Or Fate is blind,
Or Scots shall find,
Where'er this stone
A royal throne.
A prophecy which is said to have reconciled many a true Scot to the Union in Queen Anne's time; and which, since the extinction of the Stuart family, is remarkably fulfilled in the claims of the House of Brunswick,—George IV. being now the legitimate heir of both lines.
At or near a consecrated stone, it was an ancient Eastern custom to appoint kings or chieftains to their office. Thus we read in Scripture of Abimelech being "made king by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem[6]," (the earliest royal appointment, perhaps, of which we have any traces in history;) and of Joash having the "crown put upon him" while he "stood by a pillar, as the manner was[7]." Subsequently, and among the northern nations, the practice "was to form a circle of large stones, commonly twelve in number, in the middle of which one was set up, much larger than the rest: this was the royal seat; and the nobles occupied those surrounding it, which served also as a barrier to keep off the people who stood without. Here the leading men of the kingdom delivered their suffrages, and placed the elected king on his seat of dignity[8]." From such places, afterwards, justice was frequently dispensed.
"The old mun early rose, walk'd forth, and sate
On polished stone, before his palace gate;
With unguent smooth the lucid marble shone,
Where ancient Neleus sate, a rustic throne."
Homer's Odyss. Pope's Tr. Γ. 496—10.
Thus arises the name of our Court of King's Bench.
At the coronation of our kings, the royal chair is now disguised in cloth of gold; but the wood-work, which forms its principal parts, is supposed to be the same in which Edward I. recased it, on bringing it to England.
Shakspeare's Richard III. inquires—
"Is the Chair empty? Is the Sword unswayed?
Is the King dead? The empire unpossessed?
What heir of York is there alive but We?"
And the Earl of Richmond describes him, in admirable allusion to the foregoing facts, as
"A base foul stone, made precious by the foil
Of England's chair, where he is falsely set[9]."