WHAT the mondain Jesuit Father Martin D’Arcy called his Treasure Hunt began in the early 1930s. On becoming Master of Campion Hall, centre of Jesuit life in Oxford, he remembered being told by Lady Lovat, with whom he’d been staying in Scotland, that an extraordinary object was about to come onto the market. Due to (relative) poverty, Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the last heir apparent to the Bavarian throne, was selling the travelling altar that had belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots. D’Arcy bought it, probably at a good price, for the private hall —effectively a college—that Lutyens built for him in 1934–36. It would be the first of many works of art and pieces of historical interest that would adorn the building. D’Arcy’s budget may have been modest, but his charm and powers of persuasion went far.
There would be early Renaissance chasubles bought from an Italian refugee, chalices secured with the help of an Armenian Jew and gorgeous cloth-of-gold robes from China decorated with dragons and birds—a nun seamstress transformed them into a chasuble by slitting the armpits and adding ‘a small gold cross at the
