Post by hi224 on Apr 22, 2021 1:26:22 GMT
Background
When the English were looking to expand their borders in the 1100s it’s not surprising that they looked to Ireland as a prime target for invasion. What we would now call Ireland was divided into roughly nine kingdoms each ruled by their own king. While there was a tradition of having a ri Erenn or a High King of Ireland, Ireland was not a politically unified state. The High King was more of an overlord or ceremonial figure who was trusted to organize and lead in times of extreme peril, but otherwise left the independent kingdoms to their own devices.
The last Gaelic High King of Ireland was Ruaidhri Ua Conchobair (1116-1198), King of Connacht who managed to be the first to politically unite Ireland as they attempted to ward off the English. However, his efforts were in vain as the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland continued, culminating in King Henry II of England taking control of the country.
In an attempt to coyly trick the Irish into thinking they were not bowing to an English throne, starting in 1171 the King of England was styled to be called only the Lord of Ireland. However, in 1542 this farce ended and King Henry VIII of England was named the first King of Ireland.
All this is to say that the history of the Irish Crown Jewels was also the history of the English Crown Jewels which technically are safe and on display today in the Tower of London. However, there was another set of gems, traditionally called the Irish Crown Jewels, so what were they?
The Irish Crown Jewels
Their official title was long. Formally called the Jewels Belonging to the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, the Irish Crown Jewels were composed of only two pieces of jewelry. Assembled and brought to Ireland in 1831, the pieces were created for the Sovereign and Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick, an order of knighthood equivalent to the English Order of the Garter or Scottish Order of the Thistle.
Basically, the Order was an extremely prestigious club used to reward Irish nobles who supported the British Crown in Ireland. Membership of the Order was restricted to men who were knights and gentlemen and to be considered a gentleman the potential applicant had to have at least three generations of “noblesse” (aka, ancestors of rank enough to be granted a coat of arms) on both the mother and the father’s side of the family. In practice, the only people who were ever granted membership in the Order of St. Patrick were members of the Irish Peerage (who frankly were mostly culturally English with a few exceptions) and British Princes. The Irish Crown Jewels were created for the leader of this Order, a position that changed as membership ebbed and flowed, to be used for ceremonial purposes and to give the position weight and authority.
So now that we know why they were made, what did the Irish Crown Jewels look like? The first, a large diamond eight pointed star was described as;
A Diamond Star of the Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick composed of brilliants (Brazilian stones) of the purest water, 4 5⁄8 by 4 1⁄4 inches, consisting of eight points, four greater and four lesser, issuing from a center enclosing a cross of rubies and a trefoil of emeralds surrounding a sky blue enamel circle with words, "Quis Separabit (Latin for “Who will separate?”) MDCCLXXXIII." in rose diamonds engraved on back. Value about £14,000. (About £1,490,000 today or about $2,100,000 US)
The second piece, a large diamond badge was described as;
A Diamond Badge of the Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick set in silver containing a trefoil in emeralds on a ruby cross surrounded by a sky blue enameled circle with "Quis Separabit MDCCLXXXIII." in rose diamonds surrounded by a wreath of trefoils in emeralds, the whole enclosed by a circle of large single Brazilian stones of the finest water, surmounted by a crowned harp in diamonds and loop, also in Brazilian stones. Total size of oval 3 by 2 3⁄8 inches; height 5 5⁄8 inches. Value £16,000. (About £1,710,000 today or $2,400,000 US).
In total, the two pieces were made up of 394 gemstones mostly taken from the English Crown Jewels collection and an Order of Bath star that was dismantled to provide the gems.
When not in use or being cleaned, the Irish Crown Jewels were kept by a senior Irish officer known as the Ulster King of Arms and were to be stored in a bank vault within the Dublin Castle complex. (A picture of the castle from the time.)
