Tea at Trianon: Lost Fragments of the Stone of Destiny

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Lost Fragments of the Stone of Destiny

From ArtNet:

The Stone of Destiny may be the U.K.’s most beloved medieval rock, but new research suggests it hasn’t survived entirely unscathed. In a study in The Antiquaries Journal, researcher Sally Foster has documented how pieces of the slab have broken away over time—and where those lost fragments ultimately ended up.
Also known as the Stone of Scone, the sandstone slab has been integral to British royal coronations since the 14th century. It’s also subject to nationalist fervor: the Scots used it in their own coronations before the Brits stole it in the Wars of Scottish Independence. The Scots won their independence and lost the stone. It eventually returned to Scotland in 1996 and has been on view at the country’s Perth Museum since its 2024 opening.
Foster, however, claims that the Stone is not the “complete and monolithic object… with a linear story” that previous generations believed. It is, in fact, also represented by a “diverse, dispersed body of small fragments,” which she said deserves closer examination. She charts the Stone’s historic fractures. In 1838, for starters, the artifact traveled to Westminster for Queen Victoria’s coronation and suffered damage. “This event, not since recognized in Stone scholarship, led to the first record of detached ‘particles’ of the Stone,” Foster asserts.
Over the years, geologists collected their own fragments for study. The British Geographical Survey has at different times possessed what they called “crumbs from the Stone of Scone.” A 1914 suffragette bombing led to further chipping. (Read more.)