A gold ring engraved with a burning bush stolen from the home of the most senior member of the Church of Scotland. A mysterious envelope delivered nine months later to the Church’s head office containing the ring’s amethyst stone. Sounds like the beginning of a new Dan Brown novel? No, it is actually the conclusion of one of specialist insurer Ecclesiastical’s most intriguing heritage insurance claims of recent years.
On Christmas Eve 2010, the Helensborough home of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Right Reverend John Christie, was broken into and a number of valuable items stolen. Among them was the Moderator’s ceremonial gold and amethyst ring, which has been passed on from one Moderator to the next for a century.
Insurer Ecclesiastical and the Church of Scotland posted rewards for the return of the ring in January this year and even though an arrest was made, the ring was not recovered. But just as hope of recovery was fading, the ring’s amethyst stone was returned to the Church on 27 September in an envelope posted to the Moderator at its Edinburgh head office. The hand-written but unfranked envelope is now with the Scottish police for analysis.
Clare Pardy, Ecclesiastical’s fine art and heritage underwriting manager said: “It is enormously satisfying when we are able to recover important historic artefacts like this – the monetary value is almost irrelevant. What matters to the customer and to us is the restoration of a long-standing tradition.
“Even though the ring’s gold band has not been returned, we will reset the stone into a new but identical band so that it can be returned to the Moderator to play its traditional role in the Church of Scotland’s ceremonies.”
Ecclesiastical and the police suspect the ring’s original gold band has been sold and melted down. The band bore the church’s Latin motto, “nec tamen consumebatur”, meaning, “yet it was not consumed” – an allusion to the biblical story of the burning bush.
The ring is presented every year by the outgoing Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to his or her successor and is worn at ceremonial occasions.