The Theft
All was going well for the Order of St. Patrick until 1907. The Irish Crown Jewels had been moved to a new safe in 1903 that originally was supposed to be placed into a newly constructed strongroom. However, it was found that the safe was too large to fit through the doorway of the strongroom and instead of getting a smaller safe or popping open the storeroom wall to get the safe in and then rebuilding it, the safe and it’s contents would be stored in the office of Sir Arthur Vicars, the current Ulster King of Arms.
The Irish Crown Jewels were last worn on March 15, 1907 by John Hamilton-Gordon, the 7th Earl of Aberdeen on an occasion to mark Saint Patrick’s Day (which is on March 17, but whaevs John). The last confirmed sighting of the jewels was on June 11 when Vicars showed them to a visitor.
However, on July 6, 1907 the safe was found to be empty. When Vicars opened the safe on that day to bring out the gems for an exhibition King Edward VII was do be doing in Ireland, the Irish Crown Jewels, some personal valuables Vicar had stored there, and five of the ceremonial collars of the Knight Members of the Order were all found to be missing.
The Investigation
The Dublin Metropolitan Police (a more local police force in charge of patrolling Dublin and a few other major Irish cities) and the Royal Irish Constabulary (the larger police force in charge of all Ireland) were called to the scene and posters with descriptions and photographs of the missing jewels dispersed to try and gather leads. While several keys to the office were held by Vicars and his staff, there was only two keys to the safe, both of which were held by Vicars.
Detective Chief Inspector John Kane of Scotland Yard also helped with the investigation, submitting a final report naming who he believed to be the thief. However, the report was never released. Instead the report was quashed by the Royal Irish Constabulary and it is unknown if a copy still exists.
Vicars hotly denied taking part of the theft and instead publicly accused his second in command, Francis Shackleton of the crime. The Royal Commission assembled to investigate the crime however found Shackleton to be innocent and while Vicars was not found guilty of the theft itself, he was found to not have “exercised due vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the regalia” and was forced to resign.
The Blame Game
While it is unknown who stole the Irish Crown jewels there were a lot of theories then and today about what happened to them.
The first theory was the Vicars himself stole them. Vicars had access and the keys and while he was forced to resign his post in disgrace, he could have stolen the gems to sell them. While personal items of Vicars also went missing from the safe, this could have been a smokescreen to try and hide the theft and divert blame. Additionally, Vicars was what you would call a bit of a character and was known to get blackout drunk in his office when on overnight shifts. On at least one occasion, after a night of hard drinking, Vicars awoke to find he’d opened the safe and put on all the jewels inside before passing out on his desk. It is not known if this was a prank, a practice run for the theft, or if drunk Vicars just wanted to be fancy, but the possibility that Vicars was the culprit was high.
Contemporary suspicion on Vicars was intense with the newspaper the London Mail publishing a story claiming that Vicars had given a copy of the safe key to his mistress who stole the gems and fled to Paris. Vicars sued the newspaper for libel, the paper admitted the woman did not exist, and Vicars was awarded £5,000 for damages.
Shackleton was also considered to be a prime suspect even though he was cleared by the Royal Commission. British MP Laurence Ginnel gave a speech in the House of Commons in 1912 alleging that the police had found signs of depravity in Dublin Castle stating;
The police charged with collecting evidence in connection with the disappearance of the Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle in 1907 collected evidence inseparable from it of criminal debauchery and sodomy being committed in the castle by officials, Army officers, and a couple of nondescripts of such position that their conviction and exposure would have led to an upheaval from which the Chief Secretary shrank.
Specifically he claimed that army captain Richard Gorges (who he called “a reckless bully, a robber, a bugger, and a sod”) and Shackleton were in cahoots and had stolen the Irish Crown Jewels together. In 1912 those calls to investigate Shackleton again were raised when he attempted to pass a stolen cheque.
