Black Rood tells the fascinating story of one of Scotland's oldest and
most significant crown jewels. Once as famous as the Stone of Scone, the
Black Rood was a gold and jewel-studded reliquary for a piece of the
True Cross. This profound and holy treasure was smuggled into Scotland
after the Norman invasion by the sister of the last Anglo-Saxon king of
England. On her marriage to King Malcolm III, the Black Rood passed into
the Scottish royal family, and so became a symbol of the authority and
legitimacy of Scotland's kingship. Giving its name to the abbey and then
the palace and now the parliament of Holyrood, the Black Rood was to
help define Scotland as a kingdom which was at least the equal of
England in the eyes of God, and in some ways superior to it.David Willem
tells the story of the Black Rood though the lives of the kings and
queens of Scotland and England who honoured it, treasured it, enacted
themselves through it, fought over it, and who sometimes died clutching
it, so creating a history in vivid human detail that ranges over a
thousand years of Scottish and English history.At the same time, the
author tells the story of two other similar reliquaries of the True
Cross - the Croes Gneth of Wales and Ireland's Cross of Cong. Like the
Black Rood, these Irish and Welsh crown jewels helped define the
autonomy and independence of their nations, and both were to follow
similar trajectories through time. The book ends with the mystery of
what happened to the Black Rood, and explores the possibility that, like
the Cross of Cong, it might still exist and be waiting to be found.
Together these stories create a new and compelling perspective on the
relationships between Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, just when
those relationships are changing again for the first time in hundreds of
years.
