bout de papier, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2013) — Autumn 2013 // Automne 2013, pp. 39–41
Readers of bout de papier likely are familiar with the story of the Stone of Scone or Stone of Destiny, traditional coronation stone of Scottish Kings, which was stolen by King Edward of England and installed in a specially-designed “Coronation Chair” at Westminster Abbey in 1296. Although the Kingdom of England, by treaty with the Kingdom of Scotland in 1328, agreed to return the renamed Coronation Stone, it was unable to fulfill this pledge when unruly Londoners prevented its removal from the Abbey. There it remained, with the exception of the measures mentioned below and a celebrated action on Christmas Day, 1950, when a quartet of Scottish students retrieved it and (after accidentally breaking it in two pieces) returned it (in two pieces on separate journeys) briefly to Scotland. It was repaired before it was recaptured by the Sassenachs in April of the following year, so that Queen Elizabeth Il was duly crowned while sitting above it. Finally, only seven centuries after it was taken, the Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland (this time to Edinburgh Castle), where it now rests between coronations. The action of the students was celebrated in the film, Stone of Destiny, perhaps appropriately a Scottish-Canadian collaborative project.
There is another, less well-known, Canadian connection to the fate of the Stone of Scone. On the eve of the Second World War, to prevent damage in wartime and to secure it against the possibility of enemy capture, the Stone was taken out of Westminster Abbey and placed in a secure hiding place. There was sufficient doubt about the fate of Britain and its form of government, that it was decided to entrust the secret to a leader in the British Commonwealth. The chosen recipient was William Lyon Mackenzie King and he received the news (and the sealed envelope containing the location) appropriately enough in the gardens of his estate at Kingsmere, Quebec, where he had assembled a peculiar collection of ruins as a meaningful (at least to him) decorative feature. This envelope was delivered personally to him by the British High Commissioner, Sir Gerald Campbell. As the following account from the diary of the prime minister notes, this came amidst major developments in wartime relations with the still-neutral United States. The “Destroyer-Bases Deal” between the United Kingdom and the United States had been concluded shortly before this encounter. King would receive a telephone call that afternoon from American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inviting him to meet in Ogdensburg, New York, where they would agree to set up the Permanent Joint Board on Defence as part of a concerted approach to continental security. As always, King detected the influences “from the Beyond” which were guiding his destiny!
The King Diary is part of the William Lyon Mackenzie King Papers in the manuscript collections of Library and Archives Canada. For the truly curious (other explanations are possible), it is also available on-line. Although this entry is dated 16 August 1940, the early passages evidently refer to events of the day before.
Hector Mackenzie
Kingsmere Friday, August 16, 1940
Re Foundation Stone
Yesterday afternoon, while Sir Gerald Campbell and I were conversing at the little table, under the trees near the flag-pole, concerning plans between Great Britain and the United States for the disposition of the British fleet in the event of Britain being driven to extremities, and concerning the furnishing immediately of destroyers by the United States to Great Britain, Sir Gerald drew from his pocket a document which he said he had brought to me for safe keeping. It read:
“Plan of the hiding place of the Coronation Stone To be surrendered only to the Lord Chamberlain or myself.
Paul de Labilliere Bishop, Dean of Westminster Deposited August 29, 1939”
The envelope bears No. 1391. It is sealed with two seals of the Dean (P. de L.) Paul de Labilliere.
I thanked Sir Gerald warmly for this expression of his confidence. Spoke of what was represented by the document as being significant of all that was most precious in the life of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the Coronation Stone having its association with both the parliament and the church: Westminster and Westminster Abbey. The Stone united England and Scotland and carries the tradition of its sovereigns. It would probably be the last thing of all which the peoples of the United Kingdom would wish to fall into the hands of an enemy. That the hiding place of this Stone should be entrusted to my care, brought to me by the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, while discussing the particular matters which we were, is, I believe, more significant than words can well express.
I felt there was no chance about this happening, but there was something in it which was being revealed to me of the presence of others who were in part controlling and directing our lives, and of a purpose of God and of my own. I said to Sir Gerald, I thought perhaps the best place to have the document kept would be among the records of the Privy Council. I thought once of the Archives, also of the Bank of Canada. Sir Gerald said to me that he had thought of the vaults of the Bank of Canada. I said I would arrange to have the document deposited there. He said he would write me officially concerning it.
Just before he had handed me this document I had given him to read the letter which I had received from Lord Lothian [the British Ambassador in Washington] the day before and which is dated August 12th and which came to me “by safe hand”. I remarked on this expression to Sir Gerald as it was not one to which I had before been familiar. It was from the British Embassy, Washington. Sir Campbell [sic] himself brought out important cypher telegrams of August 14th, giving me information of communications sent by [British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill to the President regarding the United States supplying Great Britain with destroyers, the first of which indicated that if this aid were not forthcoming the day might be lost for the British, and, inferentially, subsequently for the Americans. The second telegram fortunately indicated that Great Britain had agreed to give the United States an undertaking that in certain eventualities her fleet would be brought to this side [of the Atlantic], not permitted to fall into German hands, and the United States agreed to supply Britain with the destroyers. I learned tonight from J. [his friend and neighbour, Joan Patteson] that the announcement of the latter had been made by [Henry] Morgenthau [Jr., Secretary of the Treasury] yesterday afternoon. Here, at last, is what I suggested should be done between two or three months ago. It is a bringing together of the peoples of the United Kingdom and the United States, much as those of Scotland and England were brought together years ago.
