The Imperial State Crown in the Crown Jewels of Great Britain - Its History, Meaning and Origin

Hello this is Alan Barton and welcome to Antiquarians Anonymous. Today I'm going to talk about something quite different than my usual fare. I'm going to talk about an object that forms one of the centrepieces of the crown jewels of the United Kingdom, the Imperial State Crown. Before I started this video I went looking on YouTube to see if there were any others about the Imperial State Crown and there are a few short videos about the modern incarnation of it and even the Queen talking about wearing it, but nothing about the crown's origins, its history, its artistic development and none that explain what the crown symbolises and why it is called the Imperial State Crown. So I hope this in-depth video will fill in that gap. It's important to note that the United Kingdom is now the only country among modern western constitutional monarchies where crowns are routinely worn by kings and queens. We are unique in Europe in still practising a coronation right as part of the accession of a new monarch. We are also rather unique in not having just one crown but two primary crowns. The first of these, St Edward's Crown, is the crown used at the coronation and is only worn once. I'll do a further video on that as it started life as a relic. The second crown, the Imperial State Crown, which I want to talk about today in contrast to St Edward's Crown, is worn annually by the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament and has a fascinating and much more complex history. First of all let's consider what the title of this crown the Imperial State Crown actually means as its meaning is not immediately plain and self-evident. You might assume that the state part refers to the crown being the symbol of the British state but it doesn't. The use of the word state to refer to a country is very late 17th or 18th century and in England we had state crowns from the medieval period onwards. The earlier meaning of the word state or estate, the two words are synonymous, comes from the old French word which means the position, condition, status or stature of a person. So the state of a person who was a monarch was their kingliness or queenliness and when they best expressed that state was when they were wearing the symbolic trappings of their royal office, the crown, the royal robe and the sceptre. When kings and queens of England appeared so dressed it is referred to as them appearing in state or estate. They were expressing through their dress who they were. When the Queen opens Parliament in the 21st century this is often referred to as the State Opening of Parliament because the Queen still attends in her full state. She wears her crown, her parliamentary robe and all the trappings of her royal position. When a British monarch dies they have a state funeral and they lie in state in Westminster Hall. That doesn't mean that the British state gives a good send-off, though they do, but that their coffined body lies adorned with all the trappings of their royal status and authority topped by the crown and the orb and the sceptre. Until the 17th century a state funeral involved a funeral effigy of the king and queen placed on top of the coffin dressed in their royal robes with the state crown on their head. So the state crown is the crown that the monarch wears when they appear publicly in state. In times past the crown was worn not only at the State Opening of Parliament but on other crown-wearing days of estate. King Henry VI in the middle of the 15th century appeared in state in his crown on the major Christian feasts of the year, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Whitsun and All Saints Day. King Henry VII seems to have worn his crown only at Epiphany but wore the purple, his state robes, on the rest of those feasts. On these days the king would process in state from his apartments to the Chapel Royal so dressed and then would form part of the festal procession that took place before the mass. Now the imperial aspect of the name of the crown has nothing whatsoever to do with the British Empire and is concerned with the form of the crown. In the early 1530s King Henry VIII, as he began to think about divorcing Catherine of Aragon, got rather sick of the Pope and other outside forces meddling in his affairs. In 1533 his rather canny Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell pushed through Parliament a bill called the Act in Restraint of Appeals which made it illegal for people in England to appeal to the Pope to overturn the king's decisions on church matters. It was the beginning of his break from the Roman Church. Now the premise of this Act declares that England is and always was an empire and that the King of England functioned as an emperor who was free and independent of any foreign interference. This idea of England being an empire wasn't an entirely new concept. The independence of the Crown of England from papal authority was a sentiment already being expressed from the early 15th century. Now if England was an empire the English King must appear as an emperor and wear an appropriate crown and so the English kings begin to wear a crown that reflected that status. Before 1400 English kings had worn crowns that were circlets but Henry V starts to wear what is called a closed crown where the top of the crown is enclosed by arches and then topped by what's called a mond, a globe, with a cross on top of that. This was a self-conscious emulation of the personal and state crowns worn by other emperors including the Holy Roman