of which we shall have occasion to speak shortly. The locality of the London stone, at the boundaries of two or more counties, is what frequently occurs in similar monuments. The Rollrich stones are pitched where the counties of Oxford, Warwick, and Gloucester meet, as was the curious septagonal edifice of John O' Groat's house;[1]—an heptagon, built when Scotland, the Orkneys, and Norway were under the same collective rule, and where the seven electors of Scotland, whom Sir F. Palgrave's industry has discovered, used to meet on any vacancy of the crown. Just so, the above-named heptagon at Rhense was situate on the boundaries of the three ecclesiastical electorates of Mainz, Köln, and Trier, where the seven German electors, upon similar occasions, met to discuss the affairs of the empire, and to give their votes at each successive choice of an emperor.
I do not think that the near neighbourhood of Staines to Kingston would, by their proximity, offer any argument against the antiquity of either. Each petty prince or state had, no doubt, a peculiar sanctified locality, which, like our parish churches or cathedrals, might frequently happen to be pitched at no corresponding nor uniform distance from its neighbour; but it would not, perhaps, be too daring a guess to suppose that, as in the case of the Scone stone being brought to Windsor, the Morasteen of Upsala to Denmark, so, perhaps for some political or ecclesiastical reason, the Kingstone may have been removed from the original site on the Runnimede to the place to which it subsequently gave its name. Such appellations as Kingston,[2] and "ston" in general, should be carefully observed throughout the land, as they might be found connected with local traditions or customs, explanatory of their purpose, and corroborative of this and other monuments; but care should be taken
- ↑ John O'Groat's House.—No view of this curious building exists. The only account I have been able to collect on it is a ridiculous legend in the "Beauties of Scotland," vol. v. p. 83. The following notice of Rhense may, therefore, be more acceptable, as no doubt very similar in purpose, if not in appearance:—
The Königs Stuhl (King's chair, Thronus imperialis) was a stone building, about four English miles from Coblenz, close to the Rhine and the small town of Rhense, at which formerly the kings and emperors were proclaimed on their election. They next took the prescribed oath, and could then take their appointed seat, and confirm the privileges of the several states; and they exercised their new sovereignty in dubbing some favourites as knights. The building was surrounded and shadowed by thick walnut-trees, and erected of squared stone in a heptagon, with seven arches, and is supported on nine pillars, one of which upholds the centre. These seven arches form openings, by which the interior may be entirely inspected, and support a vaulted roof, and are raised sixteen steps above the level of the ground: two towers on each side are either for defence or molestation; and the entire circumference is about forty ells, its diameter about thirteen, and its height nine and a half. Within are seven stone seats, for the then seven electors; the situation being chosen for its contiguity to the territories and residences of the three spiritual and the Palatine elector. The municipality of Rhense had some privileges, renewed in 1521, for keeping the building in repair. Three emperors—Henry VII., 1308; Charles VI., 1340; Ruprecht von der Pfalz, 1400—owe their elevation, and the throne of Charlemagne, to an election on this spot; and here also Wenceslaus was, at the general cry of indignation and abhorrence through the country, solemnly and justly deposed. Its open walls have echoed to many a hot debate amongst the princely voters: the important Chur-Verein was here discussed and decreed; and of still greater progress in the cause of social security was it when here was put an end to all the intestine wars and feudal broils throughout Germany, by the Landfrieden. So late as the latest decennium of the fifteenth century, Maximilian I. was induced to respect and keep up the charter by dubbing a knight within the building after his election at Frankfort, on the road to his coronation at Aachen. But the transference of the former ceremony to that free city lost Rhense its respect and the maintenance due from the neighbouring towns; it had crumbled almost to a ruin when the armies of revolutionary France approached the Rhine: their enmity of everything regal caused them to root up even the foundations, and, as much as in them lay, to destroy every trace of its previous history and recollections. Luckily, representations and plans of the original building existed, with sufficient patriotism in the archæological body of a neighbouring town to collect funds to rebuild it in 1848, exactly according to the original plan; and it was thought a fortunate conjuncture at the period, that the erection was ready for inauguration on the 18th May, 1848, the day of the opening of what was then hailed as the first great Parliament "für ein freies vereinigtes Deutschland." The augury seems to have been bad, as thence date a more confirmed rule of autocracy, and a greater opposition of the different states than ever.
It is not generally known, however, even in Germany, that this site of the King's Chair is not the original one. In Annalen für nassauischen Alterthumskunde (zweiter Band, 11tes Heft, p. 89), a previous locality is claimed for Erbenheim, near Wiesbaden, and Bodman's Rheingauische Alterthümer, p. 95, are quoted; that it stood there in the open field in a very pertinently named King's hundred (Kuniges undra); and on and near it a celebrated diet of the empire was held in 1235. Rhense was built in the twelfth century, and after that the older locality fell into decay and was demolished, and the stones used to build a watchhouse.
- ↑ Besides Kingston Bagpuze, the following English "Kingstons" deserve the study of the antiquary.
Kingston Blount, a liberty within four miles of Tetsworth.
Kingston Deverill, in the hundred of Mere.
Kingston Leste, hundred of Shoreham, Berks.
Kingston Seymour.
Kingston Wenterbourne, Dorset, and six villages of the same name.
Kingstone parish, seven miles W.S.W. of Hereford.
Kingstone, in the also suggestive hundred of Kingshamford, Kent.
Kingbury, formerly a royal mansion at Dunstable.At Wilton, in Wilts, it is said, in a description of the place as the chief seat of the British prince Caer Culon, we find that the spot where the electors chose him is still marked by a large stone in the warren.
