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Some believe it survived the Civil War, hidden somewhere in England, and was re-cut for Charles II. So he was wearing the two great saintly stones on his fingers.’Īfter Henry’s death, St Edward’s Sapphire was re-worked again by Queen Elizabeth I, who had it removed from the ring and wore it like a diadem on her forehead.Īfter Henry’s death, St Edward’s Sapphire was re-worked again by Queen Elizabeth I, who had it removed from the ring and wore it like a diadem on her foreheadįive decades later, the stone vanished and the trail briefly goes cold. He also took a large ruby from Thomas Beckett’s shrine in Canterbury Cathedral and made it into a ring, too. He made himself head of the Church of England, removed the sapphire, had the intaglio carved out and took it for himself. ‘But things changed when Henry VIII’s trouble with women began. ‘You could kiss the ring or touch it and you would be blessed because it was a saintly object,’ explains Hawkins. Its story starts with the death in 1066 of the Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, who was at first buried in front of the high altar in Westminster Abbey, but whose coffin was moved several times and at one point opened.Īt some stage, the ring on his finger - with a Roman intaglio sapphire (that had an image carved into it for signing or sealing documents) - was removed, and for 300 years put on show in the Abbey, where visitors could view it as a holy relic. No one seems to know the exact carat weight, yet this beautiful rose-cut sapphire, probably from either Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, looms so large in British history, experts say it is literally beyond price. If he is right and the stone in the Imperial Crown is not the St Edward’s Sapphire, then it raises two questions: where is the St Edward’s Sapphire? And what is the stone in the crown?Ĭertainly the Edward stone is not a large gem. Unravelling a tale of royal desire, love and greed stretching from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I to George IV and Victoria, Hawkins described how the gem was removed from a tomb, wrested from royal fingers, smuggled abroad and dug out of other crowns. Indeed, he believes it has been absent from the crown for more than 300 years.

So if the St Edward’s Sapphire is indeed in the coronet in the V&A, what is the gem in the Imperial State Crown?Īfter extensive research and a painstaking recreation of the jewel’s journey through history, John Hawkins, an historian and world authority on several royal jewels, told me he believes the gem atop the crown is not the St Edward’s Sapphire. Or so we have always been led to believe.įor 20 years I was the jewellery editor of Vogue magazine and today I host a podcast called If Jewels Could Talk, which is where I first heard an explosive new theory. It is the oldest in the Royal Collection and has been worn, in one form or another, by almost every English monarch for more than 1,000 years. It symbolises monarchy, duty and a mystical power derived from its principal stones, the Cullinan II Diamond, the Black Prince’s Ruby, the Stuart Sapphire and, especially, the St Edward’s Sapphire, the sparkling square blue stone set into the diamond Maltese Cross on the top.įor no other gem in the world has a history like The Edward the Confessor Stone.

More than any other jewel or symbol, this crown proclaims to the world that Charles is King. It will dazzle on the King’s head as he leaves the Abbey, and thereafter for formal moments of his reign including the State Opening of Parliament.

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The full regal weight of the Crown Jewels will be on display at the Coronation, but it’s the jewel-encrusted Imperial State Crown that glitters brightest.