St Edward's Crown

• 1. Introduction

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  St Edward's Crown sits inside a locked vault beneath the Tower of London, and most people alive will never touch it. But on the 6th of May 2023, Charles III bowed his head and felt its full weight settle onto him: 2.23 kilograms of 22-carat gold, studded with 444 gemstones. That moment connected him to a lineage stretching back to the 13th century, and to a saint who died a thousand years ago.

  The crown is named after Saint Edward the Confessor, the Anglo-Saxon king whose burial place became Westminster Abbey. For centuries, the crown that bore his name was treated as a holy relic, not merely a piece of jewelry. Monks guarded it. Kings borrowed its authority. And when Parliament tried to destroy it in 1649, at least one man went to prison rather than obey the order.

  How did a single crown survive civil war, republicanism, and eight centuries of political upheaval to remain the most important piece of regalia in the British monarchy? And what exactly is it made of? The answers turn out to involve a Welsh monk, a suspected fraud, a man who dressed up in the crown to mock it, and a 2008 piece of research that overturned over a century of accepted wisdom.

• 2. Alfred, Edward, and a Holy Relic

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  In 853, Æthelwulf, King of Wessex, sent his youngest son Alfred to Rome. Alfred was five years old. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Pope Leo IV blessed him during the visit. Accounts written in the 13th century suggested Alfred returned home carrying regalia presented to him at that ceremony.

  Around 1270, the historian Robert of Gloucester drew the connection explicitly, writing that the pope had blessed Alfred and that the crown of England had its origins in that Roman visit. A biography of Alfred written by the Welsh monk Asser around 893 and printed in 1574 and 1603 kept the claim alive that Alfred had been crowned and anointed by the pope. In the 17th century, the historian John Spelman wrote that an inscription on the box of St Edward's Crown, translated from Latin, read: "This is the chief crown of the two, with which were crowned Kings Alfred, Edward and others".

  The problem, discovered when a letter from Pope Leo to Æthelwulf surfaced in the 19th century, was that Alfred had actually been confirmed by the pope and invested with the insignia of a Roman consul. Alfred was only fourth in line to the throne in 853. There is no reference to "King Alfred's Crown" in any coronation order of service. The whole origin story, widely believed for centuries, rested on later embellishment.

  Edward the Confessor wore his crown on Easter Day 1065 and again on Christmas Day of that year. He is thought to have been the first English king to wear a crown with arches, a form known as a "closed" or imperial crown, symbolising subservience to no authority but God. An inventory described the crown as "gold wire-work set with slight stones and two little bells", weighing 79.5 oz.

• 3. Saints, Monks, and Political Power

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  In 1161, Edward the Confessor was made a saint. That single act transformed a coronation prop into something much more charged. The monks at Westminster Abbey, Edward's burial place, then claimed that Edward himself had asked them to use his regalia for the coronations of all future kings. A note to this effect appears in an inventory drawn up by a monk at the abbey in 1450.

  The Abbey's claim was probably untrue. Some of the regalia were likely taken from Edward's grave when his remains were reinterred. But the claim was accepted as fact, and in doing so it established the first known set of hereditary coronation regalia in Europe. An object referred to as "St Edward's Crown" is first recorded as having been used at a coronation for Henry III in 1216. Wearing a crown owned by a monarch who was now also a saint reinforced the new king's legitimacy in a way that no other object could.

  The crown's political weight was taken seriously enough that when Henry III set off for Brittany in 1230, the nobles and the abbot of Westminster refused to let it leave the kingdom. That tradition of keeping the crown within England has continued to the present day. Henry III housed his state regalia at the Tower of London, but the holy relics of St Edward remained at Westminster Abbey, a separation that reflected the crown's dual status as both political object and religious artifact.

  When Richard II was forced to abdicate in 1399, he had the crown brought to the Tower of London. He handed it to his successor Henry IV with a spoken declaration: "I present and give to you this crown with which I was crowned King of England and all the rights dependent on it". The transfer was as much a ritual as a physical act.

• 4. Destruction and Defiance

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  Charles I fled London in 1642, and rumours spread through the city that he was trying to sell the crown jewels in Holland to fund his war against Parliament. Parliament declared that anyone trafficking the jewels was an enemy of the state. The jewels were the property of the Crown, not of the king personally.

  In 1643, Parliament suspected the coronation regalia had been smuggled from Westminster Abbey to York by the royalist Dean of Westminster, John Williams. When the sub-dean refused to allow an inspection, a motion came before Parliament to force the abbey treasury open. The first motion failed. The second passed. The locks were opened and an inventory was taken by Henry Marten and George Wither. The historian Peter Heylyn reported that the two men mocked the regalia. Marten dressed Wither in St Edward's Crown and robes, and Wither, in Heylyn's words, "marched about the room with stately garb and afterwards with a Thousand Apish and Ridiculous Actions exposed these sacred ornaments to contempt and laughter".

  After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Parliament ordered the regalia to be "totally broken" and the gold and silver melted down. The jewels were to be sold at the best price available. Sir Henry Mildmay, Master of the Jewel Office, stayed away. His nephew and Clerk of the Jewel House, Carew Mildmay, returned the instructions marked "not obeyed" and was jailed at Fleet Prison for his defiance.

