The

Philip Musgrave had survived the English Civil War, but not without suffering.

A lifelong royalist, he had spent the better part of two decades under the watchful eye

of the parliamentarians who had executed King Charles I and exiled his son Charles II,

but after the younger Charles reclaimed the crown in 1661, Musgrave began to relax.

In 1677, he sat down to put his will to paper, and in it he listed the many possessions that

his son Richard would someday inherit.

Among them was an item he'd kept secret and hidden away until that very moment.

A decorative glass, about six inches tall, with a fluted top and sides that are covered

in beautiful, colorful designs.

And this cup, he said, was the source of his family's good fortune.

The cup is known as the Luck of Eden Hall, named after Musgrave's home, and it has the

most curious origin story.

It said that centuries earlier, a butler working for the Musgraves had gone to the garden

well for some water, only to discover a group of fairy-stancing near it.

In one version of the tale, the fairies leave and haste, and abandon the glass cup they

brought with them, but as the butler takes it, a curse fills the air around him.

If this cup should break or fall, farewell the Luck of Eden Hall.

And that was all it took.

From that moment forward, the cup became legendary.

In the years after Philip Musgrave's death in 1678, the cup was kept safe and secret,

never listed on official inventories of the household and always protected inside a leather

...