COVENTRY CROSS.
It is difficult for us to conceive how constantly these sculptured shafts and sheltering arches met the gaze of our forefathers at every turn in the older cities of England. Beside the splendid cross, for instance, just described, Coventry had at one time its Swine’s Cross (taken down about 1763), a second of the same name in another part of the town, Sponne Cross, Hill Cross, Jesus Cross, the Maiden’s Cross, and the New, or Queen’s Cross, as well as others close at hand at Radford and at Whitley. A similar case meets us in Doncaster, which once could boast of a Butcher’s Cross (destroyed in 1725), a Butter Cross (removed to make room for the Market House in 1846), the Northern Cross, the Wheat, or Market Cross, the Crosses of S. James, S. Sepulchre, and Maudlin (Magdalen), Snorel Cross, and one in the churchyard. Not one of all this list remains, Doncaster’s only example being the Hall Cross, which will be referred to among the memorial crosses.
During the Commonwealth, with its temporary establishment of civil marriages, this rite was “solemnized,” if one may use the term in such a connection, in Doncaster at the Wheat Cross.
The ancient city of Lincoln is another example of a place once rich in these memorials. Only a well-cross exists there to-day, although its first Bishop, Remigius, built a town-cross, his successor, Hugh de Grenoble, added others, and yet others were erected by Hugh de Wells, all of which, as also an ancient High Cross, have gone.
Amongst the Market Crosses still left to us, a foremost place, if not the first, must be given to that of Chichester. This beautiful structure was reared by Edward Story, bishop of the diocese from 1478 to 1504, who also left an estate, valued at £25 per annum, to keep it in repair, and to provide wine at the Cross annually on S. George’s Day. It is an octagon in plan, and covers a space of some fourhundred square feet. Crosses of this type, of which Malmesbury and Salisbury provide other excellent examples, are not only more beautiful, but more useful, than the solid decorated towers or spires, such as the crosses of Coventry and Abingdon, for the wide arches afford both shade and shelter to the market folk in summer heat or wintry rain and snow. A cross which is almost a combination of the solid high-cross and the large covered type is found at Shepton Mallet, having been erected by Walter Buckland and his wife in 1505. Other examples of the covered cross exist at Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire, and at Cheddar. Even in the narrower scope of the high cross, an attempt was sometimes made to provide at least so much shelter as was possible under the circumstances, as we see in the open lower story of the Butter Cross, at Winchester, and of the curious pentagonal cross at Leighton-Buzzard.
Amid all the bustle of the busy market-place, and perhaps above all times in this hurrying, grasping age, the old market cross stands with its message ever old, yet ever needful, for all who have ears to hear; testifying that there are interests of more moment than buying and selling and getting gain, and by its very antiquity speaking of the frailty of the life of man, so many generations of whom have bargained and chaffered beneath its shadow, and gone out one by one in long procession into the unknown Infinite.
Turning to those public crosses, which were used chiefly, though not quite exclusively, for religious purposes and especially for preaching, S. Paul’s Cross comes first by right both of the importance of its position, and of the prominent part which it has played in the religious history of the country.
MARKET CROSS, CHICHESTER.
The original foundation of the Cross at S. Paul’s is lost in antiquity, but evidence exists that one, on or near the site of the later one, marked the spot whereon the city folkmote was held before the twelfth century. The earliest actual mention of the cross is in 1191, when one William Fitz Osbert here delivered an address against the divine authority of the crown. From that time down to the middle of the seventeenth century, a period of about five hundred years, the references to it are frequent and interesting.
It was first used for ecclesiastical purposes in 1285, when the churchyard was enclosed, and began probably to be regarded more distinctly as a cathedral precinct, yet even after this the events connected with the cross are not all strictly ecclesiastical. In 1382 the building was damaged in a severe thunder-storm, and in 1449 it was re-built in “a more splendid style” by Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London. The last preaching at the cross was in 1633, after which the sermons were delivered in the cathedral; and in 1643, by order of the Long Parliament, the cross was taken down. All that now remains of it is the octagon base, which was discovered a few years since, when the churchyard was laid out as a garden; the site will be found, marked out with stones, at the northeast corner of the present cathedral, a portion of the east wall of which rests upon a small part of it.
