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Black
Prince II
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Some sixty years later the Black Prince’s Ruby resurfaced
with the ‘Plantagenet’ King Henry V of Lancaster. Henry
was born in 1387, and by the tender age of fourteen he
had already become a fearsome and courageous warrior.
In 1415, two years after becoming king, Henry V asked
the French King Charles VI for his daughter’s hand in
marriage. He also asked for a dowry of French lands to
be returned to the ‘Plantagenet’ kingdom: including Normandy
and Anjou as agreed in the ‘Treaty of Troyes’ . |
Charles VI broke the treaty refusing Henry V’s demands;
in answer to the French King Henry declared war. The deciding
battle, immortalized in the play ‘Henry V’ by Shakespeare,
was to be one of the most famous and bloody battles of
the ‘Hundred Years War’: Agincourt. On the eve of battle
it rained heavily turning the ground to ankle deep mud,
this was to be one of the deciding factors in Henry’s
victory. Both armies rose at dawn on ‘St Crispin’s Day’
and assembled for battle: the English, sickened with dysentery
and malnutrition, numbered approximately 7000 archers
and men-at-arms, to the French’s 13000 . |
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Henry V was an excellent leader revered by his soldiers,
so in defiance of insurmountable odds and in order to
boost moral Henry, as was the fashion for a medieval king,
adorned himself in full battle regalia. His armor was
gilt-embossed, with the crowning glory of an iron helmet
surmounted by a crown garnished with pearls, sapphires and of course Rubies of which the Black Prince's Ruby held pride of place . |
However, dressed with his gem encrusted armor Henry V
was a conspicuous figure on the battlefield, attracting
much attention from French knights who wished to deal
him death or better yet capture him for a king’s ransom.
One who came close was the renowned French knight the
Duke of Alencon, who managed to strike Henry’s helmet
a heavy blow with his axe knocking him to the ground and
severing the crown. Attracted by the glittering
Ruby, Henry was assailed by a group of French soldiers
who managed to steal away the detached part of the crown
with the Black Prince’s Ruby still attached . |
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Eventually, the mud and the skilled marksmanship of the
English longbow men, loosing up to ten armor piercing
‘Bodkin Point’ arrows a minute, proved fatal for the over
confident and badly organized French army. At one point
there seemed to be more French prisoners in captivity
than actually fighting, and these were causing so many
problems behind the lines that Henry V was forced to fire
on them to bring them under control. However, some managed to get away even stealing another one of his crowns. The battle of Agincourt was finally won, but the ‘Black Prince's Ruby was lost.
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The French prisoners were brought to England where one
of them, Gaucourt, said that he knew where the jewels were. On promise of his liberty he returned to France
and recovered the lost gems including the Black Prince’s
Ruby, restoring it to its rightful place amongst the
crown jewels. The very same helmet worn by Henry V can
still be seen today hanging in London’s Westminster
Abbey, shorn of its jewels, but bearing the battle scars
of the Duke of Alencon’s axe blow.
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T he ‘Black Prince’s Ruby’ passed from King to Queen, through
the regal hands of Henry VIII to his daughters ‘Bloody
Mary’ and Elizabeth I. It was during this period that
the Ruby was pierced at the top with a small hole to enable
it to be worn suspended from the neck, that hole during
the reign of James I was filled with a small Ruby, which
remains there today. |
The
Black Prince’s Ruby continued its passage through history.
Firstly, upon king Charles I head, while it remained attached
to his body: escaping near destruction at the hands of
Oliver Cromwell’s commonwealth who had ordered the kings
beheading. Then it found its way onto the head of Charles
II, during whose reign the Crown Jewels were almost successfully
stolen by Captain Blood, a notorious Irish desperado who
gained access to the Tower of London disguised as a priest.
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A
couple of hundred years later in 1821, the Black Prince’s Ruby was the star of the show at the coronation of the
Hanoverian king George IV. The obese, gout ridden, dandy
king spent a fortune of $1,190,000 on his personal adornment
alone, spending weeks in fretful discussion over the size,
shape and material of his outfit. The crown for this occasion,
made by Messrs. Rundell & Bridge, was large, costly
and very heavy. It weighed nearly seven pounds and was
a mass of precious stones. At the back of the lower band
was a large sapphire, and in front gleamed the fire-red
gemstone that had looked down in Agincourt from the helmet
of king Henry V . |
Queen Victoria was crowned in 1838 at the height of the
British Empire. In testament to the richness of the Empire,
Victoria’s crown also made by Messrs. Rundell & Bridge,
consisted of a Fleur-De-Lys and a Maltese Cross executed
in diamonds. In the center of the lower band of the crown
there was the same large sapphire featured in George IV’s
crown and just above it, in the middle of a superb cross
of seventy-five diamonds, gleamed the famous Black Prince’s
Ruby. It is said that during the coronation a sudden ray
of sunlight streamed down upon the young sovereign and
the crown upon her head, producing a glittering effect
that illuminated the whole interior of Westminster Abbey . |
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