It is a potent symbol of Scottish monarchy and nationhood with debated links to the real-life king Macbeth, who inspired William Shakespeare. It also has an undeniable association with the current British monarch, King Charles, who like his mother Elizabeth was crowned while sitting above it.
Now the ancient Stone of Destiny, a sacred 150kg lump of sandstone, which is venerated by Scottish nationalists and UK unionists alike as the seat upon which monarchs are crowned, is at the centre of a historical puzzle that academics aim to solve.
Researchers are believed to have found a previously unknown slew of chunks that were secretly hewn from the ancient rock and stashed for years all over Scotland and beyond. A new academic study, due out in July, will show that the Stone of Destiny has many more chips off the old block.
Custody of the stone, more formally known as the Stone of Scone (pronounced “scoon”) after the Perthshire palace that was the site of the crowning of ancient Scottish kings including Macbeth, has been a flashpoint in mercurial royal relations between England and Scotland over the centuries.
It was held for 700 years in London’s Westminster Abbey after it was forcibly taken from Scone in 1296 by England’s King Edward (the “Longshanks” villain in the Braveheart film) and later used in the crowning of unified British monarchs at the base of the Abbey’s coronation chair.
Suffragettes almost blew it up in a bomb on the chair in 1914. Famously, four Scottish nationalist students from Glasgow broke into the Abbey on Christmas Day in 1950 and made off with the stone, which broke in two during the operation. Despite the first (until Covid) recorded closure in modern times of the England-Scotland border, the students evaded police and made it back to Scotland with the stone before it was later discovered draped in a Saltire flag.
A Glasgow stone mason, Bertie Gray, who also happened to be a Scottish nationalist, was recruited afterwards to fix the stone by melding the broken halves. He reputedly kept 34 pieces, which he quietly distributed among fellow nationalists – a network of secret symbols of Scottish resistance to English rule. One verified fragment was discovered last year in a cupboard at the Scottish National Party’s offices, after it was given 16 years previously to the late former SNP leader, Alex Salmond.
Researchers from Stirling University issued a public appeal in January for holders of the 34 fragmentsto come forward. Now, it seems, there may have been more. The Stone of Destiny may have glistened farther and wider, and in more pieces, than was ever known.
“Bertie Gray talked of 34,” said professor Sally Foster, the Stirling academic who is leading the fragments research. But, as she revealed to The Irish Times this week, “there are more”.
“I can’t go any further than that for now. It’s too early: it would be unfair to those who have come forward, because the full results of the research won’t be out until July,” said Foster. Then, she suggested, there will be “more of a story to tell” beyond the original known fragments.
The Stone of Destiny was moved (officially “loaned” although the UK government dare not say who officially “owns” the stone for fear of stoking a nationalist row) from Westminster back to Edinburgh in 1996, the 700th anniversary of Edward’s plundering of it from Scone. It remained in the Scottish capital until last year, apart from a brief sojourn south for the May 2023 coronation of Charles.
Now, it is back in its original home of Perthshire, the old heartland of Scottish monarchy where ancient kings were crowned at Scone Palace, 4km north of Perth and 75km north of Edinburgh. The stone is kept under tight security and exhibited as the centrepiece of the new Perth Museum, which reopened in March 2024 on a new site in the handsome Scottish city after a £27 million revamp.
The monarchical stone will sit neatly alongside a new exhibition on Macbeth, the real-life and the literary figures, which opens at the museum later this month and runs until the end of August.
Myth still surrounds the storied Destiny slab, which is about the size of a bedside locker with metal rings attached. The main tale holds that it journeyed to Scotland from biblical Egypt, where it was originally “Jacob’s Pillow” on which the Israelite patriarch rested his head while looking to the heavens. This gave it religious significance and bolstered the claim of a divine right to rule, the lustre of which still has influence today. Some have even suggested it travelled via the Hill of Tara in Ireland.
Modern science, however, proves the stone is made of Perthshire sandstone, so it must have been quarried locally. There are even doubts over whether today’s stone is the real one that, supposedly for four centuries until 1296, was used to crown 42 kings including the real Macbeth.
Perth Museum, however, says the first “documented use” of the stone to crown a monarch was for the 1249 inauguration of the Scottish boy-king, Alexander III. Yet that is two centuries after real-life Macbeth reigned for 17 years in the kingdom of Alba, the forerunner realm to modern-day Scotland.
It would be another 357 years or so before Shakespeare would write his epochal play, a fictitious story in which the Scottish king slaughters his way to power after a prophecy from three witches.
“The significance of the stone is that for an unprepossessing piece of rock, it can absorb almost any meaning that people wish to impart upon it,” said Mark Hall, a collection officer and curator at Culture Perth and Kinross, the trust that operates Perth Museum, among other venues in the region.
Regardless of its true provenance and whether or not it had any links to Macbeth at all, the emotion attached to the stone as a national symbol in modern-day Britain and especially in Scotland is real. When the stone was “loaned” last year by the guardians of Britain’s royal regalia to Perth museum, the new venue was set a visitor target for the year of 160,000. After 12 months exhibiting the Stone of Destiny, more than 250,000 had passed through the museum’s doors.
The new Macbeth: The Exhibition show aims to pull together, side-by-side, scarce elements of the real-life Scottish king with the fictitious Shakespearean character, of which there are many more tangible reminders over history.
The exhibition’s literary displays will include an example of the First Folio, an original book of all of Shakespeare’s plays on which Macbeth was first printed. On the historical side, it will also include an 11th century iron sword from the time of the real Macbeth, who ruled Alba for 17 years until 1057. There is also an ancient arrowhead found on an island linked to the real Scottish king.
Whether or not he was actually crowned on the Stone of Destiny known today, it is a historical fact that the real Macbeth fought English kings who came marauding north. That chimes with accepted stories of the stone, most obviously the tale of its plundering from Perthshire to Westminster by Longshanks more than 700 years ago.
“The stone symbolised Scottish kingship, and that king of England wanted to be king of Scotland too,” said Hall. “That’s why he took it. It was like saying ‘I’m the boss of both’.”
Debate over the nature of the relationship between the two nations – England and Scotland – still bubbles away today.
