Royal Tomfoolery – Everything you wanted to know about the Crown and the Royal Jewels

As every Cockney in London will tell you, Tomfoolery is rhyming slang for Jewelry and at the Coronation, you are going to see many pieces that are normally kept hidden from view.

Some 15,500 items from the Collection are on long-term loan to more than 150 museums and galleries in the United Kingdom and abroad, including the British Museum, The National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, the National Museum of Wales and the National Gallery of Scotland, but if you are looking forward to seeing the Imperial State Crown, you are going to be disappointed.

Of the eight crowns held by the Royal Collection, it is the St Edward’s Crown that is traditionally used at a coronation. The original St Edward’s crown had a long and colourful history, thought to start with Edward The Confessor in 1161. Early description suggests the crown was made with slight stones and two little bells.

Since then, the crown has been dismantled, melted down, restored, built up and altered for each coronation. Although it’s not documented what jewels were in the original crown, there are only a few gemstones which existed back then and can be found in today’s crown.

In 1660 the monarch was reinstated, and a new St Edward’s Crown was made for Charles II in 1661, fashioned to resemble the original medieval crown as closely as possible. It is said that it may contain gold remnants from earlier versions of the crown.

Astonishingly, an article in the Crown Chronicals says that Charles II had thought the cost of buying the previous gems had been too high to justify, so Sir Robert Vyner, sworn in as the Royal Jeweller in 1660, oversaw the production and rented gems from the royal collection to the King for £500, before taking them back after the event. The gems included rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnet, topazes and tourmalines.

In 1911, King George V paid for the 444 gemstones which were permanently set into the Crown used for his coronation, which remains as you see it today. Whilst there is no notable “headline” gemstone in the crown (which is identical back and front), an extraordinarily high proportion of the gemstones are aquamarines: over 77%!

Not a lot of people know that!