As late as 1968 Shackleton was still named as the prime suspect with journalist Bulmer Hobson publishing a story on the theft. Hobson alleged that Shackleton and Gorges had colluded together to steal the jewels. Together they had plied Vicars with so much whiskey that he passed out, allowing the men to steal the key to the safe, remove the jewels, and return the key. The jewels were then taken to Amsterdam where he was paid £20,000 (about £2,500,000 today or $3,500,000 US) for the gems and given the promise that the buyer would not break up and liquidate the pieces for three years.
While Hobon’s theory is an entertaining read, some of his allegations are questionable to the modern eye. His theory that Shackleton and Gorges were the culprits hinges on the speech given by MP Ginnel’s accusation that Shackleton and Gorges committed buggery, as in, they were gay. The theft was supposedly covered up for fears that a larger homosexual scandal would be found in the Dublin Castle complex which had previously seen a gay panic scandal in 1884. In a time where a person’s morality was tied to their sexual orientation and where being homosexual was still a crime, believing a person to be guilty of one crime clearly meant they were guilty of another.
I don’t like to speculate on the sexual orientation of people in the past, but it is worth noting that neither Shackleton or Gorges ever married. Gorges would later go to prison for the murder of a policeman and Shackleton would be accused of defrauding Lord Ronald Gower of his fortune. Lord Gower was a Scottish nobleman who was as close as you could get to being an out and proud gay man at the time, but while Shackleton and Gorges were not the best of people that doesn’t mean they were gay or, if they were, their bad actions weren't due to them being gay.
Besides Vicars and Shackleton, there are lots of other assorted theories about who stole the Irish Crown Jewels.
In August 1907 MP Pat O’Brien publicly blamed “loyal and patriotic Unionist criminals” of the crime. Unionists being a group of mostly English descended Protestant loyalists who were unhappy with the Catholic Emancipation of 1829 and wanted Ireland to keep its close relationship with England. I don’t know why Unionists would want to steal the Irish Crown Jewels when they were a symbol of that very relationship, but it’s probably something, something, blame the Catholics, this is all going to culminate in the Troubles and it is going to be such a mess to this day. Under this theory the gems were secretly returned to the Royal Family as the point of the theft was to embarrass the Republican Irish.
Another theory directly opposed to the Unionist theft theory was that the Irish Republican Brotherhood (aka the Fenians) were the thieves and smuggled the gems to America. The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret political organization dedicated to the creation of an independent Republic of Ireland free of English rule. Ultimately, they got what they wanted in the Irish War of Independence when Michael Collins and other Irish Revolutionaries were finally able to wrest control of the country away from the UK.
There’s another far less popular theory that the gems weren’t technically stolen at all, but merely lost. Under this theory Vicars did a repeat of his drunken binge, opening the safe and removing the jewels to put them on only to lose them while he was blackout drunk. If this theory is true the gems are still somewhere in Dublin Castle, forgotten under a floorboard or lost in a wall, and still waiting to be found.
Conclusion
So who stole the Irish Crown Jewels? The answer is we’ll probably never know and if you were to ask a random Irishman on the street, a proud Republican would tell you that they really don’t care. The Order of St. Patrick has been defunct since 1922 when Ireland won their independence with it’s last member dying in 1974. While there have been occasional calls to reestablish the Order, there has never been an attempt so even if the pieces were somehow recovered they would never be put to use. In any case the pieces were likely dismantled in 1907 or shortly after, the gems scattered, the gold reused, and they are now far beyond any attempt for recovery.
Further Reading
“The Theft of the Irish ‘Crown Jewels’” (2007) | National Archives of Ireland. (2007). National Archives of Ireland. web.archive.org/web/20130511165435/http://www.nationalarchives.ie/digital-resources/online-exhibitions/the-theft-of-the-irish-%E2%80%9Ccrown-jewels%E2%80%9D-2007/
Duffy. (2000). The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. Dublin Castle. www.dublincastle.ie/the-theft-of-the-irish-crown-jewels/
The Theft of the Irish “Crown Jewels.” (2000). The Irish National Archives. www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/crown_jewels/
When the English were looking to expand their borders in the 1100s it’s not surprising that they looked to Ireland as a prime target for invasion. What we would now call Ireland was divided into roughly nine kingdoms each ruled by their own king. While there was a tradition of having a ri Erenn or a High King of Ireland, Ireland was not a politically unified state. The High King was more of an overlord or ceremonial figure who was trusted to organize and lead in times of extreme peril, but otherwise left the independent kingdoms to their own devices.