  The regalia was broken up regardless. St Edward's Crown was listed in the inventory as "King Alfred's Crown of gold wire-work set with slight stones and two little bells", weighing 79.5 oz, valued at £3 per ounce for a total of £248 10s 0d.

• 5. Restoration and a Contested History

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  The monarchy was restored in 1660. Charles II, who had been living in exile abroad, needed a new St Edward's Crown and ordered one from the Royal Goldsmith, Sir Robert Vyner. The new crown was made to closely resemble the medieval original, with a heavy gold base and clusters of semi-precious stones, though its arches were decidedly Baroque.

  For more than two centuries, a theory circulated that the current crown was not entirely new. The writer and court historian Martin Holmes, in a 1959 paper for Archaeologia, argued that St Edward's Crown had been saved from the melting pot during the Interregnum and enhanced at the Restoration. His reasoning rested on the nearly identical weights of the original and the current crown, and on an 1661 invoice for the addition of gold to an existing crown. He also pointed to a crown displayed at the lying in state of Oliver Cromwell. Holmes's theory became accepted wisdom and was repeated as fact in official guidebooks for the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

  In 2008, new research dismantled his argument. A coronation crown had been made in 1660 in anticipation of an early coronation that had to be delayed several times. That crown was enhanced with additional gold in 1661 after Parliament increased the budget as a gesture of appreciation toward the new king. As for the crown at Cromwell's lying in state, it was probably made of gilded base metal such as tin or copper, as was customary in 17th-century England. A crown displayed at the funeral of James I had cost only £5 and was decorated with fake jewels.

  After the coronation of William III in 1689, the crown's weight made it increasingly unpopular. For over 200 years it rested on the high altar during coronations rather than on the sovereign's head. Edward VII intended to revive its use in 1902 but was still recovering from an operation for appendicitis on coronation day, so he wore the lighter Imperial State Crown instead. George V finally restored St Edward's Crown to its proper role in 1911.

• 6. What the Crown Is Made Of

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  When jewels were permanently set in St Edward's Crown for the first time in 1911, they totalled 444 precious and semi-precious stones. The full count breaks down as follows: 345 rose-cut aquamarines, 37 white topazes, 27 tourmalines, 12 rubies, 7 amethysts, 6 sapphires, 2 jargoons, 1 garnet, 1 spinel, 1 carbuncle, and 1 peridot.

  Before 1911, jewels had been hired for each coronation and removed afterward. The crown's band was also resized in that year to fit George V, and imitation pearls on the arches and base were replaced with gold beads that were platinum-plated at the time. That resizing reduced the crown's overall weight from 82 troy ounces to 71 troy ounces.

  The crown stands 30 cm tall. It has four fleurs-de-lis alternating with four crosses pattée, supporting two dipped arches topped by a monde and cross pattée. A purple velvet cap is trimmed with ermine. Prior to the coronation of Charles III in 2023, the crown was removed from the Tower of London in December 2022 to be resized. Its circumference was enlarged by sawing the base into four pieces and welding 7 mm-wide strips of gold into the gaps. Eight new gold beads were then added to the rim.

  Despite its associations with continuity, only seven monarchs have been crowned with St Edward's Crown since the Restoration: Charles II, James II, William III, George V, George VI, Elizabeth II, and Charles III. Many others, including Queen Victoria and Edward VII, chose the lighter Imperial State Crown, and in Victoria's case the crown did not feature at all in her coronation ceremony.

• 7. The Crown in Heraldry and Law

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  After the monarchy was restored, Charles II based the heraldic crown used in British royal imagery on the new St Edward's Crown of 1661, featuring four crosses pattée alternating with four fleurs-de-lis. That pattern remained the standard depiction of the royal crown until the reign of Queen Victoria.

  Victoria's coronation, unusually, did not include St Edward's Crown at all. Early depictions of the Royal Arms during her reign showed the Imperial State Crown, which had been created for her coronation in 1838. Victoria had favoured a Tudor-style crown since at least the 1860s. After the accession of Edward VII, the War Office pressed for a single standardised crown design for use by the British Army. On the 4th of May 1901, the king approved a Tudor Crown design based on the crown of Henry VII, described as the design "chosen and always used by Queen Victoria personally".

  George VI stopped using the title Emperor of India in 1948 following India's independence the previous year. When Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, she switched back to a design resembling St Edward's Crown, reverting to the form last used before Victoria's reign. Charles III adopted the Tudor Crown on his accession in 2022, similar to the version last used under George VI but with some differences. The cap of the heraldic crown is always depicted as crimson, regardless of what colour any actual crown's cap may be.

  Under section 4 of the Trade Marks Act 1994, the royal crowns are specially protected emblems. An image of St Edward's Crown cannot be used in a trade mark in the United Kingdom, or in any country party to the Paris Convention, without permission. The Lord Chamberlain's Office maintains an image library of alternative crowns that may be used commercially without infringing those protections.