ENGLAND’S CORONATION STONE.
A notable survival of the primitive reverence for the one foundation, or the original threshold, as the earliest place of sacrifice and covenanting,[[710]] is shown in the famous “Coronation Stone” in Westminster Abbey. This stone is under the chair in which all the sovereigns of England from Edward I. to Victoria have been crowned. It was brought by Edward I. to England from Scone, the coronation seat of the kings of Scotland. The legend attached to it was that it was the stone pillar on which Jacob rested at Bethel,–the House of God where Abraham worshiped, and where Jacob covenanted with God for all his generations.[[711]]
“In it, or upon it, the Kings of Scotland were placed by the Earls of Fife. From it Scone became the ‘sedis principalis’ of Scotland, and the kingdom of Scotland the kingdom of Scone.” Since the days of Edward I., it has never been removed from Westminster Abbey, except when Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector in Westminster Hall, on which occasion it was brought out in order that he might be placed on it.
As in ancient Babylonia, in Egypt, in Syria, in India, in China, in Arabia, in Greece, in Scandinavia, the one primitive foundation was deemed the only foundation on which to build securely with Divine approval, so in the very center of the highest modern civilization the reputed foundation stone of the kingdom of the “Father of the Faithful” is deemed the only secure coronation, or installation, seat of King, Queen, or Lord Protector. Is it not reasonable to suppose that this feeling has a basis in primitive religious convictions and customs?
Dean Stanley, referring to this Coronation Stone as “probably the chief object of attraction to the innumerable visitors to the Abbey,” says of it: “It is the one primeval monument which binds together the whole Empire. The iron rings, the battered surface, the crack which has all but rent its solid mass asunder, bear witness to its long migrations. It is thus embedded in the heart of the English monarchy–an element of poetic, patriarchal, heathen times, which, like Araunah’s rocky threshing-floor in the midst of the Temple of Solomon, carries back our thoughts to races and customs now almost extinct; a link which unites the Throne of England to the traditions of Tara and Iona, and connects the charm of our complex civilization with the forces of our mother earth,–the stocks and stones of savage nature.”[[712]]