The last Gaelic High King of Ireland was Ruaidhri Ua Conchobair (1116-1198), King of Connacht who managed to be the first to politically unite Ireland as they attempted to ward off the English. However, his efforts were in vain as the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland continued, culminating in King Henry II of England taking control of the country.
In an attempt to coyly trick the Irish into thinking they were not bowing to an English throne, starting in 1171 the King of England was styled to be called only the Lord of Ireland. However, in 1542 this farce ended and King Henry VIII of England was named the first King of Ireland.
All this is to say that the history of the Irish Crown Jewels was also the history of the English Crown Jewels which technically are safe and on display today in the Tower of London. However, there was another set of gems, traditionally called the Irish Crown Jewels, so what were they?
The Irish Crown Jewels
Their official title was long. Formally called the Jewels Belonging to the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, the Irish Crown Jewels were composed of only two pieces of jewelry. Assembled and brought to Ireland in 1831, the pieces were created for the Sovereign and Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick, an order of knighthood equivalent to the English Order of the Garter or Scottish Order of the Thistle.
Basically, the Order was an extremely prestigious club used to reward Irish nobles who supported the British Crown in Ireland. Membership of the Order was restricted to men who were knights and gentlemen and to be considered a gentleman the potential applicant had to have at least three generations of “noblesse” (aka, ancestors of rank enough to be granted a coat of arms) on both the mother and the father’s side of the family. In practice, the only people who were ever granted membership in the Order of St. Patrick were members of the Irish Peerage (who frankly were mostly culturally English with a few exceptions) and British Princes. The Irish Crown Jewels were created for the leader of this Order, a position that changed as membership ebbed and flowed, to be used for ceremonial purposes and to give the position weight and authority.
So now that we know why they were made, what did the Irish Crown Jewels look like? The first, a large diamond eight pointed star was described as;
A Diamond Star of the Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick composed of brilliants (Brazilian stones) of the purest water, 4 5⁄8 by 4 1⁄4 inches, consisting of eight points, four greater and four lesser, issuing from a center enclosing a cross of rubies and a trefoil of emeralds surrounding a sky blue enamel circle with words, "Quis Separabit (Latin for “Who will separate?”) MDCCLXXXIII." in rose diamonds engraved on back. Value about £14,000. (About £1,490,000 today or about $2,100,000 US)
The second piece, a large diamond badge was described as;
A Diamond Badge of the Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick set in silver containing a trefoil in emeralds on a ruby cross surrounded by a sky blue enameled circle with "Quis Separabit MDCCLXXXIII." in rose diamonds surrounded by a wreath of trefoils in emeralds, the whole enclosed by a circle of large single Brazilian stones of the finest water, surmounted by a crowned harp in diamonds and loop, also in Brazilian stones. Total size of oval 3 by 2 3⁄8 inches; height 5 5⁄8 inches. Value £16,000. (About £1,710,000 today or $2,400,000 US).
In total, the two pieces were made up of 394 gemstones mostly taken from the English Crown Jewels collection and an Order of Bath star that was dismantled to provide the gems.
When not in use or being cleaned, the Irish Crown Jewels were kept by a senior Irish officer known as the Ulster King of Arms and were to be stored in a bank vault within the Dublin Castle complex. (A picture of the castle from the time.)