In its palmy days, S. Paul’s Cross consisted of a covered pulpit of stone, surrounded by a low wall, and surmounted by a bold cross on an ogee roof. When not in use it was closed by a door, and near the opening or window where the preacher took his stand, was, in its latter days, a bracket for an hour-glass. At the left hand of the structure, against the east wall of the cathedral transept, was a covered gallery of two storeys, knownas “the shrowds,” in which persons of special distinction were accommodated to hear the preaching; the bulk of the congregation sitting on movable forms or standing between the cross and the church.
Here at various times were heard such famous leaders of the religious thought of the nation as Fisher, Latimer, Gardiner, Ridley, Coverdale, Tunstall, Bonner, Grindal, Scory, Jewell, King, “the king of preachers,” according to the opinion of James I., Hooker, “the judicious,” Donne, Dean of S. Paul’s, and Laud, who, as Bishop of London, was the last of the famous preachers to occupy this celebrated pulpit. Several of the sermons delivered here have become historical, or were connected with events that have helped to make history. On September 12th, 1557, “Dr. Standyche did preach at the shrowds for the winning of the battle of St. Quentin,” the lord mayor and the aldermen being present in state. Jewell, Bishop of Salisbury, preached a sermon on March 30th, 1560, which became known as “the Challenge Sermon,” from the fact that it was largely composed of a number of theses, which he defied the Roman controversialists to prove from the Fathers or from Holy Scripture. Another discourse that acquired a name had been preached here by Latimer in 1548; this was the “Sermon of the Plough,” which treated in a quaint and characteristic manner of the seed and the husbandry of “God’s plough-land.” Queen Elizabeth came to S. Paul’s Cross in full state on September 8th, 1588, to hear another bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Piers, preach in commemoration of the overthrow of the Armada. On this occasion eleven ensigns taken from the Spanish fleet were exhibited, previous to their being displayed on thefollowing day on London Bridge. On March 24th, 1619, the cross was draped in black in memory of the death of Anne of Denmark, the queen of James I., who had died early in the month; and in April, King, Bishop of London, delivered a sermon there at a solemn thanksgiving for the king’s recovery from severe illness. In 1629 a muttering of the coming storm was heard at S. Paul’s Cross, when, on the Sunday before Whitsunday, two papers were found attached to it addressed to King Charles I., who was warned of the wrath of heaven against him, and bidden, “Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou must be no longerStuart.”
The Cross, however, was not used for sermons only. Being a place centrally situated and resorted to by large numbers of people, it was deemed a suitable one for the performance of acts of public penance. In 1441, Roger Boltyngbroke, who was found guilty of the sin of necromancy, sat on a chair by the Cross during sermon time, surrounded by his magical appliances, and afterwards openly abjured his dark arts. A more notable penitent was Mistress Jane Shore, who came here “out of all araie, save her kertle onlie,” and with a taper in her hand, in May, 1483. John Hig, “alias Noke, alias Jonson”—a suspicious character obviously—stood bareheaded and barefooted, with a faggot on his shoulder, all through the preaching at the Cross on Good Friday, in 1528, as a penance for certain “damnable and erroneous opinions” which he confessed to having “erroneously and damnably said, affirmed, believed and taught.” A similar penance was performed in 1532 by a barrister of the Middle Temple, James Baynham by name, who seems to have been a singularly weak and vacillatingcreature. Having professed Protestantism, he recanted; again recalled his recantation, and was burned at Smithfield. In 1534, Elizabeth Barton, “the holy maid of Kent,” who professed to have had divine revelations condemning the divorce of King Henry VIII., was compelled to stand on a high scaffold over against the pulpit, together with some half-a-dozen priests and monks, who had expressed belief in her prophesyings. This probably mistaken, but certainly well-meaning and pious nun, was hanged at Tyburn on April 21st, 1534.
In November, 1554, five men did penance here by standing during the sermon with lighted tapers in one hand and rods in the other; in March, 1556, a man, for transgressing the rules of Lent, stood with the carcase of a pig on his head and another in his hand; and in August, 1559, a “minister” did penance for “marrying a couple that were married afore-time.”
