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 me other than Lord Mortimer." Short as this speech is, coupled with the stage direction now, of striking the stone, it gives us all the usages we have heard of as to other Morasteens, and all the various indispensable requisites of a coronation. The sanctity of the place, the striking the stone, a burlesque of the regal defiances at Presburg, and still practised by the sovereign at the ceremony of dubbing a knight—which, as Pennant remarks, had been a customary way of taking possession—the being placed on the stone upon which his recognition as a prince and sovereign is to follow; all are ample testimonies of the intention. Stowe, in his Annals, produces many instances where this stone is mentioned in documents as early as Athelstan, as a kind of landmark, and for "the payment, tendering, and making of debtors to their creditors at their appointed days and times, till of later times payments were more usually made at the font in Paul's Church, and now most commonly at the Royal Exchange." These would assure us of its sanctity, as temples were used by the Romans for many pecuniary transactions; and as we here find them transferred to the interior of a Christian church, until the greater convenience of the continental bourse, introduced into Great Britain by Sir Thomas Gresham, carried them more appropriately to the secular edifices, as at Bristol, where old brass font-like tables still exist for the obsolete purpose of money-changing, in front of their new exchange, the very intent of which is indicated by its name. But we have direct evidence that the title of supreme magistrate of the City was taken from this stone. In the Rotuli Curiæ Regiæ, edited by Sir F. Palgrave (1835, vol. i. p. 12), some conspirators are made to say, "Come what will, in London we will never have another king except our mayor, Henry