Mary, Queen of Scots Silver-Gilt Casket

When I was a teenager growing up in Edinburgh I used to love going to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse, to see the apartments where Mary, Queen of Scots had lived, the plaque in the floor showing where her private secretary David Rizzio was brutally murdered, and to learn something of the complex and romantic history of her reign, imprisonment and death. Mary remains to this day an iconic figure in Scottish history and legend; and the fact that a gorgeous late-15th- or early-16th-century silver casket made in France and with strong associations with Mary is now in the National Museum of Scotland – with help from Art Fund – represents a perfect moment.   

It is, in any case, a superb example of early French silver, made in Paris between 1493 and 1510. Almost all the very finest French silver made before 1700 was requisitioned by Louis XIV – the Sun King – to finance his wars, and promptly disappeared into the melting pot. It is mainly those pieces that escaped abroad that have survived, so they are exquisite rarities. This is one of them. It has a fine coat of arms on the side, a splendidly decorated lock with a delicate key, and beautifully depicted leaves spreading across the silver surfaces of the casket. It takes its place alongside other fine pieces of French silver in the museum’s collection, including the famous 17-piece Lennoxlove toilet service from the 17th century, which still has its travelling chest and complement of protective leather cases. This casket, however, is earlier and even more striking.   

What makes it particularly significant, however, is the connection with Mary, Queen of Scots. Not only is it believed – with good evidence – to have belonged to Mary, but it is also believed to have been the receptacle that contained the infamous Casket Letters. These were letters purportedly revealing Mary’s adulterous relationship with the Earl of Bothwell (who ended up as her third husband) and implicating her in the murder of her second, Lord Darnley. These letters, and the casket, were paraded at Westminster in the English court in 1568 – in order to implicate her in Darnley’s murder. It sped up her calamitous fall from grace, which began after her enforced abdication in Scotland, followed by her flight to England, her subsequent imprisonment and, finally, her execution 19 years later.  

No one knows for certain that this was the casket that contained the Casket Letters. But it’s very likely that it was; and tradition for centuries now has held that this was indeed the very same. The casket was bought 87 years after Mary’s death by the Duchess of Hamilton, and she did so on the strength of its association with Mary. The Hamiltons were close relatives of the Stuart family, and collected many relics of Mary and her reign; the casket remained in the Hamilton family’s collection for centuries. There is not much better provenance than that.   

For many years the story of Mary, Queen of Scots has been dominated by her final years: her imprisonment, on the orders of Elizabeth I, in a succession of English manor houses and castles, followed by her execution at Fotheringhay in 1587. Her reign in Scotland, however, was a period of much greater enlightenment. For many years she skilfully navigated the competing demands of reformation campaigners and traditionalists; and she surrounded herself with artefacts, interiors and architecture that brought some of the beauty of the Renaissance in France to its northern ally in Scotland. The National Museum says of the casket that – together with its other holdings connected with Mary – it will help to tell a new story and that ‘Mary will emerge in her full glory as a majestic Renaissance queen’.    

The casket is now precisely where it ought to be. It is worth seeing, just for the sheer beauty of its craftsmanship and decorative glory. It is doubly worth seeing because it is so redolent of history and will make us all think, again, about the graceful and tragic queen who echoes down the years as such a symbolic figure in Scotland’s history.