The custom, common in past days, of formally destroying a book by way of condemning its publication, has several times been illustrated at S. Paul’s Cross. Many of Luther’s works were burnt at a sermon preached there by Fisher on May 12th, 1521; and Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, after another sermon by the same bishop, Cardinal Wolsey being present also, in 1530. In 1613, some books by a Jesuit named Suarez, whose works were said to be “derogatory to Princes,” were burnt at the Cross, and the writings by Pareus, concerning the people’s authority over princes, were similarly treated in 1622.
A notice of the Cross in the reign of Edward III. gives us a curious insight into the ideas of episcopal duty at the time. Michael de Northbury, Bishop of London from 1354 to 1362, acted as a pawnbroker for the benefit of the citizens of that city, and if at the year’s end the pledges were not redeemed, notice was given by the preacher, after his sermon at the Cross, that they would be sold in fourteen days.
THE READING CROSS, ST. PAUL’S, LONDON.
Amongst the incidents of a secular character which centred in this time-honoured erection, we find a pleasing illustration of the friendly relations which subsisted between the King and his subjects in bygone days; for it seems to have been customary for the monarch, before going abroad, to come down to S. Paul’s Cross, and there to bid them farewell. So came, at any rate, Henry III., both in 1257 and in 1261, before passing into France.
The gatherings round the spot were not always of so friendly a nature. Under Queen Mary, religious feeling ran so high as to lead to serious disturbances. Dr. Bourne, chaplain to Bonner, was interrupted by shouting and uproar for attacking Ridley in a sermon on August 13th, 1553, and a dagger was flung at him, which stuck into a post of the Cross. On the following Sunday, about one hundred and twenty halberdiers were present, and peace was preserved; but in June of the next year, Dr. Pendleton was fired on whilst preaching and nearly struck by a pellet “of tyne.”
No other preaching cross attained to the name and fame of that of S. Paul’s, yet they were not uncommon in the country. In the Green Yard at Norwich was one of wood, with leaded roof and a cross of the same metal; Worcester also had one. Remains of a preaching cross may be seen near the church in Iron Acton, in Gloucestershire, a graceful structure originally, now lamentably mutilated; and at Disley, in the same county, is another, also in ruins. Astill better example is the Blackfriars’ preaching cross at Hereford, a hexagonal enclosure with open arches, above which is the stump of what was once the sacred emblem.
The Puritans, although such advocates of preaching, evidently had a strong prejudice against these open-air pulpits. That at Iron Acton bears to this day marks of the violence used in the attempt to destroy it, and most of our English preaching crosses have, like our most famous example, wholly disappeared.
In this last half century, the English people have woke up once more in a wonderful way to an appreciation of life in the open air. Never were outdoor sports and games so generally followed; and “garden-parties” and “garden-meetings” are amongst our most modern inventions. Parks and pleasure-grounds are now demanded almost as a public right; and no “exhibition” can look for success that does not provide ample accommodation for its patrons to listen to music under the open skies. In the face of all these signs of the times, is it too much to hope that the Church may be touched with the same feeling—surely a healthy and a desirable one; and that we may yet see on summer’s evenings the congregations choosing to sit or stand about the preaching cross in the churchyard, rather than sit, involuntarily listless, at the best with difficulty attentive, in the heat of a crowded, and often ill-ventilated church?
Memorial Crosses.
Thesign of our salvation having come to fill so large a place in Christian art, it would naturally be expected that in memorials in any way connected with religious feelings it would be employed, and above all in the monuments of the dead laid to rest in hope of a joyous resurrection through the victory of the Cross. As a matter of fact, our earliest Christian cross-forms are the disguised crosses of the catacombs, and in spite of every outbreak of bigotry against other uses of the symbol, it has never been entirely abandoned for such purposes. Preaching crosses and market crosses might fall into ruin, and roods and crucifixes be wantonly destroyed, but the Cross, carved in stone or cut on stone above the grave, is found in all ages, though not so frequently in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as before or since.
The first cross said to have been raised in the Kingdom of Northumbria, was that wooden one which S. Oswald, the King and Martyr, planted with his own hands on the eve of the battle of Hevenfelth in 635. This, originally a sign of the cause for which Oswald sought to reclaim his realm, became a memorial of the Christian victory, and was still preserved as such in the time of the Venerable Bede, who tells us that “the place is shown to this day, and held in great veneration.”
