like the Palladium of Rome, of which Ovid (Fasti, lib. vi. 382) writes,—
"Imperium secum transferret ilia loci;"
and it was therefore but a measure of policy which induced Edward I. to transfer "it to his own capital, when he fancied he had reduced Scotland to a province of his English kingdom. Richard III. used it at his coronation, as it is no doubt meant in the extract which Mr. J. G. Nichols gives in his Life of Edward V. (Gent. Mag., March, 1855, p. 256). "Nor was Richard unsupported by others of the principal nobility. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, supported his claim; and when he assumed the throne, by taking his seat upon the marble chair in Westminster,—a remarkable incident, recorded by the continuator of the Chronicle of Croyland,—he was supported by the Duke of Suffolk, as well as by the new Duke of Norfolk,—one on either hand." Here the being seated on this stone seems a necessary, possibly the most important, portion of the ceremony, as in Jack Cade's proceeding, noted in the text, and equivalent to what was generally considered in mediæval ages to attach to the possession of the regalia of each kingdom, or to the crown and mantle of St. Stephen in Hungary. Less fortuitous contingencies than this, on the accession of a Scottish prince to the English throne, have frequently had considerable effect on the temper of a people; and James I. may have owed much of his undisturbed succession after Elizabeth to this common belief. But whether the following verses existed in Scotland previously to his accession, or whether but a subsequent adaptation to the event, I have not been able to discover: they are—
"Ni fallat Fatum, Scoti hunc quocunque locatum,
Inveuient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem."
If Fates go right, where'er this stone is found,
The Scots shall monarchs of that realm be crown'd.
As her present most gracious Majesty can never divest herself, or her posterity, of her Scottish lineage through female descent, there can be therefore no doubt that the prophecy will never fail being accomplished.
7 The trial by twelve jurymen.—Nicholson, Preface to Wilkins's A.S. Laws, p. 10:—"D. H. Spelman ex adverso, duodecim virale judicium apud A. S. obtinuisse sat clarum putat; idque ex lege R. Ethelredi apud Venktingum lata; ut duodecim seniores Thani cum præposito prodeuntes supra sacra quæ ipsis in manus traduntur, jurabant se neminem innocentem accusaturos, sonteni excusaturos."
8 Attested by tradition and history.—The historical documents which fix the locality for the crowning the Anglo-Saxon kings at Kingston, in
