A RARE rifle given by Queen Victoria to her Scottish attendant and reputed lover, John Brown, is expected to fetch $80,000 at auction in the US later this month.

The rifle, made by renowned Edinburgh gunsmith Alexander Henry, was Victoria’s Christmas present in 1873 to John Brown, and is engraved with both their names.

Scots rifle historian Donald Dallas, whose book about Alexander Henry comes out later this year, said: “John Brown was a noted sportsman with rod and gun, a typical Highlander. It is without question that this rifle dispatched deer that were put before the Queen.

“A gift such as this at the time was the equivalent of a giving someone a Ferrari, or, bearing in mind the age and status of those involved, a Bentley Continental.”

Henry’s great-great grandson, Richard Brown, has been collaborating with Dallas on the book, Alexander Henry Rifle Maker.

He said: “I’m very proud that my ancestor’s rifle played a role in the friendship between Victoria and John Brown. He was the world’s most famous rifle maker of the 19th century. It’s a beautiful rifle and was sold at auction last year for £35,000.”

The close friendship between the recently widowed Queen Victoria and the uncouth Brown, originally a gillie on the Balmoral Estate, was portrayed in the Hollywood film Mrs Brown, starring Dame Judi Dench and Sir Billy Connolly.

Their relationship defied the strict social etiquette and class boundaries of the time and caused a scandal, with rumours circulating that not only were they lovers, but they had married in secret.

Her daughters referred to him as ‘Mamma’s lover’ and unkindly courtiers and palace workers as the Queen’s Stallion, while Victoria was known as Mrs Brown or Empress Brown.

Despite intense hostility from Victoria’s family and from the shocked Prime Minister Lord Derby, who recorded they slept in adjoining rooms “contrary to etiquette and decency”, Brown achieved the status of national hero in the eyes of the public when he rescued the Queen from a carriage accident and foiled an assassination attempt on her life outside Buckingham Palace, tackling and holding the armed assailant until the police arrived. He was also present at another attempt in 1882 when an assassin shot the Queen with a revolver and the bullet narrowly missed him.

When he died in 1883, Queen Victoria preserved his room with his prized possessions – including the rifle – as a shrine. But on her death in 1902, the new King Edward VII, who loathed the plain-speaking Brown, ordered that the rooms be ripped apart and all the memory of him be erased.

“Hammers smashed plaster busts, scissors rent keepsakes, photos, sketches and paintings, all buckled and hissed on bonfires. Princess Beatrice, the queen’s youngest daughter was no less thorough and rewrote her diaries and consigned the originals to the flames. We know from the entries that escaped editing that the Highlander figured prominent in the Queen’s daily journal,” said Dallas.

There was also a strongly held belief that Victoria and Brown had united in a morganatic marriage – a marriage between social unequals where the lower class partner could not inherit titles or wealth. The Reverend Norman Macleod, a close friend of Queen Victoria and minister of Crathie church, reputedly confessed to his sister on his deathbed that he bitterly regretted being persuaded to marry them.

When Queen Victoria died, according to her instructions items belonging to her late husband Prince Albert were placed in her coffin – but so was a lock of John Brown’s hair and his mother’s wedding ring, which he had given to her and she wore every day, was placed on her finger, while his photograph was placed in her left hand, hidden by flowers and lace.

Dallas added: “If they ever married, if they were physical lovers, we shall never know for certain, the evidence was destroyed more than a century ago. There is one thing we can be certain of – John Brown was totally devoted to the Queen and her to him. Her wellbeing was paramount in his life, and he gave his life to her. Theirs was one of the great, maybe strangest, and yet hidden love stories in history.”