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The Regent

The audacious history of the Regent is very much like that of numerous other great diamonds. Gluttony, assassinate and compunction play a part in the breach chapter. Trouble - biased, communal, and individual - accompanies this precious stone to its final quiescent place. Initially known as the Pitt, this 410-carat stone was one of the very last bulky diamonds to be originated in India. It is told to have been revealed by a slave in the Parteal Mines (also told 'Partial') on the Krishna River about 1701.

The slave scarves the massive rough concealing it in bandages of a self inflicted leg lesion, and fled to the seacoast.

There, he revealed his clandestine to an English sea captain, presenting him half the value of the stone in turn for secure passageway to a gratis country. But during the expedition to Bombay, enticement overcame this oceangoing man and he murdered the slave and took the diamond. After trading it to an Indian diamond mercantile named Jamchund for about $5000, the captain misspent the profits in debauchery and, in a fit of repentance and frenzy tremens, hanged him-self.

In 1702, Jamchund traded the stone for about a sum of $100,000 to Governor Thomas Pitt of Ft. George, Madras, who was the grandpa of William Pitt of American Revolutionary fame. Acknowledged to historians as the "Elder Pitt," William was the British Prime Minister for whom Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was christened. He sent it to England and had it shaped into a 140.50 carat cushion-shaped dazzling cut, measuring just about 32mm × 34mm × 25mm. The cutting exhausted 2 years and cost about $25,000, but a quantity of less important stones brought more than $35,000; some of these stones were rose-cut stones that were traded to Peter the Great of Russia. The chief gem, which has one extremely diminutive deficiency, is in the present day measured as one of the premium and most radiant of the acknowledged huge diamonds.

The desirable gem vanished, jointly with the uniformly famed Sancy and French Blue (from which the Hope stone was cut); when the Garde Meuble (Royal Treasury) was robbed of its marvelous jewels in 1792, for the duration of the premature part of the Revolution. Some of the famed stones were soon found back, but the Regent could not at 1st be traced. After 15 months, however, it was found, having been concealed in a hole beneath the timberwork of a Paris loft.