NINE
The Rosslyn connection
In an age of atheism and doctrinal retreat, the Holy Rude – or Black Rood, so called because the crucifix in which the splinter of the True Cross was implanted was made of ebony, richly ornamented in gold – remains one of the most priceless symbols of Scotland’s Christian sovereignty and, despite the carnage of the Reformation, it defies imagination that it could have been allowed simply to vanish. This was no diminutive object, but stood a substantial 3 feet 9 inches in height. There has to be more to its disappearance than carelessness.
Following King Edward I’s invasion in 1296, the mediaeval sovereign reliquaries of Scotland were removed to England by him and were held in London until 1328, when the Treaty of Northampton made provision for the return of the Holy Rude, but curiously not the Stone of Destiny. Could this have been because King Robert knew that the large lump of sandstone held at Westminster was not the genuine article? An unlikely assumption, but worth pondering. Of all of Scotland’s State treasures, the Stone of Destiny has grabbed the popular imagination, not least because of its supposed ancestry. It is alleged to be the biblical pillow upon which Jacob, the Hebrew patriarch, rested his head in the Garden of Bethel in Judea, where, at one stage, the Ark of the Covenant was also kept.
The stone is said to have been brought to Scotland via Ireland from Egypt in the sixth century by Fergus Mor Mac Erc, first king of Dalriada, and all subsequent Scottish kings were crowned upon it. On hearing of the approach of King Edward’s army, and suspecting his motives, it is said that the Abbot of Scone gave instructions for the genuine stone to be hidden and replaced with a lump of local rock. Both the writer Seton Gordon and the novelist Nigel Tranter are convinced that the genuine stone was hidden in a cave at Dunsinnan in Perthshire and remains there to this day. The ‘official’ view, however, is that this is based on pure romanticism and there is no evidence to support it.
Eighteen years passed after the Holy Rude was returned to Scotland, then in 1346, Bruce’s son, 22-year-old King David Bruce, adhering to the Franco-Scottish Alliance and hoping to distract Edward III from the Siege of Calais, marched into England carrying it at the head of his army. It was a huge mistake. The Scots were soundly defeated at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, King David was taken prisoner, and the Holy Rude of Scotland was put on display on a pillar of St Cuthbert’s shrine in Durham Cathedral.
Historical accounts are often contradictory. One version of the Holy Rude story insists that this unique artefact was looted with all the other valuables associated with the Church of Rome when that great English cathedral was despoiled in 1540. However, there is another theory which claims that it was retrieved from England seven decades earlier, in 1471, through the diplomacy of Prince William St Clair, when he was sent to London as Scotland’s ambassador by James III.1 This variant certainly presents a far more compelling possibility. And if it is indeed the case then the Holy Rude would certainly have been among the items of value taken from Holyrood Palace to Rosslyn for safekeeping between 1544 and 1548, the period of national emergency known as the ‘Rough Wooing’, after the Scots had broken off the betrothal of the two-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, to the five-year-old Prince Edward of England.
To house them we know from Father Hay that a ‘treasury’ was built, but its whereabouts remains a mystery. Some zealots insist that it must have been located within the chapel vaults, but why not within the castle? Or was the sanctity of the chapel considered inviolable? Surely not with the Reformation underway? However, these were early days in that particular saga, and by protecting the valuables of Scotland the St Clairs of Rosslyn, as loyal subjects of the House of Stewart, were fulfilling what they saw as their sacred duty. But to just what lengths did that loyalty stretch?
In 1544, Rosslyn Castle came under attack from the English again, for the first time in over two centuries. This time the assault was led by Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, King Henry VIII’s commander who later became 1st Duke of Somerset. In the course of his Scottish campaign, his army decimated 243 villages, destroyed 7 monasteries, burned 5 market towns, and razed 4 abbeys, including Dryburgh and Kelso.2 Rosslyn Castle was severely damaged by fire, but amazingly the chapel was left intact and no mention is made of valuables being seized. In February of the following year, the Scots did win a victory against the invaders at Ancrum Moor, but were severely beaten at the Battle of Pinkie on ‘Black Saturday’, 10 September 1547.3
Only months previous to this defeat at Pinkie, Mary de Guise, Queen Regent of Scotland in the absence of her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been sent to France for her own safety, wrote an enigmatic letter to Sir William St Clair of Rosslyn, in which she referred pointedly to a ‘secret’ which she promised not to reveal. In addition, she pledged to ‘maintain and defend him be ourself, our pensionaris, servandis, partakers and assistants, that will do for us, in all his actions, causes and quarrels, contraire and against all men that leive, or deny the crown of Scotland and authority thereof ’, and allocated to him an annual pension of 300 merks.4 So what was this ‘secret’ Mary de Guise promised not to betray?
