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NICOLAS HARLAI.
1546—1629.
ICOLAS HARLAI, Seigneur de Sancy, treasurer of King Henry IV., is said to have advanced it to that monarch under romantic circumstances. The messenger who was conveying it to the King was assassinated, and the gem was afterwards found in his stomach. There is little doubt that Harlai afterwards sold it to the British Crown during his residence in London between 1590 and 1600. Commines in his “Memoirs” describes the diamond as the “largest one then in the world, having an immense pearl attached to it.”
