Correction: the tradition that the body of Harold Harefoot was buried at St Clement Danes (p 175) was already known to Ralph de Diceto in the 12th century. Modern accounts of London Stone, the enigmatic landmark that has stood since at...
moreCorrection: the tradition that the body of Harold Harefoot was buried at St Clement Danes (p 175) was already known to Ralph de Diceto in the 12th century.
Modern accounts of London Stone, the enigmatic landmark that has stood since at least the end of the 11th century (and probably much earlier) in Cannon Street in the City of London, usually refer to a ‘traditional belief’ that the stone was associated in some way with the well-being of the city, and quote an ‘ancient proverb’ that ‘So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish’. In a paper published some years ago (Clark 2007, 178), and later in a fuller paper in Folklore on the growth of traditions and myths about London Stone (Clark 2010, 45–52), this supposed saying was traced back to a first appearance in a note in the periodical Notes and Queries in 1862. The note was signed with the pseudonym ‘Mor Merrion’. This, more correctly ‘Môr Meirion’, was the Welsh Bardic name adopted by the Revd Richard Williams Morgan (c.1815–89), Anglican clergyman, Welsh patriot, co-organiser of the 1858 Llangollen Eisteddfod, and later the founder and first bishop of a revived ‘Ancient British Church’. ‘Môr Meirion’ claimed that there were ancient traditions that London Stone had been brought from Troy by Brutus, legendary founder of London as ‘New Troy’, and erected as the altar stone in the Temple of Diana, and that the ancient British kings had by custom sworn their oaths of office upon it. It was ‘the foundation stone of London and its palladium’. Moreover there was, Morgan asserted, a saying ‘So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish’.
In the absence of evidence that these were legitimate ‘ancient traditions’ about London Stone, it is easy to assume that all were the inventions of Richard Williams Morgan, that imaginative and eccentric author. However, there is one medieval source that does indeed connect London Stone with Brutus and with a prophecy of London’s greatness – but it remains uncertain whether Morgan was aware of it: a narrative poem known as the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle, composed in the early 14th century. One version of this text was written in London and clearly intended for a London readership, and among much unconventional and unlikely history it contains episodes and references of particular London interest, and probably reflecting local knowledge. One of these is the attribution to Brutus of the setting up of London Stone and a prophecy of London’s future greatness. This paper considers this episode alongside other apparently novel references, which may reflect ways in which medieval Londoners interpreted the past of their city.
