A banker's nephews fought ten years over his jewels, and the heir who got the Hope Diamond could sell it only with the court's permission

In 1668 the gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier sold Louis XIV a blue diamond of 115 metric carats for 220,000 livres. It was cut down to 67 carats and stayed with the French kings until thieves took it from the Garde-Meuble in 1792. It reappeared in London about 20 years later, recut to 45.52 carats. The banker and collector Henry Philip Hope owned it. He died in 1839. His three nephews fought over his gem collection in court for about ten years before it was divided. The eldest, Henry Thomas Hope, got the diamond. His widow, Anne Adele, inherited it in 1862 and left the Hope estates to her grandson, Lord Francis Hope, as tenant for life. Under that settlement the heirlooms could not easily be sold. Lord Francis married the singer May Yohé in 1894 and went bankrupt by 1895. His brother and three sisters contested his attempts to sell family property. He obtained permission and sold the diamond in 1901 or 1902 to the London dealer Adolph Weil. It passed to dealers in New York and Paris, then through Cartier to Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1911^†. Harry Winston bought it from her estate in 1949 and gave it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958. It is in the National Museum of Natural History, Washington.