Another memorial of battle was the famous Neville’s Cross, near Durham, erected to mark the spot where Ralph Neville, in October, 1346, defeated the Scottish invaders. This, according to ancient accounts, was a singularly dignified structure, with a crucifixion beneath a stone canopy at the top, and a series of figures at the base, the whole being raised on half-a-dozen steps.
The greater number of our memorial crosses, however, preserve the memory, as was above indicated, of persons rather than of events; and amongst the earliest of these is a very ancient example of the so-called runic type in the Parish Church of Leeds. It is curiously wrought with human figures, difficult now to name with any certainty, and with several fine specimens of the varied and intricate scrolls so popular with the early stone-carvers of the north. It is supposed to be a monument to Onlaf Godfreyson, who died about 941.
Travellers in the Alps will be familiar with the memorials, pathetic in their simplicity, of those mountaineers and wayfarers who have met sudden destruction beneath the overwhelming avalanche; ever and anon the rustic cross of wood is met with, marked with the initials of the dead and with the letters “P. I.,” or perhaps the words in full,Perit ici. Spain, too, has her wooden crosses scattered along her most lonely roads and hillsides, or by the forest pathway; memorials, these, however, of more sombre tragedies, telling where the brigand or the highwayman struck down his victim.
The great type of the permanent memorial cross amongst us in England has been supplied by the devotion of Edward I. to his Queen Eleanor, and any land might well have been proud of the splendid series of crosses which he raised to her memory.
NORTHAMPTON CROSS.
Queen Eleanor died at Hardeby, in Nottinghamshire, on November 28th, 1291, her husband being at the time in the north, entering upon a Scottish campaign. The body was embalmed; and as the solemn procession, which the King joined ere its start, made its slow way to Westminster, a spot was chosen at each halting place, on which a monument was to be raised. The total number of these is not quite certain, but the following is probably a complete list of them, namely:—Lincoln (where those parts of the body removed in the embalming were buried in the Minster), Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony-Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, S. Alban’s, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing. All have now disappeared except those at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham; and these three survivors, singularly enough, illustrate three distinct styles of construction, the ground plan of the first being a triangle, of the second an octagon, and of the last a hexagon.
With so many crosses varying so largely in design it is probable that there were several architects, but not many names have come down to us; John de la Battaile is said to have designed the one at Northampton, and Pietro Cavallini the Waltham one, Alexander of Abingdon, and William de Ireland executing the work. All the existing crosses have several statutes of the Queen, so that we may conclude that this was a feature common to the whole series; and all were adorned with the arms of England, Castile, and Ponthieu. The design in each case is beautiful, and the detailed carving, whether in the diapering of the surface, orits enrichment with flowers, crockets, and other architectural features, both elaborate and exquisite. Charing Cross, the cross of “the beloved Queen” (chèr reine), the last of the series, more nearly approached the Northampton Cross than either of the other two which remain, but its plan was hexagonal. Not a trace or a description of the original condition of most of the other crosses has been handed down to us.
Geddington Cross is in a singularly perfect state, wanting only its upper member with the actual cross. That at Northampton is similarly truncated. In the reign of Queen Anne a new cross, quite out of keeping with the rest of the design was placed upon the latter by the local justices of the places, who also adorned its faces with sundials; these have happily been again removed. Waltham Cross, which had become seriously decayed, was restored early in the present century, and again more carefully and satisfactorily in 1887 as a memorial of the jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria.
GEDDINGTON CROSS.
The Cheapside Cross was renewed in 1486 by the citizens of London, and again in 1600. In the excitement of the religious ferment of the following century it was a great sufferer, all the images on it being broken in 1581, and again, “with profane indignity” in 1596. Its final destruction took place in 1643 under an order of the Long Parliament, which decreed the demolition of all crosses. Both this and, it would appear, the earlier attacks upon it, were the work of a fanatical minority merely, which could command but little popular sympathy, for Sir Robert Harlow, who had charge of the work of destruction, brought with him to the city a troop of horse and two companies of foot to protect the workmen from the rage of the citizens. The Cross at Charing was probably removed at the same time. Of the fate of the others we have no record; some perhaps crumbled with decay, and were neglected, others doubtless met a fate similar to that of their London sisters.
PURITANS DESTROYING CHEAPSIDE CROSS.
