Shakespeare and Precious Stones
this and other pearls to adorn dolls for the amusement of the royal children, and that she did not expect the queen would ask for them. As, however, it was brought out in the trial that she had cleverly disguised some of the pearls she had taken, and had offered to sell them to the queen, she was condemned to imprisonment in Blackness Castle until the payment of a fine of £400, and to confinement in Orkney during the remainder of her life. Eleven years later, however, the king's advocate "produced a letter of rehabilitation and restitution of Margaret Hartsyde to her fame."20
In Shakespeare's day the "goldsmiths" were also jewellers and gem dealers, and often moneylenders as well. The settings of the finest precious stones were at that time generally of gold, rarely of silver. Platinum, the metal that now enjoys the greatest furore for diamond settings, was then unknown in Europe; it was first brought to Europe in 1735, from South America, having been found in the alluvial deposits of the river Pinto, in the district of Choco, now forming part of the United States of Colombia. The Spaniards had named it platina, from its resemblance to plata, silver. The chief source
20 "Every-Day Book," loc.. cit.
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