The Theft
All was going well for the Order of St. Patrick until 1907. The Irish Crown Jewels had been moved to a new safe in 1903 that originally was supposed to be placed into a newly constructed strongroom. However, it was found that the safe was too large to fit through the doorway of the strongroom and instead of getting a smaller safe or popping open the storeroom wall to get the safe in and then rebuilding it, the safe and it’s contents would be stored in the office of Sir Arthur Vicars, the current Ulster King of Arms.
The Irish Crown Jewels were last worn on March 15, 1907 by John Hamilton-Gordon, the 7th Earl of Aberdeen on an occasion to mark Saint Patrick’s Day (which is on March 17, but whaevs John). The last confirmed sighting of the jewels was on June 11 when Vicars showed them to a visitor.
However, on July 6, 1907 the safe was found to be empty. When Vicars opened the safe on that day to bring out the gems for an exhibition King Edward VII was do be doing in Ireland, the Irish Crown Jewels, some personal valuables Vicar had stored there, and five of the ceremonial collars of the Knight Members of the Order were all found to be missing.
The Investigation
The Dublin Metropolitan Police (a more local police force in charge of patrolling Dublin and a few other major Irish cities) and the Royal Irish Constabulary (the larger police force in charge of all Ireland) were called to the scene and posters with descriptions and photographs of the missing jewels dispersed to try and gather leads. While several keys to the office were held by Vicars and his staff, there was only two keys to the safe, both of which were held by Vicars.
Detective Chief Inspector John Kane of Scotland Yard also helped with the investigation, submitting a final report naming who he believed to be the thief. However, the report was never released. Instead the report was quashed by the Royal Irish Constabulary and it is unknown if a copy still exists.
Vicars hotly denied taking part of the theft and instead publicly accused his second in command, Francis Shackleton of the crime. The Royal Commission assembled to investigate the crime however found Shackleton to be innocent and while Vicars was not found guilty of the theft itself, he was found to not have “exercised due vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the regalia” and was forced to resign.
The Blame Game
While it is unknown who stole the Irish Crown jewels there were a lot of theories then and today about what happened to them.
The first theory was the Vicars himself stole them. Vicars had access and the keys and while he was forced to resign his post in disgrace, he could have stolen the gems to sell them. While personal items of Vicars also went missing from the safe, this could have been a smokescreen to try and hide the theft and divert blame. Additionally, Vicars was what you would call a bit of a character and was known to get blackout drunk in his office when on overnight shifts. On at least one occasion, after a night of hard drinking, Vicars awoke to find he’d opened the safe and put on all the jewels inside before passing out on his desk. It is not known if this was a prank, a practice run for the theft, or if drunk Vicars just wanted to be fancy, but the possibility that Vicars was the culprit was high.
Contemporary suspicion on Vicars was intense with the newspaper the London Mail publishing a story claiming that Vicars had given a copy of the safe key to his mistress who stole the gems and fled to Paris. Vicars sued the newspaper for libel, the paper admitted the woman did not exist, and Vicars was awarded £5,000 for damages.
Shackleton was also considered to be a prime suspect even though he was cleared by the Royal Commission. British MP Laurence Ginnel gave a speech in the House of Commons in 1912 alleging that the police had found signs of depravity in Dublin Castle stating;
The police charged with collecting evidence in connection with the disappearance of the Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle in 1907 collected evidence inseparable from it of criminal debauchery and sodomy being committed in the castle by officials, Army officers, and a couple of nondescripts of such position that their conviction and exposure would have led to an upheaval from which the Chief Secretary shrank.
Specifically he claimed that army captain Richard Gorges (who he called “a reckless bully, a robber, a bugger, and a sod”) and Shackleton were in cahoots and had stolen the Irish Crown Jewels together. In 1912 those calls to investigate Shackleton again were raised when he attempted to pass a stolen cheque.
