Stories About Famous Precious StonesOrpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
History
Stories About Famous Precious Stones
Orpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
Gems
Berquen was likely to be well-informed both from his profession and from
his position. His book is highly interesting and contains some very
quaint passages. Thus, when writing of diamonds he assumes a critical
attitude in surveying past writers and their deductions, and rejects
with scorn and as utterly unworthy of belief the statement that a lady,
having two large diamonds, put them away in a box and found, on again
examining the box, that they had produced several young ones.
The expression "the present Queen of England" has considerably puzzled
many writers, since at that date there were two queens of England,
namely the dowager Henrietta and the consort of Charles II., Catherine
of Braganza. It seems most probable that the expression refers to the
latter, for some years previous to the Restoration we find Henrietta
disposing of the diamond to the Earl of Worcester. The following letter
is in her hand:
"We Henrietta Moria of Bourbon, Queen of Great Britain, have by
command of our much honored lord and master the King caused to be
handed to our dear and well-beloved cousin Edward Somerset, Count
and Earl of Worcester, a ruby necklace containing ten large rubies,
and one hundred and sixty pearls set and strung together in gold.
Among the said rubies are also two large diamonds called the
'Sanci' and the 'Portugal,'" etc.
After the Restoration Charles II. made strenuous endeavors to collect
the scattered jewels of his Crown. How or when he recovered the Sanci
and the Portugal we cannot now tell. It would be very like the devoted
Worcester who ruined himself for the Stuarts to have given them back to
Charles without stipulation, and it would be very like a Stuart to have
accepted them and never to have paid for them. Worcester died in 1677
and two years later, as we have seen, the Sanci was in the hands of the
"present Queen of England."
Along with the Crown, the Sanci descended to James II., and no doubt
figured at the extraordinarily fine coronation which inaugurated his
disastrous reign. The Queen had a million's worth of jewels on her gown
alone, and "shone like an angel," says a contemporary, who was so
dazzled by her splendor that he could scarcely look at her. When James
lost his crown he managed to keep hold of the Sanci and also,
presumably, of the Portugal. Indeed the jewels of England for a long
time served to keep the famished court of the Stuarts around James and
his son. Gradually they were sold to meet the exigencies of the various
Pretenders till nothing of value was left for the last Stuart, the
Cardinal of York, to bequeath to the English King. Among the first to go
was the Sanci which James II. sold to Louis XIV. for twenty-five
thousand pounds about the year 1695.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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