Last night after dinner, G. [Godfroy Patteson, husband of Joan] brought J. over for a little reading. I have been waiting all year to begin the season as I have other years with the reading of Grey’s Elegy at the abbey ruin. We walked there and in the quiet of the evening I read aloud the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. When we came back I told J. of the document Sir Gerald had entrusted to my care. I went to the despatch case and took it out and looking through some other papers there came across what I had dictated three months ago – May 25, I think it was – after the return of [Hugh] Keenleyside [of the Department of External Affairs] from Washington [where he had been sent by King as a personal emissary] with the word from Roosevelt and Mr. [Cordell] Hull [Secretary of State] of the possible defeat of the French and the necessity for plans being laid to secure the Atlantic fleets. In that dictation I had recorded belief in communion with my mother and others which came strongly to me at the time of waking, after seeking a quiet rest, before undertaking to decide upon what I should do with the information obtained.
J. asked me ifI had any particular things which had come from Westminster Abbey. I told her of the chair in my bedroom at Laurier House. I might have added the oak chair at the farm [King’s nearby property at Moorside, now a residence for the Speaker of the House of Commons]. It was interesting that she should have referred to the word Abbey as it brought to mind the abbey ruin which we had just visited. There are of course a collection of stones linking together the parliamentary institutions of the old world and our own with associations that are those of the Abbey. It was clear that the whole evening was significantly related to historical stones.
The evening papers had brought word of the largest attack thus far in the air – a beginning, clearly, of Germany’s blitzkrieg – and the loss of some of the British forces in Somaliland.
… This morning [presumably 16 August] I walked out as usual to the abbey ruin and after breakfast on the lawn had regular reading [from the Bible] in the garden seat, little Pat [his Irish terrier] lying asleep close by. The chapter was the XXIV (?) of Ezekiel in which reference is made to Ezekiel being intended as a sign to his people of his generation. It contains the words “to remember this particular day”. A day or two ago I had read a couple of chapters in succession and but for that would not have had this particular chapter fall where it did today. As I was reading the little picture of the stone commemorating [presumably William Lyon] Mackenzie’s [the rebel, King’s maternal grandfather] birthplace at Niagara [this seems to be a convoluted reference to the Mackenzie panel in the Clifton Gate Memorial Arch in Niagara, which celebrates the origins or birth of responsible government in Upper Canada], and the communion card I have had along with it as a marker, fell out. I replaced them later as markers, but was struck at once in looking at the picture with the resemblance of the stone at the base of the Memorial Arch at Niagara and that of the Coronation Stone.
Something kept saying to me to tell MacLeod of having the Coronation Stone document in my keeping: that it would interest him. Later when I returned to the house and was getting ready to go to the farm, I went with the document to show it to him. He at once expressed appreciation of its importance and gave me the history of the stone as he knew it. It is the one on which James VI of Scotland, James I of England, had been crowned. Also Robert of Bruce and running back to the beginning of the Scottish kings. He spoke of it as the Scone Stone and then went on to say that it is from where my grandfather William Lyon Mackenzie lived
– from Scone Castle [actually Scone Abbey], in Glenshee Perthshire. It would make a great story to have this told as showing how history brings about and unites things – the past with the present. It was quite remarkable the way he outlined all this in his own words and how strongly it seemed to impress itself upon him. He felt as I did that it was not a matter of chance, but most significant that this document should pass into my safe keeping in this country at this time. I brought the document over to the farm and immediately dictated this record to [Edouard] H.[andy, his private secretary] as I felt strongly impressed about the significance of the whole business.
Curiously enough when I was getting ready to dictate I moved the little Jacobean table which I like to work on to the front of the statue of “Victory” and placed on it the different documents to which I have referred, including a précis of the report submitted by three officers of the Defence Department who, at my insistence, recently visited the United States. They were dictated just a month ago – 18th July 1940. The purpose was to effect in concrete and particular ways the very thing between the United Kingdom and the United States which at last the United Kingdom is seeking to arrange with the United States.
There came to my mind as I thought of these matters and how they link up with the chair from the Abbey, another chair which I have in my bedroom at Laurier House and which strangely enough is the one on which it is believed that James I of Scotland was crowned. It is indeed remarkable that that particular chair should have come into my possession at Glasgow, especially when one recalls that at present the Coronation Chair is so arranged that the Coronation Stone is immediately beneath its seat – the chair as it were superimposed upon the Stone. I cannot but believe that I am being shown by all of these things that my life’s purpose is to fulfil that of my grandfather and help to establish, as the basis of freedom, responsible government on a wider basis than ever in different parts of the world. I believe that what has been accomplished within the last 24 hours does really mark a dividing place in the fortunes of the British peoples and a closer union between the Anglo-Saxon race.
Stones, chairs and seats are the particular objects that have been closely associated with this, I believe, mystic revelation of some great truth. There is the seat at the abbey ruin where I read the Elegy and which by the way concludes with the epitaph engraved upon the stone. I talked with J. about these stones at Stokespages (?) [this likely is a reference to the village of Stokes Pages in Buckinghamshire] which she remarked as having seen when in England at the time of the Coronation. Then there is the garden seat where I enjoy the morning reading, reflection and prayer and now the seat where I work at the Farm and which has its association with the chair at Laurier House. It is remarkable too how in all this James VI of Scotland and I of England keeps coming into my life. I would not be at all surprised to find, on my father’s side, a relationship that goes back to some of the ancient kings of Scotland. The Mackenzie side is already known. I have never attached importance to anything of the kind but some facts are being borne so continually upon me that I cannot but believe I am being shown something that it is desired I should know, not for purposes of pride but rather as disclosing the invisible hand which helps to control the destinies of individual lives and nations.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2013) — Autumn 2013 // Automne 2013, pp. 39–41. Read the rest of this issue →