As late as 1968 Shackleton was still named as the prime suspect with journalist Bulmer Hobson publishing a story on the theft. Hobson alleged that Shackleton and Gorges had colluded together to steal the jewels. Together they had plied Vicars with so much whiskey that he passed out, allowing the men to steal the key to the safe, remove the jewels, and return the key. The jewels were then taken to Amsterdam where he was paid £20,000 (about £2,500,000 today or $3,500,000 US) for the gems and given the promise that the buyer would not break up and liquidate the pieces for three years.
While Hobon’s theory is an entertaining read, some of his allegations are questionable to the modern eye. His theory that Shackleton and Gorges were the culprits hinges on the speech given by MP Ginnel’s accusation that Shackleton and Gorges committed buggery, as in, they were gay. The theft was supposedly covered up for fears that a larger homosexual scandal would be found in the Dublin Castle complex which had previously seen a gay panic scandal in 1884. In a time where a person’s morality was tied to their sexual orientation and where being homosexual was still a crime, believing a person to be guilty of one crime clearly meant they were guilty of another.
I don’t like to speculate on the sexual orientation of people in the past, but it is worth noting that neither Shackleton or Gorges ever married. Gorges would later go to prison for the murder of a policeman and Shackleton would be accused of defrauding Lord Ronald Gower of his fortune. Lord Gower was a Scottish nobleman who was as close as you could get to being an out and proud gay man at the time, but while Shackleton and Gorges were not the best of people that doesn’t mean they were gay or, if they were, their bad actions weren't due to them being gay.
Besides Vicars and Shackleton, there are lots of other assorted theories about who stole the Irish Crown Jewels.
In August 1907 MP Pat O’Brien publicly blamed “loyal and patriotic Unionist criminals” of the crime. Unionists being a group of mostly English descended Protestant loyalists who were unhappy with the Catholic Emancipation of 1829 and wanted Ireland to keep its close relationship with England. I don’t know why Unionists would want to steal the Irish Crown Jewels when they were a symbol of that very relationship, but it’s probably something, something, blame the Catholics, this is all going to culminate in the Troubles and it is going to be such a mess to this day. Under this theory the gems were secretly returned to the Royal Family as the point of the theft was to embarrass the Republican Irish.
Another theory directly opposed to the Unionist theft theory was that the Irish Republican Brotherhood (aka the Fenians) were the thieves and smuggled the gems to America. The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret political organization dedicated to the creation of an independent Republic of Ireland free of English rule. Ultimately, they got what they wanted in the Irish War of Independence when Michael Collins and other Irish Revolutionaries were finally able to wrest control of the country away from the UK.
There’s another far less popular theory that the gems weren’t technically stolen at all, but merely lost. Under this theory Vicars did a repeat of his drunken binge, opening the safe and removing the jewels to put them on only to lose them while he was blackout drunk. If this theory is true the gems are still somewhere in Dublin Castle, forgotten under a floorboard or lost in a wall, and still waiting to be found.
Conclusion
So who stole the Irish Crown Jewels? The answer is we’ll probably never know and if you were to ask a random Irishman on the street, a proud Republican would tell you that they really don’t care. The Order of St. Patrick has been defunct since 1922 when Ireland won their independence with it’s last member dying in 1974. While there have been occasional calls to reestablish the Order, there has never been an attempt so even if the pieces were somehow recovered they would never be put to use. In any case the pieces were likely dismantled in 1907 or shortly after, the gems scattered, the gold reused, and they are now far beyond any attempt for recovery.
Further Reading
“The Theft of the Irish ‘Crown Jewels’” (2007) | National Archives of Ireland. (2007). National Archives of Ireland. web.archive.org/web/20130511165435/http://www.nationalarchives.ie/digital-resources/online-exhibitions/the-theft-of-the-irish-%E2%80%9Ccrown-jewels%E2%80%9D-2007/
Duffy. (2000). The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. Dublin Castle. www.dublincastle.ie/the-theft-of-the-irish-crown-jewels/
The Theft of the Irish “Crown Jewels.” (2000). The Irish National Archives. www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/crown_jewels/
