PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART'S SHOE BUCKLE
18TH CENTURY
£1,500
Scottish Silver & Applied Arts
Auction: 14 August 2019 at 11:00 BST
Description
silver and gold-mounted, the navette shaped shoe buckle set with eighteen pastes claw set in silver with additional engraved gold inner border, the reverse converted to a brooch
Dimensions
52mm wide
Footnote
Provenance: By descent to Mrs Colquhoun, till circa 1888
By 1903 Mrs Robertson, Kingsburgh Bungalow, St Pierre du Bois, Guernsey
With Francis Kerr by 1922 (whose hand-written note accompanies this lot)
Private Collection
Exhibited: Highland and Jacobite Exhibition Inverness 4th August - 20th September 1903, where described as 'Brooch of old French paste, made from a shoe buckle worn by the Prince. Lent Mrs Robertson, Kingsburgh Bungalow, St Pierre du Bois, Guernsey'
Note: Although various buckles purport to have been given by Prince Charles to loyal supporters after he fled from the battlefield at Culloden few if any have an earlier history. This example is highly unusual having exhibition history back to 1903 and with written family provenance from 1922 detailing some earlier history.
While the name of the original recipient is not mentioned, it seems possible it could have been gifted by the Prince to Donald Cameron of Glenpean. Donald Cameron had helped the Prince elude the Hanoverian troops and affect his eventual escape to the continent. Charles had stayed with Cameron on the 18th April 1746 and with MacDonald of Glenaladale near Glenfinnan they travelled a route through Corrour and the Braes of Moidart. Cameron saved the Princes' life when, in the dark, he almost fell to his death. By the 22nd of July they parted ways and it is told that the Prince gave the gift of silver shoes buckles to him - amongst the last values he had about his person, having lost his baggage train after Culloden.