Yahoo News Casket believed to have belonged to to Mary, Queen of Scots to go on display in Kirkcudbright
A silver casket believed to have been owned by Mary, Queen of Scots is set to go on display in Kirkcudbright later this year.
The artefact, acquired by National Museums Scotland in 2022, has been undergoing fresh conservation work, with centuries of tarnish and corrosion being removed.
It is thought the casket was made in Paris between 1493 and 1510 and is a superb and extremely rare work of early French silver.
It will go on display from November to April at Kirkcudbright Galleries – just a few miles from Dundrennan Abbey, where Mary, Queen of Scots spent her last hours on Scottish soil in 1568.
Vice chair of the council’s communities committee, Councillor Jackie McCammon, said: “This is such an exciting loan. We are pleased to be working with National Museums Scotland once more, a key partner for Kirkcudbright Galleries over the years, and have no doubt this will be an emotional and stirring exhibition. I personally can’t wait to see it.”
It is thought the casket was given to Mary by her first husband François II of France, and came to Scotland with her in 1561 after his death in 1560. Her inventories from this time list multiple examples of precious jewellery and other such valuable objects.
The casket appears in records following Mary’s arrest by the rebellious Confederate Lords in 1567. The Scottish Privy Council struck off the lock to reveal its contents.
At that point they were unknown, but when the Earl of Moray produced the same casket at Westminster a year later it contained the Casket Letters.
These love poems and letters, allegedly from Mary to her third husband, the Earl of Bothwell, implicated them both in a conspiracy to murder her second husband, Lord Darnley. They are widely thought to have been doctored.
Mary remained in English captivity for 19 years, being executed in 1587 for her involvement in the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, and place Mary on the English throne.
The casket was owned by the family of the Dukes of Hamilton for around three centuries but were acquired for the nation in 2022 for £1.8 million. Funding came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, the Scottish Government and several trusts, foundations and individual donors.
Acting keeper of Scottish history and archaeology at National Museums Scotland, Dr Anna Groundwater, said: “One of Scotland’s national treasures, this extraordinary casket has been venerated as a relic of Mary, Queen of Scots for centuries, and I’m delighted that more people will have the opportunity to see it up close when it goes on tour later this year.
The casket’s display in Kirkcudbright is supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund, which was created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund, to allow smaller and local authority museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections.
