Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/111

 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; —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, 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