The Waltham Cross has proved the most suggestive to architects of subsequent times; amongst other instances the Crimean Cross, near Westminster Abbey, has been formed on its design. Sir G. Gilbert Scott drew inspiration from the Northampton Cross for the erection of the Martyrs’ Memorial at Oxford; and near Sheffield is one which perhaps follows, though at an immense distance, thetype at Geddington. This is the memorial to the four hundred victims, of the terrible epidemic of cholera which visited Sheffield in 1832. This cross, the foundation-stone of which was laid by James Montgomery, the poet, is chiefly interesting as one of the earliest instances of the reviving taste and feeling for this specially appropriate form of monument. Another Memorial Cross, whose noble size and dignified proportions, when compared with the one last named, give ample evidence of the artistic growth which has accompanied this growth of feeling, is the S. Andrew’s Cross, at Plymouth.
Two crosses of a different type to the Eleanor crosses are those at Newark and at Wedmore. The first, which consists of a tall shaft on a flight of bold, hexagonal steps, was erected by the Duchess of Norfolk, as a memorial of her husband, John Viscount Beaumont, who fell at the battle of Towton Moor in 1461. The present head of the cross is modern. The Wedmore Cross, sometimes called “Jeffrey’s Cross,” commemorates the unfortunate country-folk of Somersetshire, who fell in Monmouth’s rebellion, or were butchered by the brutal Jeffreys afterwards.
CROSSES AT SANDBACH, CHESHIRE.
Probably, could we but decipher the allusions intended by their sculptures, we should find that most of our ancient carved crosses were originally memorials. Almost certainly the two shafts at Sandbach, in Cheshire, are such. These, which are amongst the most valuable relics of early art in this country, dating probably from the eighth, or even from the seventh century, were broken into many pieces and scattered over the district as doorsteps, gate-posts, and what not, until collected and most carefully restored by Colonel Forde, the lord of the Manor. The larger of these two columns, each of which has lost its cruciform head, is covered with sculptures of sacred subjects taken from the New Testament; we have the annunciation of S. Elizabeth, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the trial and crucifixion of our Lord, the apocalyptic emblems of the four evangelists, and other sacred scenes and persons. The carvings on the smaller cross are of a secular character, and are supposed to represent events connected with the marriage of Peda, King of Mercia, to Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy, King of Northumbria, and his baptism, on which as a condition that marriage depended; most of the work is nowinexplicable, referring to scenes of which all other records are lost. The stones of which these columns are composed are of the hardest and most durable sort, and a perfect enthusiasm of destruction must have been required to tear them down and break them.
IONA CROSS.
The Scottish island, the famous home of S. Columba, has several note-worthy examples. They are of the so-called runic design, covered for the most part with very elegant carvings, and form the most interesting series of relics left to us in that cradle of northern Christianity. None of them date back so far as the days of the great Abbot, whose name is so interwoven with the history of Iona, yet they are very ancient and characteristic. Gathered about Reilig Odhrain, the burial-place of the isle, they bear eloquent testimony to the sanctity of the spot, to which kings and chieftains were brought for sepulchre even from far off Norway. One of these, and perhaps the most familiar, stands on three roughly-hewn steps overlooking the sea; its ornamentation consisting of a series of circles. Abbot Mackinnon’s Cross is now headless; the shaft is covered with a scroll beautifully designed of conventional leaves, and bears an inscription, recording the date of its erection, 1489. S. Martin’s Cross is near the ruined cathedral, and is also carved in graceful scrolls in which the figures of snakes and other creatures are introduced.
Monasterboice, or the Monastery of Boethius, a bishop who died in 521, situated in county Louth, has a number of crosses, several of which are in excellent preservation. The Great Cross, as it is called, stands twenty-two feet in height, and is on the south side of the church. A second example, which is also near the church, has been described as “the most beautiful specimen of Celtic stone-work now in existence,” this is the Cross of Muiredach. It is covered with carvings of scriptural scenes, and bears on the front the inscription (in Erse), “Pray for Muiredach, by whom this Cross was made.” The venerable builder was Abbot of Armagh, and died in 923 or 924. Drumcliff, near Sligo, and many other places in Ireland also possess most interesting crosses.
THE CROWLE STONE.
