone was given the
same welcome usually afforded to a visiting head of state,

(32:10):
including a twenty one gun salute that was placed in
the Crown Room along with the Crown jewels known as
the Honors of Scotland. Today, the stone is under the
Care of Historic Environment Scotland on behalf of the commissioners
for the safeguarding of the regalia. There are plans for
it to be moved to a new museum in Perth

(32:30):
City Hall in twenty twenty four. A devolved Scottish Government
was established in nineteen ninety nine, giving Scotland its own parliament,
so the Scottish and the UK governments each have specific
responsibilities within Scotland. Of course, the idea of Scottish independence
is still around. A twenty fourteen referendum asked the question
should Scotland be an independent country? Two million people voted

(32:54):
no and one point six million voted yes. There was
another surge in interest to the twenty nineteen Brexit debates.
Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted remain, while the total
vote was for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
Earlier this year, a high resolution three D model was
made of the stone as part of preparations to send

(33:15):
it to Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Charles the Third.
This revealed previously unrecorded markings that resemble Roman numerals, plus
a lot of marks from wear and tear and the
tooling that was done to shape the stone earlier in
its history. X ray fluorescence analysis suggested that the stone
was in contact with something made of bronze or brass

(33:38):
earlier in its history, and there are also traces of
gypsum plaster, possibly from a cast that was made of
it at some point. Also this year, in November, members
of the environmental activist group This Is Rigged attacked the
stone and vandalized its display case. Three people were charged
with malicious mischief and breach of peace. Course just happened,

(34:01):
and so I'm presuming more will have happened with that
by the time this episode comes out. None of the
people who were involved with the removal of the stone
in nineteen fifty were ever tried. At the time, authorities
said that they knew who the perpetrators were, but that
it would not be in the national interest to prosecute them. All.

(34:21):
Four of the people who were part of the Christmas
Heist have since died, Gavin Vernon in two thousand and four,
Ky Matheson in twenty thirteen, Alan Stewart in twenty nineteen,
and Ian Hamilton in twenty twenty two. Also, there are
a bunch of conspiracy theories about the Stone of Schoon
one started circulating in the nineteen seventies, claiming that the

(34:42):
stone that was sent to England in nineteen fifty one
was a fake, perhaps a replica made by Robert Gray.
Gray did make at least one replica of the stone,
which was left in Parliament Square in Edinburgh in nineteen
sixty five, but Gray's replicas were measurably different from the
Stone of Scoo, and the one that was returned in
nineteen fifty one has a visible repair that matches up

(35:04):
with the damage that participants described in the nineteen fifties.
The other conspiracy theory has been around since at least
seventeen eighty one, and this one claims that Edward the
First's army took the wrong stone from Scoon after the
Battle of Dunbar in the thirteenth century. This conspiracy theory
has been used to explain why the stone's various origin

(35:27):
stories describe it as coming from outside of Scotland world,
while the stone itself seems to have been quarried locally,
but none of the medieval accounts of the stone suggest
any kind of switcheroo. This is really an idea that
seems to have first come about almost five hundred years later.
Various other large stones have been cited as the quote

(35:51):
real stone, including one found at Dunzenine Hill, traditionally identified
as the site of Macbeth's castle in eighteen eighty. So
that's a stone of schoon. Do you have listener mail?
Why do I have a correction about an episode that's
been out for a bit, But this is actually the
first time that anybody has written about it. I'm sorry.

(36:13):
I do not know whether the person who sent this
email pronounces their name Bri or Brie. We just got
it this morning. The email says, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
I hope you are well. My name is Bri or
perhaps Brie. I have been an intermittent listener for the
past few years, and as a lifelong history lover, I
studied medieval and religious art history in college. Your podcast

(36:34):
has opened my mind to so many new eras I
never explored. Thank you. I have two things I wanted
to share with you. The first is a correction to
a few of your episodes. Sorry. The episodes about Dean
Muhammad had my Indian and Filipino boyfriend banging his head
against the wall and here's why India is actually considered
South Asia, not Southeast Asia. Examples of countries in Southeast

(36:56):
Asia are Vietnam, Thailand, and of course the Philippines. Common
misconception that India is Southeast Asia, though my boyfriend, as
a South and Southeast Asian man, had to explain it
to me when we first met, because people often think
that we both loved the episodes, though, so thank you.
The other thing I'd like to inquire about is a
topic of my own research in college, which was the

(37:18):
Jewish community in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
I studied much of the Dutch artwork of the period,
considered the Golden Age for mere Rembrandt et cetera, et cetera,
and also became acquainted with information about the Sephardic Jews
taking refuge in this period following the expulsions in fourteen
ninety two from Iberia. The history of this nearly forgotten

(37:38):
world is incredible. I believe there is so much value
to be found in showcasing such beautiful culture and history,
especially because I have found little information outside of academic
circles on the topic. I can give you both links
to titles and primary sources if you're interested. It was
a main focus for me and I only graduated this May.
I've attached an obligatory photo of my cats. Her name
is Mango and she loves to steal my math potatoes

(38:00):
and carry plastic bottles in her mouth like a dog.
Keep being amazing, guys, wishing you all the best this
holiday season. Thank you so much for this email and
this correction. I went back into the episode outline I
was like, did I did I say that? I did
say that, and then I went down a big rabbit

(38:20):
hole about like who decided what was Southeast Asia and
what was South Asia? Because a lot, unlike a lot
of regional groupings, it does seem to be pretty consistent
which countries are described as which. And I did not

(38:41):
find an answer to who decided what is South and
what is Southeast? So I'm sorry for messing that up.
And we have not talked about the Jewish community in
Amsterdam during this period. We have talked about the expulsion
of the Jewish unity for Iberia in fourteen ninety two.
So thank you so much for this, and thank you

(39:03):
for this cat picture. This kitty cat looks a little
startled to be on camera. If you would like to
send us a note about this or any other podcast.
For history podcasts at iHeartRadio. You can find us on
social media ad Missed in History, and you can subscribe
to the show if you haven't, on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you

(39:29):
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Stone of Scone Heist