Queen Victoria’s Cross Moline Brooch

The Duchess of Kent celebrates her 91st birthday today! In her honor, let’s take a closer look at a gorgeous antique brooch from her jewelry box—a piece originally worn by Queen Victoria.

The brooch consists of two sections: a large, oval-shaped pin with a pear-shaped pendant. The main section of the brooch features an elongated cross moline set on a background of intricate gold scrolls. The cross appears to feature light blue or silver enamel decoration, and a single pearl is mounted in the center of the cross. The pendant also includes a second pearl, set on gold scrolls with enamel accents.

A cross moline is a specific type of heraldic cross that features forked ends resembling the base of an anchor. It’s a common design motif connected to various families and places, including the Molyneaux family, the city (and university) of Nottingham, and the Benedictine order.

Several photographs of Queen Victoria wearing the brooch exist, all taken in the 1880s. Here, she wears the brooch as she holds her infant granddaughter, Princess Margaret of Connaught, in the spring of 1882. This would have been around the time of Margaret’s christening that March. Queen Victoria was one of her granddaughter’s godparents during the service, which was held in the private chapel at Windsor Castle.

Almost a century later, the brooch appeared again on another member of the royal family: Katharine, the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. (Posters at the History of Famous Jewels website made the connection.) The present Duke of Kent is one of Queen Victoria’s great-great-grandchildren. It’s not clear exactly how the brooch arrived in Edward and Katharine’s collection, but there are two reliable pipelines for jewelry inheritance between Queen Victoria and the Kents. The first is via Queen Mary, Edward’s grandmother, who ended up with numerous pieces of Victoria’s jewelry through both family inheritance and later acquisition.

The second is via Princess Marina, Edward’s mother. Victoria’s daughter, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, bequeathed numerous pieces of jewelry to Marina, who then left them to her children. In some ways, it’s not surprising that the brooch would have remained in the vaults for 90 years. If the brooch was inherited by the Kents from Louise, it wouldn’t have arrived in Marina’s collection until 1939. By then, Marina’s style was sharply focused on contemporary, bold Art Deco pieces. The cross brooch doesn’t seem to me like a piece that would have caught Marina’s eye, and I can see her keeping it tucked away instead of wearing it.

The present Duchess of Kent wore the brooch for the first time in the early 1970s, and she has used the piece on occasion in the decades that followed. This image was reportedly taken during one of her appearances at Wimbledon in the early 1990s.

And here, she pairs it with a bright yellow-green and white ensemble for a visit to Heathrow in 1996. It’s an unusual pairing of clothing and jewelry, but the colors do allow the blue tones of the brooch’s enamel to pop.

In June 1999, the Duchess wore the brooch for the funeral of Cardinal Hume at Westminster Cathedral in London. It was a fitting tribute to Hume, as he was a Benedictine priest, and the cross moline is a symbol of that religious order. Katharine converted to Catholicism in 1994, so she was a natural royal representative for the funeral, and the brooch was a natural fit for her to wear on the occasion.

Katharine Kent retired from public duties many years ago, and it’s been several years since she attended a public event with other members of the royal family. Our most recent glimpse of the brooch, I believe, was during Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June 2012. The Duchess wore the brooch for a service of thanksgiving for the monarch’s reign at St. Paul’s Cathedral.