We do not often get all three of these Fortunes combined--the human victim, the stone, and the tree, with the annual offering which renews its sanctity. But we find traces so often of one or other of the trio that we are justified, I think, in connecting them together as parts of a whole, whereof here one element survives, and there another. “Among all primitive communities,” says Mr. Gomme, “when a village was first established, a stone was set up. To this stone, the headman of the village made an offering once a year.” To the present day, London preserves her foundation-god in the shape of London Stone, now enclosed in a railing or iron grill just opposite Cannon Street Station. Now, London Stone was for ages considered as the representative and embodiment of the entire community. Proclamations and other important state businesses were announced from its top; and the defendant in trials in the Lord Mayor’s court was summoned to attend from London Stone, as though the stone itself spoke to the wrong-doer with the united voice of the assembled citizens. The first Lord Mayor, indeed, was Henry de Lundonstone, no doubt, as Mr. Loftie suggests, the hereditary keeper of this urban fetish,--in short, the representative of the village headman. I have written at greater length on the implications of this interesting relic in an article on London Stone in _Longman’s Magazine_, to which I would refer the reader for further information. {259}I will only add here the curious episode of Jack Cade, who, when he forced his way, under his assumed name of Mortimer, into the city in 1450, first of all proceeded to this sacred relic, the embodiment of palladium of ancient London, and having struck it with his sword exclaimed, “Now is Mortimer lord of this city.”