Emperor and the late Byzantine emperors which also had one or two arches topped with a cross. The Holy Crown of Hungary, a late Byzantine crown of the 11th century, is precisely of this form. So an imperial crown is a crown with arches as was worn by an emperor. So when worn in state the imperial state crown with its arches makes a statement about the English and subsequently the British monarch's sense of their particular kingly status as the head of a self-determining imperial kingdom free from outside political interference. As the state crown was the most used crown in the royal jewel house and was in frequent use it very often needed repair and replacement. In fact the present imperial state crown is the sixth state crown used since the early 16th century. Although we know nothing concrete about the crowns worn before the reign of King Henry VIII we know rather a lot about the crown used by him. Made either for him or his father Henry VII, the crown is described in some detail in an inventory of the jewel house in 1521. Here is Henry VIII wearing it. The crown is also shown in a portrait of 1631 of King Charles I by Daniel Maitens. Made of solid gold the crown consisted of a band adorned with five crosses The crown was encrusted with 168 pearls, 58 rubies, 28 diamonds, 19 sapphires and two emeralds. The gems were mostly polished as cabochons which were the prevailing fashion of the late gothic period. The crown was also adorned with enamel plaques in the centre of figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint George and Three of Christ. Rather bizarrely sometime after Henry VIII broke with Rome the crown was altered and the figures of Christ were removed and replaced by three figures of kings of England, Saint Edmund, Saint Edward the Confessor and King Henry VI. This crown remained in service until the reign of King Charles I and after his execution in 1649 with the monarchy abolished, Parliament ordered the crown to be melted down. At the time the crown's materials were valued at 1,100 pounds and the whole thing weighed a neck-breaking 2.8 kilos. Compare that to the present imperial state crown which weighs just a little over one kilo. It's no wonder the kings of England didn't wear their crown very often. The destruction of the regalia and the Commonwealth meant that when the monarchy was restored in 1660 and Charles II came to the throne there was absolutely nothing for him to wear at his coronation. So a whole new set of regalia was created. The decision was taken to replicate two crowns, to have a coronation crown and a separate state crown. Robert Viner the London banker was given the job of creating these two new crowns. One of these of course, Saint Edward's crown, still survives but the state crown does not. It's that crown that you can see here on the head of King Charles II. The state crown was the grandeur of the two. Saint Edward's crown was set with hired stones only for the coronation but the gold state crown was set with 900 diamonds, 549 pearls, 20 emeralds, 18 sapphires and 10 rubies. It made the Tudor crown look rather plain. Now you may remember from your history lessons in school that in 1671 an audacious Irish desperado called Thomas Blood tried to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London. Now Blood ingratiates himself with the keeper of the jewel house and is able to get into the jewel house and make away with some of the crown jewels. Now it's usually assumed that Blood took away King Edward's crown, the coronation crown, but he didn't. It was the state crown which was considerably lighter. He hits it with a mallet, squashes it and places it under his cloak before getting away. Now in this wonderful engraving you can see Blood with the crown under his cloak and you can see the cupboard in the jewel house in which the crown jewels are kept. There is the castle-like Great Salt and above still on the shelf is St Edward's crown. Although the crown is mended it's never really quite the same again. When Charles II's Catholic brother James II comes to the throne in 1685 the crown needs a bit of work and it's given a facelift just in time for James's coronation. Here it is just after the makeover. It's more of a starting up than anything else to be honest. The top of the crown gets what's called a new mond, a new globe with a cross on it. This is seemingly made of aquamarine and diamonds but it turns out the aquamarine is in fact made of paste. It seems really surprising that crowns are set with hired jewels and paste rather than real gems are put on the English crown but the royal family do not have a never-ending budget in the restoration period. Although Charles II and James II would like to think of themselves as the English equivalent of Louis XIV they had neither the power or the finance of the French king. The English crown jewels delivered splendour on a reasonably pragmatic budget. As part of the 1685 restoration of the crown James had an iconic jewel added to it at the front, a jewel that still takes pride of place on the modern state crown. Known as the black prince's ruby it's not really a ruby at all but a 170 carat spinel, the largest uncut spinel in the world. It's not a subtle stone. This stone has a bloody history that befits its colour. In the 14th century the ruby belonged to Abu Sa'id, the Arab prince of Granada. In the 1350s and 60s his Muslim kingdom in Iberia was under attack from the Christian king of Castile, Peter, known variously as Peter the Cruel or Peter the Just depending on which side of things you were on. Abu Sa'id realises that the game is up and tries to surrender