Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/108

suffrages in looking upon it as a central milliarium, whence all the Roman itineraries were measured, as from a common starting-point. Without stopping at present to discuss various objections to such an assumption, and taking such a destination as admitted, there would be nothing incompatible with such purpose in supposing this stone, or at all events one on its place, to have been a primeval object of veneration to the people whom the Romans found in the island at their first invasion under Cæsar. That the trunk-walled Burg of Cassivelaunus, and his Trinobantes proper,—firmissina earum regionum civitas ("Cæsar de Bello Gall." lib. v. c. 16),—should have been without such place of assemblage, required by their customs, social and political, and hallowed by its ancient prestige of sanctity, is inconsistent with history, particularly when we here meet with a stone whose memory has been kept alive in an under-current of tradition and veneration amongst the people till a very recent period. The tenacity with which the earliest impressions of religious deference live in all ages, and all people, might assure us of the probability; and an undoubted proof of its surviving to the age of our immortal dramatist, seems to me to be unequivocally found in his works, and will be carried down, if rightly understood now, to the latest posterity. Based, perhaps, upon a tradition or chronicle older than Holinshed, in the Second Part of "King Henry VI.," act iv., we have as scene 2, the following:—"London: Cannon-street. Enter Jack Cade and his followers.—He strikes his staff on London Stone—Now is Mortimer lord of this city, and here, sitting upon this stone, I charge and command that, of the city's cost, the pissing conduit run nothing but claret-wine the first year of our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that calls