A curiously carved shaft in the church of S. Oswald at Crowle, in North Lincolnshire, has been supposed by many to be the shaft of a very ancient cross, and if so, must almost certainly be included amongst those raised as memorials. It is covered on one side with an involved chain pattern roughly suggesting a snake swallowing its tail, and on the other are some human and animal figures, the meaning of which has never been satisfactorily explained. What makes the shaft especially interesting is the presence of the fragment of a runic inscription. The wall into which the Crowle stone is built was part of the eleventh century church of the place, and this ancient memorial to some long-forgotten hero was obviously taken from some neighbouring spot and converted into a lintel for the west door by the Norman builders.[3]
Another memorial cross of quite a different type is the Hall Cross of Doncaster. It was erected by, or in memory of, Oti, or Otho di Tilli, steward of Conisborough for the Earl of Warren, under Stephen and Henry II. It would have been destroyed by the troopers of the Earl of Manchester in the Civil War, but for the action of themayor, who succeeded in preserving it; but in 1792 it was taken down on making some alterations in the level of the road, and another cross of the same character was put up in the following year on Hall Cross Hill. It consists of a centre circular column, with four others much smaller placed about it, each of the five originally terminating in a cross. Its memorial character is preserved by the old Norman-French inscription, which it still bears, “Icest est la cruice Ote di Tilli a ki alme Deu en face merci. Amn.” It served a more gruesome purpose in the seventeenth century, being the spot chosen for the exposition of the heads of decapitated traitors.
Among the simple crosses planted in such profusion over and around Dartmoor are one or two interesting memorials. Roman’s Cross, at Leemoor, a plain Latin cross nearly six feet in height, standing on a circular base, is claimed by a local tradition as marking a spot whereon the Apostle S. Paul once preached. On Fox Tor stood, till about 1812, a cross raised on a very solid square sub-structure in three tiers, known as Childe’s Tomb. Here, according to the story, Childe, a hunter of ages long gone by, met his death from cold one stormy winter’s night. The whole memorial was wantonly destroyed by some labourers early in this century, but it has recently been re-built and surmounted by a new cross. Bra Tor boasts a modern addition to the Dartmoor Crosses, one having been erected there in memory of her Majesty’s Jubilee, and another, of a style more lofty and ornate than is characteristic of the locality, has been erected at Plympton S. Mary in memory of the Rev. Merton Smith, a late vicar, who perished in the Pyrenees in 1883.
Travelling yet further west, in Cornwall, one ancient cross at least is found which was intended as a memorial of the now forgotten dead. In the market place of Penzance, which can hardly, under the circumstances, be its original site, is a cross some five feet high, on which, at its removal in 1829, from the centre to the side of the square, were found near the base the words, “Hic procumbunt corpora piorum.”
Thus scattered up and down the land, from far Iona to the Cassiterides, is found the simple but expressive emblem of the Christian faith, bearing its silent testimony to the belief and hope of all the ages, that through the Cross the holy dead all sleep in peace to rise in joy.
Wayside and Boundary Crosses.
Wehave seen how the cross was erected in the busy market and beneath the shadow of the great Cathedral, where crowds hurried to and fro, day by day, for business or devotion. It was not alone in such populous places, however, that the sign of salvation reared itself to cheer the weary traveller through life’s ways by a message of faith, of hope, of divine love. In the village street, the lonely trackless moor, the meadow pathway and the king’s high-road, at every turn and in every place in mediæval England one met the same sacred memorial. Nay, even the hillside itself has been scored with it, as in the case of Whiteleaf in Buckinghamshire, where a cross, nearly one hundred feet long by fifty feet broad, was cut at some unknown but remote period in the chalk hill, by means of a huge trench over two feet in depth, after the fashion of the more familiar White Horse in Berkshire.
These numerous examples are not easily classified. If only the full history of their raising could be known, many doubtless would fall into classes that have already been considered. Some would prove to be memorials which have failed to preserve the memory of their founders; others may have marked spots, round which the villagers gathered to hear sermons from the travelling friars, to listen to some proclamation issued by the lord of the manor, orby the king, or to discuss those topics of local politics or of public interest which might from time to time come uppermost; others again marked the boundaries of estates, and especially of Church lands. They were in fact public crosses for no one special purpose, but for every public requirement of rural life.
