damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666, which possibly reduced it to something near its current size; the stone was placed by the door of the rebuilt St Swithin’s Church.
Things start to get strange for the London Stone, as far as we know, from Jack Cade’s 1450 rebellion. Cade, invading the City of London, struck the London Stone and declared himself the mayor of London. As John Clark, former Senior Curator (Medieval) at the Museum of London points out, much of our knowledge of this event comes from Shakespeare’s dramatic interpretation in Henry VI Part 2 . Clark points out that there is no historical precedent for the Lord Mayor having to strike the London Stone, and contemporary chronicles were ‘at a loss as to its significance’. In the 1720 update to Stow’s Survey of London, John Strype got druids involved for the first time, suggesting that the stone was ‘an Object, or Monument, of Heathen Worship’. London poet and mystic William Blake ran with the idea, suggesting that it was a Druid altar stone. Thomas Pennant, in his Some Account of London , suggested that the London Stone could have ‘formed part of a druidical circle’. The idea that the stone somehow protected London was first considered in Pennant’s Account :
At all times it has been preserved with great care, placed deep in the ground, and strongly fastened with bars of iron. It seems preserved, like the palladium of the city.
This refers to the statue of Pallas Athene that protected the city of Troy. This all fitted very well into the legend first concocted by twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain that Brutus of Troy brought the Brutus Stone to Britain after his city’s destruction, and ancient kings would swear oaths over it. After all, didn’t Jack Cade strike the stone and declare himself ruler of London? Perhaps the London Stone is the stone of Brutus? There is already a Brutus Stone in Totnes where the refugee Trojan landed, but that probably doesn’t matter. The first to suggest that the London Stone is the stone of Brutus seems to be Welsh supremacist and language advocate Revd Richard Williams Morgan under his nom de plume Môr Meirion. In 1892, in an article in ‘Notes and Queries’, a pre-internet user-generated content publication where questions were asked and answered by public correspondence, Morgan is the first to ‘discover’ the ancient saying ‘so long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish’. In his 1857 book The British Kymry, Or Britons of Cambria , Morgan suggested that the London Stone is the palladium of Troy, possibly dragged under the wooden horse as the city burned. The Newburgh Telegraph of 18 December 1909 described the stone as a ‘relic of Homer’s days’.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the London Stone was incorporated into a number of ley-lines (lines that can be drawn through a number of sacred sites to decipher arcane truths about the sacred landscape). By 2002 the London Stone was linked to Elizabethan occultist John Dee, in a claim that he believed it had magical powers. It was even given another legendary secret identity as the stone from which King Arthur drew Excalibur. These stories came out suspiciously near to London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.
There is little danger in moving the London Stone: in fact, it was moved from the centre of Cannon Street in 1720 when it became a traffic hazard. It was incorporated into the post-Great Fire St Swithin’s Church. As a part of the church furniture, it moved around a little until it ended up in the corner of the church. Come 1884, when the District Line was being constructed, the London Stone was kept where it was, but the earth beneath it was removed. St Swithin’s was gutted by Second World War bombing and the stone was moved to its current location in 1961, when the offices at 111 Cannon Street were built. At the time of writing, part of the new Cannon
Things start to get strange for the London Stone, as far as we know, from Jack Cade’s 1450 rebellion. Cade, invading the City of London, struck the London Stone and declared himself the mayor of London. As John Clark, former Senior Curator (Medieval) at the Museum of London points out, much of our knowledge of this event comes from Shakespeare’s dramatic interpretation in Henry VI Part 2 . Clark points out that there is no historical precedent for the Lord Mayor having to strike the London Stone, and contemporary chronicles were ‘at a loss as to its significance’. In the 1720 update to Stow’s Survey of London, John Strype got druids involved for the first time, suggesting that the stone was ‘an Object, or Monument, of Heathen Worship’. London poet and mystic William Blake ran with the idea, suggesting that it was a Druid altar stone. Thomas Pennant, in his Some Account of London , suggested that the London Stone could have ‘formed part of a druidical circle’. The idea that the stone somehow protected London was first considered in Pennant’s Account :
At all times it has been preserved with great care, placed deep in the ground, and strongly fastened with bars of iron. It seems preserved, like the palladium of the city.
This refers to the statue of Pallas Athene that protected the city of Troy. This all fitted very well into the legend first concocted by twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain that Brutus of Troy brought the Brutus Stone to Britain after his city’s destruction, and ancient kings would swear oaths over it. After all, didn’t Jack Cade strike the stone and declare himself ruler of London? Perhaps the London Stone is the stone of Brutus? There is already a Brutus Stone in Totnes where the refugee Trojan landed, but that probably doesn’t matter. The first to suggest that the London Stone is the stone of Brutus seems to be Welsh supremacist and language advocate Revd Richard Williams Morgan under his nom de plume Môr Meirion. In 1892, in an article in ‘Notes and Queries’, a pre-internet user-generated content publication where questions were asked and answered by public correspondence, Morgan is the first to ‘discover’ the ancient saying ‘so long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish’. In his 1857 book The British Kymry, Or Britons of Cambria , Morgan suggested that the London Stone is the palladium of Troy, possibly dragged under the wooden horse as the city burned. The Newburgh Telegraph of 18 December 1909 described the stone as a ‘relic of Homer’s days’.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the London Stone was incorporated into a number of ley-lines (lines that can be drawn through a number of sacred sites to decipher arcane truths about the sacred landscape). By 2002 the London Stone was linked to Elizabethan occultist John Dee, in a claim that he believed it had magical powers. It was even given another legendary secret identity as the stone from which King Arthur drew Excalibur. These stories came out suspiciously near to London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.
There is little danger in moving the London Stone: in fact, it was moved from the centre of Cannon Street in 1720 when it became a traffic hazard. It was incorporated into the post-Great Fire St Swithin’s Church. As a part of the church furniture, it moved around a little until it ended up in the corner of the church. Come 1884, when the District Line was being constructed, the London Stone was kept where it was, but the earth beneath it was removed. St Swithin’s was gutted by Second World War bombing and the stone was moved to its current location in 1961, when the offices at 111 Cannon Street were built. At the time of writing, part of the new Cannon
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