On This Day in History: April 11

The Stone of Scone

AUDIO VERSION HERE

You will never convince me there wasn’t alcohol involved in this caper. It was the theft of a big fucking rock. But it’s an important rock. A rock that was used for centuries in coronations of Scottish monarchs. And those English fucks took it. But then, some (probably drunken) Scottish heroes took it back.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 11, 1951--

The rock is called the Stone of Scone, and it got its name because it was housed at the monastery of Scone, not because it looked like a baked good. Then in 1291 some English cock named Edward I said, “Spoils of war, muthafuckas!” and stole that rock and put it in Westminster Abbey where it was used for crowning their monarchs because fuck you Scotland, I guess.

Speaking of coronations, the stone kind of looks like an off-with-their-head chopping block, which has been known to happen to the odd British monarch, but the stone is integrated into a coronation chair. You don’t place your head across it; you sit on it. Well, not you, ya fuckin’ peasant.

Some six-and-a-half centuries after the limeys took the fuckin’ thing, four brave young Scots, three men and a woman, decided they were going to take it back. On Christmas Day 1950 the four students from Glasgow broke into the abbey, took the rock, then fucking dropped it and it broke in two. It also broke two toes on one of the thieves. Told you they were drunk.

Not realizing how heavy a big fucking rock can be, they had to drag the bigger piece down the hall on top of a coat to a waiting car. The smaller piece was put in a separate car by two of the thieves, and they were almost busted by a cop, but one of them was the woman in the crew so they started making kissy face, because it was five in the morning so why else would two young people be in a car at that time?

After making their getaway, they took the two parts of the stone to a mason to have it fixed. During the repair, the mason placed a brass rod with a note inside it within the stone. And no one knows what it says. The man who wrote the note took that secret to his grave. Probably something like “Fuck you, England. Scotland rules!” Anyway, after three months the police were closing in on the thieves, so on April 11, 1951, they left it at the Arbroath Abbey in Scotland, and told the cops where to find it. The stone was taken back to Westminster; Elizabeth II was crowned on it the following year. Forty-three years later she said fine have your fucking rock back and returned it to Scotland. It now resides in Edinburgh Castle.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE! Both volumes of “On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down” are being UNPUBLISHED* in mid-April. Last chance to get them at JamesFell.com/books.

*Republishing rights have been purchased by Bantam. A new version of Volume I comes this October, and a new version of Volume II next year.