but Peter, rather ruthlessly, stabs him to death and the ruby is found on Abu Sa'id's clothing. When things were not going too well for Peter in 1366 and he was facing a rebellion from his half-brother, he enlists the military aid of Edward the Black Prince of Wales, son of King Edward III. When the rebellion is successfully put down, the Black Prince demands the ruby as payment for his aid. The Black Prince brings the stone back to England and it becomes an heirloom of the English royal family, forever known as the Black Prince's Ruby. It's worn by King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt and Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. It may well have been set into the Tudor state crown but during the Commonwealth it is sold and goes missing, only reappearing during the reign of King Charles II after the 1661 state crown has already been made. You can see this enormous red spinel illustrated here on the crown worn by King William III at his coronation. At the time the first Hanoverian king, George I, ascends to the English throne in 1714. The 1661 state crown is looking a little worse for wear and never really recovered from its poor treatment by Colonel Blood in 1671. So the decision is made to create a new state crown in time for George's coronation. Made by the goldsmith Samuel Smithyn, the new state crown followed almost precisely the form of the 1661 crown, with the same settings of coloured gems augmented with more stones and with a frame that was somewhat lighter than its predecessor. The aquamarine mond and the cross added to the 1661 crown by James II was salvaged and reused and the Black Prince's Ruby reset in it too. This crown, though altered, would serve for the next 100 years. By the coronation of George II in 1727 this form of crown was looking very dated and unfashionable. Brilliant cut diamonds were all the rage in Georgia and London and so the decision was made to remove many of the old coloured stones and reset the crown with hired diamonds. At this point in time the state crown takes centre stage. The coronation crown, St Edward's crown, equally unfashionable, falls out of favour and all English monarchs except one, we'll come to him in a minute, until George V in 1910 are crowned with the state crown. The frame of the 1714 state crown, denuded of its stones which have been reused elsewhere, still remains among the collection in the jewel house. In 1820 King George III died and his eldest son, who for a decade had been Prince Regent, became King George IV. To put it mildly, George was not known for his simplicity of living. A really rather absurd person he considered himself to be the vanquisher of Napoleon and he was determined that his coronation in July of 1821 would both emulate and outshine the splendour of Napoleon's coronation in 1804. George's coronation would prove to be the most expensive ever, costing an eye-watering £238,000, 20 times the cost of his father George III's coronation. As part of the preparation, St Edward's crown was set with a permanent collection of stones and the state crown of was also refurbished. It was reset with new stones too. The faux aquamarine monde of 1685, all that was left of the Stuart state crown, was removed from it to be replaced with a new diamond monde. George was not content to be crowned with either St Edward's crown or the refurbished state crown. He was special and he wanted a new crown that reflected his sense of So he commissioned the royal jeweller's Rundlebridge and Rundle to make a coronation crown for him at the cost of £50,000, a large chunk of the entire coronation budget. This new crown was set with 12,000 brilliant cut diamonds. It was of groundbreaking design. The arches were not of solid metal as previous crowns had been, but were formed of a crazy paving of open diamond settings, forming oak leaves and acorns and supported on slender wires. Diamonds were heavy and the crown was designed to offset the weight of the stones by having a light structure. This crown was used only once and proved to be an expensive white elephant, a bit like George himself you might argue. The diamonds were hired and George had hoped that Parliament would give him the money to keep them, but they didn't and the diamonds were returned to their owners in 1822 and the empty frame taken to the jewel house. Although not a state crown per se, I have included this crown in this video because the innovative design of it would prove to be a great influence on the next incarnation of the British state crown. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his brother William IV, who was quite happy to have a budget coronation and be crowned with the state crown refurbished by his brother. With Queen Victoria's accession to the throne only seven years later, it was clear that the heavy state crown of George I, despite being restored in 1821, would be rather uncongenial for a petite queen who only stood five feet tall to wear. So Rundlebridge and Rundle were contracted to make an entirely new state crown for Victoria, incorporating within it some elements from the earlier state crown and also some of the innovative design features from the coronation crown of her uncle George IV, including the arches and band made of crazy paved diamonds and open settings. The aim of Rundlebridge and Rundle was to make a crown that was smaller and lighter for the queen. The Black Prince's ruby took centre stage on the front of the new crown and two important other stones from the royal collection were also added at this time. A large 104 carat sapphire called the Stuart Sapphire