In 1669 the court jeweler of France, Robert de Berquen, whose writings have already been alluded to, says:
"The present Queen of England has the diamond which the late Monsieur de Sanci brought back from the Levant. It is almond-shaped, cut in facets on both sides, perfectly white and clean, and it weighs fifty-four carats."
Berquen was likely to be well-informed both from his profession and from his position. His book is highly interesting and contains some very quaint passages. Thus, when writing of diamonds he assumes a critical attitude in surveying past writers and their deductions, and rejects with scorn and as utterly unworthy of belief the statement that a lady, having two large diamonds, put them away in a box and found, on again examining the box, that they had produced several young ones.
The expression "the present Queen of England" has considerably puzzled many writers, since at that date there were two queens of England, namely the dowager Henrietta and the consort of Charles II., Catherine of Braganza. It seems most probable that the expression refers to the latter, for some years previous to the Restoration we find Henrietta disposing of the diamond to the Earl of Worcester. The following letter is in her hand:
"We Henrietta Moria of Bourbon, Queen of Great Britain, have by command of our much honored lord and master the King caused to be handed to our dear and well-beloved cousin Edward Somerset, Count and Earl of Worcester, a ruby necklace containing ten large rubies, and one hundred and sixty pearls set and strung together in gold. Among the said rubies are also two large diamonds called the 'Sanci' and the 'Portugal,'" etc.
After the Restoration Charles II. made strenuous endeavors to collect the scattered jewels of his Crown. How or when he recovered the Sanci and the Portugal we cannot now tell. It would be very like the devoted Worcester who ruined himself for the Stuarts to have given them back to Charles without stipulation, and it would be very like a Stuart to have accepted them and never to have paid for them. Worcester died in 1677 and two years later, as we have seen, the Sanci was in the hands of the "present Queen of England."
Along with the Crown, the Sanci descended to James II., and no doubt figured at the extraordinarily fine coronation which inaugurated his disastrous reign. The Queen had a million's worth of jewels on her gown alone, and "shone like an angel," says a contemporary, who was so dazzled by her splendor that he could scarcely look at her. When James lost his crown he managed to keep hold of the Sanci and also, presumably, of the Portugal. Indeed the jewels of England for a long time served to keep the famished court of the Stuarts around James and his son. Gradually they were sold to meet the exigencies of the various Pretenders till nothing of value was left for the last Stuart, the Cardinal of York, to bequeath to the English King. Among the first to go was the Sanci which James II. sold to Louis XIV. for twenty-five thousand pounds about the year 1695.
From this date for one hundred years the Sanci ranked third among the French jewels, being valued at one million of francs ($200,000). The first and second on the list were respectively the Regent, valued at twelve millions, and the Blue, at three millions.
At the coronation of Louis XV. in 1723, the Sanci bore a distinguished part.
The little King, aged thirteen years and a half, was crowned at Rheims with all the splendor and tediousness of ceremonial for which the French court had become renowned. Louis, previous to the imposition of the Crown, was dressed in a long petticoat garment of silver brocade which reached to his shoes, also of silver. On his head he wore a black velvet cap surmounted on one side by a stately plume of white ostrich feathers crested with black heron's feathers. This nodding head-dress was confined at the base by an aigrette of diamonds, among which the Sanci was chief.