Diplomatic Gifts in Gold

Dr Timothy Schroder, Dlitt, FSA. Former curator

Gifts have always been an integral part of diplomacy and were presented by sovereigns to visiting ambassadors as a complement to his royal master and as a means of sweetening the passage of a treaty. The commonest fate of those in gold or silver was to be melted down and turned into cash, but occasionally they have survived, although sometimes transformed into something else and inscribed with a record of the original gift. The favoured form of these gifts changed over time. In the sixteenth century it was common to present a departing ambassador with a gold chain; in the seventeenth the gift would often take the form of a cup, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth the snuff box was the favoured form. But in whatever form, they are a striking reminder of the importance of the ambassadorial role at a time when historic and binding decisions had to be taken without any possibility of the ambassador referring back to his government for new instructions.