Charles I. and Cromwell, however, are mere personages of yesterday in the history of Kingston. Ten hundred and fifty years ago it was the seat of Egbert's brilliant Witenagemot, a couple of generations before ever a king was crowned here. These coronation memories, however, are Kingston's great pride, and almost the only passages in her history of which any material memorial still remains. This memorial is, of course, the famous coronation stone, an irregular mass worn smooth and shiny by a thousand years of rain and friction. It stands finally now in the market-place, railed off in the reverent fashion common to chairs of state by a massive _grille_ which tends greatly, no doubt, to its conservation. How many of our kings before the Conquest were crowned at Kingston, and that their consecration really took place upon this particular stone, tradition affords the only evidence. The genuineness of the stone is well enough authenticated for the ordinary believer who does not care to make himself miserable by a course of universal scepticism; but I believe there have been antiquaries (of course they were not born at Kingston) who have ventured to suggest that the evidence is insufficient. Tradition says that seven Saxon kings were certainly crowned here, and that probably others were. Here are the names of the seven, with the dates of their coronation, copied from the pedestal of the stone, with faithful adherence to the spelling affected by Mr. Freeman:--Eadweard, 901; Adelstan, 924; Eadmund, 943; Eadred, 946; Eadwig, 955; Eadward, 975; Ædelred, 978. Kingston is a bright, cheerful little town, and the inhabitants seem to bear up well beneath the infliction of their terrible Town Hall, of which the sole tolerable points are some very good oaken carvings and some quaint armorial glass, all removed from the old Town Hall when it was demolished. Before the iconoclasts of Cromwellian days wreaked their evil will upon it, the parish church of Kingston must have been internally very interesting. There is reason to suppose that it was rich in brasses; but all that now remains of them are the blanks in the floor left by their removal. There are a few fine monuments, and one ancient brass of considerable interest is to be seen still. It commemorates Joan, the wife of Robert Skern, and her husband. The lady was a daughter of Edward III. and the frail Alice Perrers. After the coronation stone and the church, the only other "sight" of Kingston is the Norman chapel of St. Helen, for many years only a ruin, which is believed to be the successor of a still older building in which "Saint" Dunstan is reported to have crowned King Ethelred. The crooked streets of this old town, which disputes with Winchester the glory of having been the ancient capital of England, are made picturesque by many fine old red-brick houses of Jacobean and Georgian date. A generation ago there were standing a number of even older houses irregularly gabled,