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The Tudors and the Stuarts: Charles

While all this pawning and selling was going on, Charles patronized the jewellers as liberally as though the royal exchequer was overflowing with riches. In the very year that his agents were bringing England into contempt abroad by carrying her crown jewels from money-lender to money-lender, the king added to the royal collection a diamond costing eight thousand pounds, a gold ring of four hundred pounds, a fair jewel set with diamonds, worth nine thousand five hundred pounds, and a looking-glass set with diamonds, priced at two thousand five hundred pounds. He purchased three thousand pounds' worth of jewellery for the queen from Mercadet, and when the jeweller presented the order for the money, he was informed that the exchequer had not the wherewithal to satisfy his demands, and was compelled to give it some months' credit. John Vaulier, who supplied the king about the same time with about two thousand pounds' worth of jewellery, is found, after eighteen years of constant dunning, still without his money; while Sir Thomas Roe, after patiently waiting for three years and a-half, complained bitterly that he saw no prospect of obtaining two thousand five hundred pounds, for some jewels he had procured at the express desire of the queen, and for which he had actually paid three thousand pounds.

In 1642, when both king and parliament were preparing for war, Charles authorized Queen Henrietta to dispose of his great collar of rubies, and sundry other jewels she had conveyed abroad to raise funds for equipping his adherents. As soon as this became known, parliament issued an order of the day declaring the king had no power to pawn or sell the crown jewels, and ordering that "whoever had or should pay, lend, send, or bring any money into the kingdom for, or upon those jewels, should be accounted an enemy of the state, and be dealt with accordingly."

In Miss Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England" we have interesting notices of the means adopted by the consort of Charles I. to raise money on the royal jewels. The Queen solicited loans not only from the female nobility of England, but from private families whom she had reason to believe sympathized in the royal cause. To such as supplied her with these aids, she was accustomed to test her gratitude by the gift of a ring, or some other trinket from her own cabinet. But when affairs became critical she was compelled to sell or pawn in Holland the whole of her plate and most of her jewels. She adopted an ingenious device by which she was enabled, at a small expense, to continue her gifts to her friends. She had a great many rings, lockets, and bracelet-clasps made with her cypher, the letters H. M. R., in a very delicate filagree of gold, entwined in a monogram, laid on a ground of crimson velvet covered with thick crystal cut like a table diamond, and set in gold. These were called the "Queen's pledges," and presented by her to any person who had lent her money, with an understanding that if they were returned to her majesty at any future time, the money should be repaid. Charles I. seems to have had a passion for gems in his more prosperous days. In the Athenaeum (No. 573) there is a formidable list of expenses incurred by him for jewellery--fifty thousand pounds worth in eighteen months. The greater part of this was, however, for gifts.

Dean Swift tells us that Charles I., in gallantry to his queen, thought one day to surprise her with the present of a diamond brooch; and fastening it to her bosom with his own hand, he awkwardly wounded her with the prong so deeply that she snatched the jewel from her bosom, and flung it to the ground. The king looked alarmed and confounded, and turned pale, which he was never seen to do in his worst misfortunes.

Sir Paul Pindar is said to have brought from Turkey a large diamond, valued at pound 30,000 (a vast sum in his days), which James I. wished to obtain on credit; but the merchant wisely declined the contract, yet allowed his sovereign the use of the diamond on State occasions. Charles I. afterwards became the purchaser.