Below the screen, which is wrought with exquisite carving into niches and canopies, stands a curious old chair. This is the Coronation Chair, in which all English sovereigns have sat at their coronations since it was made in Edward the First's reign. But more curious than the chair is the rough block of stone which it incases. That block is the mysterious stone of Fate which Edward the First captured at Scone in Scotland--the stone on which every Scotch king had been crowned from the days of Fergus the First--the stone on which every English king or queen has been crowned since. And legends carry the history of that stone back into the remotest past. They say that it was the stone pillow on which Jacob slept at Bethel; that it was carried by the Jews into Egypt; that the son of Cecrops, King of Athens, carried it off to Sicily or Spain; that from Spain it was taken by Simon Brech, the son of Milo the Scot, to Ireland, where after many marvelous adventures it was set up on the sacred Hill of Tara as the "Lia Fail" or Stone of Destiny; and that Fergus, the founder of the Scottish monarchy, bore it at length across the sea to Dunstaffnage.
Whether we believe the whole history of the Stone of Destiny or not, the chapel in which it stands is a wonderful place. In the centre rises the Confessor's shrine, the remains of the mosaics with which it was encrusted showing what its splendor must have been. The mosaic pavement of 1260 is under our feet. Henry the Fifth's shield and helmet hang aloft on a bar above his chantry. All round us are the splendid monuments of the kings. Richard the Second, Edward the Third and Queen Phillipa, Henry the Fifth under his beautiful chantry, Henry the Third in his gorgeous tomb inlaid with marbles and mosaic, Good Queen Eleanor, and her husband Edward the First--they all are there! "The greatest of the Plantagenets," as he has been called, lies beneath an enormous monument of solid gray stone, absolutely plain, without carving, brass or mosaic. Only his gigantic two-handed sword lies upon it, and along it runs this inscription:
"_Edwardus Primus Scotorum malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva._"[15]
It is of Edward the First's reign we are to talk. For besides being the Hammer of the Scots, he conquered the last stronghold of the British race, and made their land forever a part of England.