The previous year, a communication had arrived at Rosslyn from the Scottish Lords in Council demanding that Sir William produce, within three days, all jewels, vestments and ornaments of ‘the abbay and place of Halyrudhous’. There is no record of Sir William’s response, so we are left to speculate as to what these jewels, vestments and ornaments were, where they were being kept, and why it was that Sir William should have been held responsible for them in the first place. Certainly, the contents of Holyrood would have included the Honours of Scotland: the circlet of gold used at King Robert I’s inauguration, the Sceptre of Peace, a gift from Pope Alexander VI to James IV in 1494, and the Sword of State, a gift to that same king from Pope Julius II. In times of national emergency it makes sense that these items would have been stored somewhere that was considered safe until the danger had passed, and their hiding place could well have been Rosslyn. But what else might there have been?
In contrast to the Holy Rude, we do know for certain what became of Scotland’s other icons. During Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of 1651, for example, the Honours of Scotland were taken to the Keith Family stronghold of Dunnottar Castle in Kincardineshire. When Cromwell attacked Dunnottar, they were smuggled out by a servant girl and hidden in a church in Kinneff. They were later transferred to Edinburgh Castle where they were found in 1822 by Sir Walter Scott, who discovered their hiding place from researching old manuscripts.
The whereabouts of Scotland’s Holy Rude is central to the mythology surrounding the treasures thought to have been secreted away in Rosslyn Chapel and Castle. Its whereabouts is still a mystery, and one that has increasingly focused on Rosslyn, especially with the publication of The Da Vinci Code in 2003. Not only that, the chapel has also come to be associated with the missing wealth of the Templars, if it ever existed in the first place.
In Theatrum Scotiae, published in 1693, John Slezer writes that a great treasure, ‘amounting to some millions, lies buried in one of the vaults at Rosslyn’. So as to put people off looking for it, he says that it is under the guardianship of a lady of the ancient house of St Clair who, not very faithful in her trust, has long been in a dormant state. Awakened, however, by the sound of a trumpet, which must be heard in one of the lower apartments, she is to make her appearance and to point out the spot where the treasure lies. Whether the vaults to which he refers are those under the chapel or to be found within the castle itself is open to conjecture. Whether the treasure worth millions is in fact the Holy Rude, or one of the many other possibilities which proliferate, is equally unclear. Short of levelling the entire plateau upon which Rosslyn sits, we are unlikely ever to know, and God forbid that we should. An unresolved mystery is far more tantalising than an established truth.
One claim made is that the original stones which formed the foundation for the Ark of the Covenant under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago are now to be found within the chapel.5 A more recent contention, announced by the Edinburgh-based musician Stuart Mitchell and others, is that the 213 cubes set into the roof of the Lady Chapel represent the Devil’s Chord, a set of notation proscribed by the Church for inducing altered states of consciousness. The Holy Grail, according to popular belief the vessel used to gather up the blood of Christ at his crucifixion, is thought to have been among the great treasures of the Dome of the Rock, and is said to possess extraordinary powers of healing. An alternative belief is that it was the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, but not to be confused with the Holy Chalice which contained the wine, and which is among the venerated relics held at the Cathedral of Valencia in Spain. Either way, and whatever it is, many believe it resides at Rosslyn. And, given the outlandish symbolism allocated to so many Christian reliquaries, skulls, bones and body parts, it comes almost as a relief to find such potency associated with a simple goblet, made of clay or stoneware, in preference to human tissue. But then there is the additional ‘spiritual’ interpretation to contend with.
The passing centuries have served only to blur, excite and exaggerate hypotheses, and mobilise cranks, but there is still a widespread belief that, in mankind’s increasingly more desperate attempts to understand the origins of spirituality, at least some of the answers are to be found somewhere in the vicinity of Rosslyn Chapel. This is evident not least in the proliferation of secret societies and cult practices which have sprung up to ruthlessly associate themselves with the Knights Templar and the history of the St Clair Family.