Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom

I'll be back shortly with act one.

[Instrumental music] He had solved them all, the disappearance of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, the Fort Knox hijacking, a million in gold bars that never reached their destination, the theft of the historic Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

In each case, Otto Glazer undertook the task of finding the stolen valuables, and in each case, through much heralded psychic means, he eventually led the police to their reward.

His fees were astronomically high, but since what he regained was priceless, no individual, insurance company, or nation felt defrauded.

Anyway, I was talking about the Office of Arms moving to Bedford Tower.

Because the office was also the depository of the Irish Crown Jewels, the refurbishment there in anticipation of the move had included the addition of a strong room.

You know, a room that's been reinforced with security features like thick walls that are usually fireproof, bomb-proof, and burglar-proof.

In this case, the door to that room was made of steel and weighed a couple of tons, all with the express purpose of keeping a handful of royal family jewels in safe hands.

The jewels themselves were also born of illustriousness.

R.L. Weston, host of History Calling, explains

"The Irish Crown Jewels were the insignia of the Chivalric Order of St. Patrick, which had been founded in 1783 as a counterpart to the English Order of the Garter and the Scottish Order of the Thistle."

You should know that the Irish Crown Jewels were in no way comparable to the more famous British crown jewels, whose value is somewhere between $4 and $6 billion.

So it's been, uh, it's been great.

Saw the Crown Jewels.

Yes, we went and saw the Crown Jewels.

Yeah.

My, uh, my four-year-old son was very upset that he couldn't take any of them home.

We all wanna get down to the tapestry, and we're sort of in this long, uh, queue.

And also, actually particularly for the people who are working there, 'cause when you get to the tapestry, y- you have to keep mo- moving along, or that's the idea, and they haven't got a travelator like the Crown Jewels.

So, um-

[laughs]

Hey, we go in there, respect their house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I brought up the jewels, the crown jewels of England and how those have been around for so many years and how people are the caretakers of the jewels of England.

Your resources baffle me.

Are you using AI to come up with yet another story for my team on Monday? Cindy, edit that

Got your attention now, didn't I? Right.

Here's what it is.

When we walk into people's houses, we are working with their crown jewels.

We are in there working with their house, and we are working on their most prized possession.

And so my wife and I made a list of like, what are our bucket list items? And one thing she said was, I have to go to the Tower of London.

I have to see the Crown Jewels, which, by the way, the whole time we were there, I kept calling them the Family Jewels, not even being funny, just on accident.

I would say, boy, I hope I get to see the Family Jewels, and people go, I think it's the Crown Jewels, sir.

But that's what was on her list.

So, I mean, that's who Susan is, right? She wants to go to the fancy museum.

Hm.

And then it's up there for British people with the Crown Jewels, with Stonehenge.

Wow.

The Bayeux Tapestry is something so important we teach it at schools.

One of her crafting exercises, yeah.

And, and then everyone was talking about the crown jewels, whatever they are, and how they've gone missing, and, uh-

Mm.

Anyway, so-

This stone weighs 530.20 carats and is pear-shaped with 74 facets.

The Cullinan one is set in the Royal Sceptre and is part of the British Crown Jewels housed in the Tower of London.

The Cullinan II, the second largest cut stone, weighs 317.4 carats and is set in the Imperial State Crown.

The Cullinan was presented to King Edward VII as a gift, and these cut stones became part of the British royal collection.

The transformation of a single massive rough diamond into multiple gemstones that now adorn royal regalia across centuries represents one of the most remarkable transformations in diamond history.

Each stone carries the history of that initial find and that patient cutting process.

When you see images of the British crown jewels, you are seeing pieces of a story that began in South Africa in 1905.

Russia and Congo are the world's largest diamond producers by volume.

Welcome to the Proper British History Podcast.

Today, we follow Thomas Blood's audacious 1671 attempt to steal the Crown Jewels and the surprising royal pardon that followed.

The story that unfolds around Thomas Blood begins in seventeenth century Ireland, a place of land, title disputes, and civil strife.

He was an Anglo-Irish colonel, serving first under the Parliamentarians, then switching allegiances as the Restoration swept Charles into power in 1660.

By the late 1660s, Blood had lost much of his property in Ireland as Charles reestablished royal prerogative.

This financial loss was no doubt a key motivator for what came next.

Yet, despite being an exile from favor and a man out of pocket, Blood harbored one audacious idea: to steal the Crown Jewels from the very vaults that had symbolized his former lordship.

The jewels themselves were a relatively recent compilation, most items assembled under Charles' own orders for his 1661 coronation.