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Ian Hamilton, who broke into Westminster Abbey in London with fellow College of Glasgow college students on Christmas Day in 1950 to take again the Stone of Future, the rock upon which Scottish monarchs had been topped for hundreds of years till England seized it in 1296, died on Oct. 3 in North Connel, Scotland. He was 97.
His demise was reported extensively in Scottish media.
Mr. Hamilton was learning legislation when he hatched his plan with three others to recuperate the stone. It was not, in his view, a foolish escapade or a scholar prank. An ardent Scottish nationalist, he seen the stone as a potent image of Scottish independence that rightly belonged on Scottish soil.
“The beauty of the stone is that it transcends politics,” he mentioned in an interview with the Sons of Scotland web site when he was 82. “No matter our political beliefs, Scots acknowledge that there’s something that binds us collectively.”
All he and his crew needed to do was break into Westminster Abbey, wrest the stone — a sandstone block weighing 336 pounds — from beneath the Coronation Chair constructed by King Edward I to surround the relic after his conquest of Scotland, and get away cleanly.
The group drove from Glasgow to London on Christmas Eve in two vehicles. The following morning they left one automotive in quite a bit and piled into the second, a Ford Anglia, arriving at Westminster Abbey at the hours of darkness early morning hours of Dec. 25.
At about 4 a.m., Mr. Hamilton, Alan Stuart and Gavin Vernon started to assault the pine door on the Poets’ Nook entrance to the abbey. Nobody noticed or stopped them.
“Gavin put his shoulder to the door,” Mr. Hamilton wrote in a 1952 e-book, “No Stone Unturned,” nevertheless it barely budged.
“The jimmy!” Mr. Vernon cried, demanding the one instrument that they’d introduced with them, a crowbar.
Mr. Hamilton turned to Mr. Stuart: “The jimmy!”
“What?” mentioned Mr. Stuart. “I believed you had it.”
Mr. Hamilton ran again to the automotive to retrieve it.
Quickly the door’s woodwork and padlock gave away.
“You form of know that if you take a crowbar to a facet door of Westminster Abbey and jimmy the lock that there actually isn’t any going again, don’t you?” Mr. Hamilton instructed British newspaper The Telegraph in 2008.
They moved swiftly into the darkness of the abbey and located their technique to the Coronation Chair. They pried off a wood retaining bar throughout the entrance of the chair, however releasing the stone was harder. They pushed and jimmied it till they have been capable of raise it and carry it for a yard earlier than realizing that it was too heavy to take any additional.
They then heaved the stone onto Mr. Hamilton’s coat, hoping to slip it to freedom. However as he pulled at one of many stone’s iron rings, it got here aside, one chunk of about 100 kilos, one other greater than double that weight. Mr. Hamilton ran exterior, nearly giddily, lugging the smaller piece. The fourth member of the group, the getaway driver, Kay Matheson, drove up, and Mr. Hamilton laid it on the again seat.
As he did so Ms. Matheson urgently instructed him that she had been noticed by a police officer. Mr. Hamilton hopped within the automotive, and when the officer approached, he and Ms. Matheson pretended to be an amorous couple. Arousing no suspicions, they drove away. The 2 different college students fled, leaving the remainder of the stone behind.
Mr. Hamilton returned later with the opposite automotive, dragged the remaining stone to it, and drove off.
The audacious caper captivated Britain for months.
The British police started a manhunt. Vehicles have been stopped at roadblocks. Our bodies of water have been dredged. The border between Scotland and England throughout the Cheviot Hills was briefly closed.
Ian Robertson Hamilton was born on Sept. 13, 1925, in Paisley, Scotland, simply north of Glasgow, to John and Martha (Robertson) Hamilton. His father was a tailor. His mom fired his nationalism with tales concerning the Stone of Future.
Ian served within the Royal Air Power as a flight mechanic, enrolled on the College of Glasgow in 1948 and have become considered one of two million Scots to signal the Scottish Covenant, a petition to Britain demanding residence rule.
Mr. Hamilton discovered a patron for his raid on the abbey in John MacCormick, a number one advocate of Scottish autonomy, who gave the group 50 kilos for his or her bills.
Radio applications reported the theft on Christmas. For the scholars, each passing police automotive prompted concern. Fearing seize, they hid the stone — a minimum of the bigger portion of it — in an overgrown rural space in Kent, England. A day or so later, they moved it to a wooded space in Rochester. Ms. Matheson had hidden the opposite piece in Birmingham.
On Dec. 30, the group issued a letter to King George VI, providing to return the stone if it have been repatriated to Scotland, however promising to make it out there for future British coronations.
Mr. Hamilton and a crew of recent recruits dug up the stone and ferried it to Scotland, anointing it with a splash of Scotch whisky as they crossed the border. This time it was hidden within the cellar of a manufacturing unit exterior Glasgow by a neighborhood politician who organized to have the 2 items rejoined.
The 4 plotters have been interrogated by a Scotland Yard detective in March 1951, however they denied any involvement and none have been arrested.
In April, deciding that he had executed all he might to advance Scottish nationalism, Mr. Hamilton determined to give up the stone anonymously. He, the politician who had repaired it and one other nationalist buddy laid it on the altar within the ruins of the Abbey of Arbroath, about 100 miles northeast of Glasgow.
Per week later, the British authorities introduced that it could not prosecute. Hartley Shawcross, the legal professional normal of Britain, scorned the group’s “vulgar acts of vandalism” however selected to not cost them and threat turning them into martyrs.
Assured of their freedom, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Stuart and Mr. Vernon handed out statements to reporters in Glasgow figuring out their roles within the stone’s liberation.
Mr. Hamilton completed his authorized research and have become a famend felony lawyer and an energetic member in Scottish Nationwide Get together politics. Ms. Matheson turned a instructor, Mr. Vernon an engineer, and Mr. Stuart a businessman.
Mr. Hamilton was the final surviving member of the crew.
His survivors embody his spouse, Jeanette (Stewart) Hamilton; his sons, Jamie and Stewart; and a daughter, Aileen.
In 1996, Mr. Hamilton’s purpose was fulfilled. Prime Minister John Main of Britain agreed to return the stone to Scotland, and it was taken to a brand new everlasting residence at Edinburgh Castle, with the supply that it could be returned to London for coronations. And so it is going to be subsequent 12 months for the crowning of King Charles III.
When Mr. Hamilton’s e-book was made right into a film, “Stone of Destiny,” launched in 2008, he instructed The Telegraph in an interview that he had hardly ever talked concerning the caper within the intervening years.
“Am I proud?,” he mentioned. “You wager I’m. I felt I used to be holding Scotland’s soul after I touched it for the primary time.”
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