“Within a few days pieces of valuable gold and silver work of an unknown period began to be seen in the Toledo silversmiths’ shops, and a goldsmith and dealer in stones and gems in the town, who had his house and workshop in a beautiful garden by the Tagus, near the Sword Factory, and who was distinguished among his fellows by his taste for archæology, had the patience to acquire one by one, and to match together the different pieces under observation; after many combinations and rectifications, leaving out some pieces, and, with consummate art, supplying others that were missing, he at last formed, or rather restored, several crowns, among them one very large and valuable, which, by the hangings, was found to be the crown of King Recesvinto (649-672).
“With the same secrecy that the discoverers of the treasure had observed, Navarro (for this was the name of the dealer in stones and gems) proceeded with the difficult task of restoring to their original shape those inestimable insignia of Visigothic Royalty. He took them to France, and they were already in a case in the Cluny Museum when Spain heard of the discovery and extraction of the crowns of Guarrazar.
“But the treasure, taken in 1858 from Guarrazar to Guadamar was not exhausted. About May, 1861, a villager of Guadamar, Domingo de la Cruz, who had found in the same Guarrazar cemetery, but in a different hole to the one already explored, other crowns and objects used for worship, presented himself at Aranjuez, where Queen Isabel was at the time. This man, after many ambiguous and roundabout proposals, having ascertained that no harm would come to him from the revelation he was about to make, and, above all, stimulated by the promises which, relying on the generosity of the Queen, the Intendant Don Antonio Flores cleverly let fall in the conversation, said he was the possessor of these treasures. The crafty rustic had them with him, but at the moment he did not say so, and only showed them when Flores, having obtained the consent of her Majesty, formally offered him, in the Queen’s name, a life-pension [4,000 reals a year], which from that day was religiously paid to him.”
The Armoury and the Cluny Museum probably contain only a half of the treasure of Guarrazar. As we have seen, much of it was broken up and melted down by the goldsmiths of Toledo. It is said that it comprised a beautiful golden dove, which came into the possession of a jeweller, who had so many qualms of conscience concerning it, that he at last took the drastic course of throwing it into the Tagus. That rapid stream must have received a good deal of Visigothic treasure since it first flowed under the arches of Toledo.