Clan Scott · 1818
The Honours of Scotland
In 1818 Walter Scott opened a chest in Edinburgh Castle that had been sealed for 111 years and pulled out a country.
Draft entry · awaiting review
The Honours of Scotland — the Crown of James V, the Sceptre, and the Sword of State — are the oldest crown jewels in Britain, used to crown every Scottish monarch from Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1543 to Charles II at Scone in 1651. After the Treaty of Union of 1707 they were locked in a chest in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle. The doors were sealed. By the 1810s most Scots assumed they had been quietly taken to London or melted down.
Walter Scott — already the author of Waverley and Rob Roy, already the most-read writer in Europe — petitioned the Prince Regent for permission to open the chest. The warrant was granted in 1818. On 4 February the door was forced. The Honours were there.
Scott put them on public display and engineered the rest. The state visit of George IV to Edinburgh in August 1822 — the first reigning Hanoverian to set foot in Scotland — was Scott's production from end to end: the king in a kilt, the lord mayor of Edinburgh in tartan trews, the Honours carried in procession down the Royal Mile. The image of Scotland that the world now knows — Highland, romantic, plaid, single — was largely invented by one man in a sitting-room in Castle Street, Edinburgh.
The Honours were last carried in state at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at St Giles' in 2022.