David Manderson: The ‘Instrument of Authority’
It would be me, somehow, that got the Instrument of Authority. Whatever that is. I’m the guy everyone thinks is a cop on holiday: the short hair, the ultra-straight look (though that’s not me at all).
But what is this ‘treasure’ exactly? Something dark, brutal and unpleasant no doubt … A truncheon? A hook on a dungeon wall?
But here’s a surprise. With my treasure comes a picture, and it’s none of the above. It’s not cold and cruel. It’s a document, a crisp piece of parchment with faded coloured ink, red lions rampant down the margins, scratchy signatures at the bottom, and big words that stand out:
At the Castle of Edinburgh …
My research starts on the Net, and with a few guesses, a little ingenuity and some clicks I have all I need. I will go to Edinburgh to see it though. I can’t miss the chance of standing in front of it and taking it in, the reality of it, not just on a screen. Because it really is a treasure I’ve been given, a piece of a story that was lost and found, and lost again and found once more, and has come back as alive today as it was three hundred years ago.
This is the document that the keeper of the Scottish Crown Jewels – or the ‘Honours of Scotland’ as they were known – had drawn up at the Treaty of Union in 1707. He was one William Wilson, and he must have been conscious of the importance of the moment, and his role in it. For it had been decided, and written into the Treaty, that the Honours would stay in Scotland, kept forever in Edinburgh Castle, a marker of all that remained of Scottish independence.
And maybe he was aware too of the trouble in the streets, the cries of rage from the markets and taverns, the unrest at the selling of a nation ‘for English gold’ - or gold of any sort. Maybe he knew that the significance of the jewels was much greater than their value or their symbolic power.
Perhaps he believed, as many others did, that they were the soul of Scotland, something people would sell their lives for. They already had, during Cromwell’s brief but brutal reign, when they had been shielded against overwhelming odds in Dunnottar Castle, and then smuggled out, a frantic, desperate escape, to be buried again in Kinneff Chapel for eight years, until Charles II mounted the throne and Cromwell’s head rested on a pike. Maybe he knew that symbols though they were they stood for something, like the Stone of Scone, that people would remember, and long for again.
The Which Day …
Local poets on that fateful day in 1707 even gave the Honours a voice, sadly lamenting their fate:
The Croun’s last speech 26 March 1707
When lodged in ye castle of Edinr after ye
rising of ye parliament
I royal diadem relinquisht stand
By all my friends and robbed of my land
So left bereft of all I did command …
And they were indeed lost. In fact, the crown, orb and sceptre were to disappear for over a hundred years, forgotten, the cast-off relic of a cast-off nation. And not until a new era had set in, and a young Borders lawyer (who was rapidly becoming a best-selling author and an international publishing sensation), Walter Scott, set out to trace them were they found again. Scott used the Instrument to prove that the Honours were still in the castle – after all, it said they would be there forever, and it was stated again in Article 24 of the Treaty – but rumour had it they’d been taken to London decades before, like everything else of any worth, and melted down. But in the Crown Room of the castle that day in 1818 an ancient chest was opened, a roughly bound bundle drawn out, and there they were, the oldest sovereign ornaments in Britain, still as they were on the day they’d been taken from their rightful place and hidden in darkness. Maybe something like Scotland itself.
The story doesn’t even end there – for the jewels were buried again, in the grounds of Edinburgh Castle during the Second World War. But today they rest on scarlet velvet in the Edinburgh Crown Room, except when they’re dusted down and give a rare journey down the Mile, like they were just the other day for the Queen’s opening of the Holyrood parliament. And the Instrument – loudly, blowsily and show-offily - still protests the right of a nation to protect what it holds most dear.
A country at a cross-roads, trouble in the streets, debates over dependence or independence, a new parliament, no end of pride, and still no gold …
It was so long ago. It couldn’t happen now.
Mind you …
