Ian Hamilton masterminded probably the most daring heists of the final century

As treasures went, this one was no magnificence. It was an rectangular block of crimson sandstone, 26 inches lengthy by 16.7 extensive by 10.5 deep, rough-hewn and chisel-pocked. One face was incised with a crude cross, and two iron rings on chains had been set into the ends. By younger Ian Hamilton’s estimate—for he had borrowed guide after guide on it from the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, the place he was learning regulation on the college—it weighed 4 hundredweight: in actual fact it weighed 336lb, or 152 kilos. It was additionally crammed tightly below the traditional wood coronation chair of the kings and queens of England in Westminster Abbey. All this made it troublesome to abscond with. However that was what he meant to do.

For the Stone of Future, as this was, didn’t belong to England. It belonged to Scotland, and was the seat of Scottish kings. Legends hung thickly spherical it, instilled in his head by his mom. This was the pillow on which Jacob had slept, dreaming of angels descending and ascending once more to heaven. The prophet Jeremiah had introduced it to Eire, the place it grew to become the seat of the Excessive Kings. Thence it got here to Scotland. It was ripped from Scone Abbey by Edward I in 1296, since Scotland couldn’t prosper if it was gone. Edward III later promised to return it, however by no means had. Now, in 1950, 650 years later, a 25-year-old chain-smoking pupil was proposing to proper an amazing mistaken.

He didn’t accomplish that as a result of he hated the English. Although he got here throughout the border like a reiver bent on plunder, he admired England in some ways. Slightly than steal cattle or blow up bridges, he meant nothing violent. He had signed the Covenant of 1949 that demanded self-government in Scotland, however he was loyal to the English king; he didn’t search separation, only a higher union. Greater than something, he wished to wake Scotland as much as its personal greatness, its historical past and shared id. For the reason that Stone symbolised all that, its restitution can be a rallying cry. And no blood can be shed in doing it.

So the plot was hatched, with him because the mastermind and three different college students, Gavin Vernon, Alan Stuart and Kay Mathieson, becoming a member of in. Issues quickly turned farcical. His first plan, to cover within the Abbey at evening and open a door from the within, was foiled when a watchman discovered him. The subsequent day, Christmas Day within the small hours, they managed to interrupt in on the Poets’ Nook Entrance, however made a noise with their large jemmy match to wake the lifeless. When ultimately they obtained the Stone out and onto his coat to be dragged (he insisting that his coat ought to have that honour), he pulled a hoop too onerous, and the Stone broke in two. For a sickening second, he appeared to have destroyed what he had come to avoid wasting.

But it was not so. Regardless of all their fumblings, the greater than canny pressure of the Stone labored of their favour. In two items it was simpler to hold, and at occasions he barely felt the burden in any respect; he picked up the smaller chunk like a rugby ball, slid it into the clapped-out Ford Anglia which was the primary getaway automobile, and the automobile fired immediately. Improbably he and Kay, the motive force, managed to divert a policeman by posing as lovers on the lookout for a resort. Miraculously, returning to the pitch-black abbey for the second chunk, he trod on the mislaid keys to the second getaway automobile. Everybody obtained clear away. When he had first touched the Stone, although he was not particularly non secular, he had felt the soul of Scotland in his arms. What he didn’t count on was that, henceforward, the Stone would additionally dangle round his neck.

At first, this was thrilling. England and Scotland each went wild over the theft; for some time, the border was even closed. But he and his helpers had no thought what to do with the Stone. They hid one piece in Kent, the opposite in Birmingham, earlier than reuniting them in Scotland. Inside 4 months, nonetheless, they realised that they must give it again. He left it, draped in a Saltire, on the altar of the ruined abbey in Arbroath, and swore not to have a look at it once more till Scotland was free. Policemen recovered it, locking it in a imply cell like frequent loot, and took it again to Westminster.

Having escaped prosecution (one other miracle), he then resumed his authorized profession. By 1953 he was already well-known as a second petitioner in a landmark case, MacCormick v Lord Advocate, over whether or not Queen Elizabeth II needs to be plain “Queen Elizabeth” in Scotland. The primary Elizabeth, in spite of everything, had by no means dominated there. The ruling went towards him, however he had uncovered deficiencies within the Act of Union of 1707, and that made his title. He grew to become a much-respected legal lawyer in Scotland, in addition to director of civil litigation in Zambia and rector of Aberdeen College. Within the Scottish Nationwide Celebration, which he joined in 1992, his views on the union hardened, and his two memoirs burned with nationalist polemic. In 1994 he stood in European elections for Strathclyde East, in 1999 for the Scottish Parliament for Greenock. Although he misplaced each races, he was revered as an elder within the celebration.

But he typically felt he had no id besides the Stone. For years he was “the Stone man”, little else. He wouldn’t speak about it, for worry of changing into invisible; although he laughed at his youthful daftness, he struggled to do away with that shadow. The insurgent in him—the one who jumped off a bridge for a drunken wager and roared spherical on a motorcycle in his 80s—was nonetheless pleased with what he had completed, and rejoiced in having been known as a “vulgar vandal”. The considerate lawyer felt ashamed that the Stone had made him well-known, when the names of the airmen who had died within the battle, during which he had volunteered as an RAF mechanic, had lengthy been forgotten.

In 2008 a movie got here out in regards to the raid. The publicity reunited him with the Stone, which in 1996 had been returned on mortgage to Edinburgh Citadel. He might take a look at it now as a result of Scotland, although nonetheless not free, was awake, and the flood-tide was flowing.

No new encounter, although, might dislodge the picture of their final, when he had left the Stone at Arbroath. It lay in its Saltire, blue towards the blood-red damaged partitions of the nave: merely an rectangular block of the identical sandstone, rough-hewn and chisel-pocked, cracked (although since mended), with iron chains at its ends. But as he gazed, he heard the voice of Scotland crying out defiance. ■