was added to the band at the front. By tradition, this stone had been in the royal collection in the time of Charles II and had been taken out of the country in the pocket of James II when he fled the country at the Glorious Revolution in 1688. It had passed down in time to James's grandson, Henry Benedict Stuart Cardinal York, and was sold when his effects were dispersed at his death in 1807, and was then purchased by King George III. The diamond-encrusted mond added to the Georgian state crown in 1821 was salvaged and was given a new cross, and at the centre of this was set another important stone, an octagonal rose-cut sapphire called St Edward's Sapphire. It is believed that this gem belonged to St Edward the Confessor, and tradition goes that it was set in a ring that he was buried with and was removed from his coffin in 1163 when his new shrine was erected in Westminster Abbey. In a painting called the Wilton Diptych, a painting of the late 14th century, Edward is shown holding the ring with this sapphire in it, though in an earlier form, the present cut dating from the 17th century. Queen Victoria also added to the crown under the arches four pearls, said to be earrings belonging to Elizabeth I. The rest of the crown is set with diamonds, many of them salvaged from the old state crown and from elsewhere in the royal collection. It was only in 1837 that the coronation crown and the state crown are set with a permanent collection of stones. Queen Victoria was crowned with this crown at her own coronation, as was her son King Edward VII in 1901, although the band was altered and made somewhat larger for his head. In 1908, the crown was altered again. The Stuart's Sapphire was removed to the back of the crown to make way for a new stone. In January 1905, at the premier number two mine at Golanen in South Africa, a 3,100 carat rough diamond was discovered. It is the largest diamond ever found. In 1907, the government of the Transvaal purchased it and it was presented to Edward VII on his 66th birthday. In 1908, the stone was cut by Joseph Asher of Amsterdam into nine major stones and various other smaller brilliants. The two largest stones, known as Cullinan I and Cullinan II, or the first and second stars of Africa, were set in the regalia. The 94 carat Cullinan II replaced the Stuart's Sapphire on the front band of the imperial state crown below the black prince's ruby. It was first seen at the coronation of King George V in 1910. By 1936, 100 years after it was first made, the delicate frame of Queen Victoria's state crown was a little worse for wear. At the state funeral of King George V in 1936, the crown was placed, as was customary, on his coffin on a gun carriage during the procession to Westminster Hall. During the procession, the jolting of the gun carriage caused the monde with St Edward's Sapphire to drop off the crown and fall on the pavement, where it was retrieved by one of the soldiers lining the route. So, in readiness for the coronation of King George VI in 1937, Queen Victoria's state crown was retired. The frame was put into the jewel house and Garrard's crown jewelers made a replica of it with a frame of gold, silver and platinum. All the gems from Victoria's crown were salvaged and reset and the crown, when completed, contained 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and five rubies. This crown was used in the procession at the end of the coronation of George VI when he appeared on the balcony after the coronation and at the state opening of Parliament. When Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, the dilemma arose again of a young woman using a crown designed and made for the head of a man. But rather than starting from scratch, the arches of the imperial state crown were lowered and the band size reduced without removing stones to give the crown a more feminine profile. The Queen continued to use the crown for state openings until 2018 and it is now born before her and I doubt we will see her wear it again in her lifetime. Which begs the question, what will happen next? The Queen is now 96 and no doubt preparations are already being made for the accession and the coronation of the Prince of Wales in the not too distant future. He will be the oldest sovereign to accede to the British throne in history. I doubt very much that he will be thrilled to wear a very heavy crown. So have we seen the end of crown wearing in the United Kingdom? I wonder if Prince Charles does choose to wear a crown, the imperial state crown, this ever-evolving object cannot remain in its current state as it simply won't fit his head. Presumably we will either see it altered back to the height it was when worn by his grandfather George VI or the decision might even be taken after nearly a hundred years of use to retire the present imperial state crown and construct a new one using those heirloom stones or perhaps we might see a completely new imperial state crown of contemporary design created. Only time will tell. If you like the content on my channel don't forget to subscribe and you'll be informed when there is another video. I produce these videos on a bit of a shoestring. If you are able to support my work you can make a donation or subscription via either BuyMeACoffee or by PayPal. Links are on the bar at the top of the home page. Thank you very much indeed to those who have already generously supported me. Your contributions are very gratefully received and will help me improve my rather old equipment so that I can produce better quality content in the future. 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