The Devonshire coronets were an exhibit a few years ago! But due to the changes that the present Duke and Duchess are undertaking, they may have been moved
The Roxburghes have a special 'Robe Room' at Floors where you can seen their coronets and robes proper!
Various ceremonial robes including glorious tabards, mantles and whatnot were certainly displayed at Arundel and made a wonderful exhibit!
Ian 13th Duke of Bedford claimed that the family coronation robes and coronet were 'lost' after his father had lent them to 'another Duke'. The present Duke will probably have to get go to London for fittings if they were not replaced! In all likelihood incumbent Dukes and Duchesses could always hire the whole caboodle from Ede and Ravenscroft rather than fork out tens of thousand on a new set which will only ever be worn at a coronation!
In a rather hauntingly prescient move, the 11th and penultimate Duke of Leeds included his coronet in one of several auctions where he placed lots! The coronet fetched eight guineas and his robes a further forty! Jack Leeds was an intriguing man! He was one of those later babies. His parents the impossibly suave 'Dolly' 10th Duke and Duchess Katherine had been married for seventeen years and had four daughters the youngest of whom was nearly nine when the Duchess finally provided an heir to the Dukedom!
At the time of John's birth, the Dukedom appeared relatively secure! His father had two brothers, Lord Francis whose wife Blanche was still hoping to have children after only five years of marriage and Lord Albert, unmarried but very much alive as a prospective father of future Dukes. In addition there were three teenage cousins, D'Arcy, Sidney and Maurice Osborne, second cousins of Jack's father the 10th Duke. Thus the Dukedom appeared to be reasonable secure for the future. Nevertheless Jack Carmarthen as the future 11th Duke was known from birth grew up cherished, adored and cosseted by his mother in particular. She became somewhat detached from her husband and after her daughters had all 'come out' took to spending longer and longer periods abroad in Paris and at a villa she rented in Bordighera on the Italian Riviera. Duchess Katherine always took her son with her as often as school holidays permitted when she migrated to the continent and he appears to have grown into a young man of particularly discerning and worldly tastes unlike many others heirs to British Dukedoms of his generation.
Perhaps his childhood and youthful travels abroad planted the seeds of Jack's adult preference for a life spent predominantly on the continent! Later Dukes followed suit, but few save the 10th Duke of Manchester seem to have altogether severed their links with their native land so thoroughly. In 1948 Jack did buy Trafalgar House, the former home and estate of the Nelson family, but he never lived there and leased the house to his brother-in-law. Apparently Jack acquired the Trafalgar estate in order to avoid the ever increasing worry over taxes, putting money into a property was quite a sensible option at the time when he was childless, but shortly after his daughter was born he sold the estate.
He had a sartorial elegance about him that was akin to that of his father the eponymous Edwardian Duke, 'Dolly' 10th Duke of Leeds. I always found it fascinating that Jack Leeds sold his coronet when he was still a young bachelor in his twenties! He certainly didn't have to sell it as his father had left an estate valued in the region of 700,000 pounds! Death duties would have been very heavy, but Jack sold more or less every last acres of the family holdings in North Yorkshire and Cornwall and spent most of his time living in an early form of tax exile, mostly in France and Jersey ! I often wonder when twenty years after selling his patrimony and his coronet and robes, how Jack Leeds must have felt when he was told he was to become a father for the first time? Pleased that he had got rid of the trappings of a ducal lifestyle that was no longer relevant? Or perhaps he may have felt a twinge of guilt in case he had robbed a possible male successor of some part of his rightful inheritance! It is irrelevant anyway as his only child was Lady Camilla Osborne.
By the time Jack became a father in 1950, the possible heirs to the Dukedom had dwindled significantly. In 1901 when he was born, there had been five other males in remainder. As it turned out, neither of Jack's uncles sired legitimate children. Lord Albert, one of those archetypically appalling spendthrift black sheep younger sons that all families produced, died unmarried aged forty eight just before the outbreak of the Great War and Lord Francis died without issue in 1924. Of Jack's three second cousins once removed, Maurice had been killed in action in 1915 unmarried. Thus when Jack Leeds' daughter was born in 1950 there were only two remaindermen left, Maurice's elder brothers, Sir D'Arcy Osborne and Sidney Osborne. Both were by then over sixty and confirmed bachelors. Sidney died in 1958. Leaving the impossibly urbane and fascinating Sir D'Arcy Osborne, former Minister Plenipotentiary to the Vatican between 1936 and 1947, and a full time resident in Rome as sole heir. Even at this time, now married for a third time, Jack Leeds and his twenty seven year old wife hoped for a child of their own, but to Duchess Caroline's great disappointment she never bore a child and so after a long and harrowing illness Jack Leeds died aged sixty three and was succeeded by his rather more famous kinsman, Sir D'Arcy Osborne.
Sir D'Arcy Osborne who briefly became 12th Duke of Leeds, was a great chum of the Queen Mother and visitor at Clarence House and at Castle of Mey as one of her guests whenever he returned to Britain. With his panache, wit and extraordinary experiences during the War when he helped hide thousands of allied personnel and Jews, he was one of the a select 'few' who were genuinely close to QEQM. I have some of his poetry which is rather lovely and his memoirs are extremely elegant and very evocative!