In the west of England, in Devon and Cornwall, roadside crosses were, and even now are, remarkably common. Those of the former county seem to have generally served one of two purposes, either to mark the boundaries of lands, or to act as guide posts on the other wise almost trackless moorlands of Dartmoor and the neighbourhood.
For example, not far from Princetown stands one of the largest of the Dartmoor Crosses, known as Siward’s or Nun’s Cross, over seven feet in height. On the western face of this is carved, in two lines, the word ‘Boc-lond,’ marking it as a boundary stone of the lands of Buckland Abbey, although in this case it was adapted to that purpose, not erected expressly for it, the foundation of the abbey being not so ancient as the cross. The abbey dates from 1278. Bennet’s Cross, again, is one of the boundaries of Headland Warren, and of the parish of Bovey Tracey; it bears on its face the letters W. B., standing for “Warren Bounds;” the letters, but not the boundary line, are modern.
An ancient track across the moor, called the Abbot’s Way, which formed the most direct method of communication between the abbeys of Buckland and Tavistock on the one side, and that of Buckfast on the other, was marked out with a series of crosses, many of which yet remain.The fords of the Avon, on this pathway, were indicated by this means; Huntingdon Cross still stands at one ford as of old, but Buckland Ford Cross has gone. Some of these weather-beaten stones have carved on their several faces the initial letters of the towns towards which those faces turn, as a guide to the traveller. Sandowl Cross, now a rough stone rising scarcely a yard from the earth, has cut upon it the letters B., T., R., and M., pointing to Brent, Totnes, Kingsbridge, and Modbury respectively. Similarly Hookmoor Cross indicates the direction to be taken to reach Modbury, Brent, Totnes, and Plymouth.
These Dartmoor Crosses are interesting as ancient landmarks and boundaries, and as indications of the almost instinctive way in which our forefathers employed the Cross for every purpose of more than usual importance; they are moreover not devoid of a certain picturesque effect from the harmony of their rugged forms with their moorland surroundings. They are not, however, in the ordinary sense of the word, beautiful. They are mostly plain Latin crosses, occasionally mounted on one or two steps, with no attempt at carving or decoration. Nor are they specially impressive in height or size; Merchant’s Cross, near Lynch Hill, is the largest and stands but eight feet two inches high, and some are much less than this. Some few of them have an incised cross cut within the head, or even running the whole length, but those on the Moor proper are of the simplest kind. On the borders we find a few cut by some slightly more ambitious hand. At Hele is a Maltese Cross, the section of each of its limbs being an octagon, and a Latin one of the same section is at Holne.
REMAINS OF RUNIC CROSS, WEST KIRBY, CHESHIRE.
The roadside crosses which dot the neighbouring county of Cornwall are similar in this respect, that there are few of them of any great size, but otherwise the type is quite different. They are mostly shafts terminating in circular or oval heads, on which is either incised, or cut in relief a cross or crucifix; in very few instances is the stone itself cruciform. A great number of the Cornish crosses stood near an ancient cell or chapel, serving much the same purpose as a churchyard cross, others marked the pathways which led to these rude and now forgotten shrines. Formed of the hard granite of the district, the simple, and sometimes almost grotesque, carvings of these monuments, have been generally well preserved; and seeing that in recent years an increasing amount of interest is shewn towards them, there is every reason to hope that the days of careless neglect or wanton destruction are over. Many crosses have recently been reclaimed from degradinguses, as field gate-posts and the like, and placed in more seemly situations. A singular cross unearthed at West Kirby, near the Dee in Cheshire, bears a closer resemblance to the characteristic crosses of Cornwall, than to those found elsewhere in England. The fragments of the shaft, for it is in several pieces, are covered with ingenious interlacing scrolls, and the head has a bold Latin cross within a circle cut upon it.
Many other examples of wayside crosses are scattered up and down the country, in a greater or less condition of preservation, some of them being still tall and graceful structures. At Aylburton in Gloucestershire, is the lower portion of a very substantial column, said by competent authorities to form part of a fourteenth century cross probably designed by some foreign artist. At Bromboro, in Cheshire, are the remains of a cross, well illustrating the meaningless fashion in which some of our ancient buildings are restored. It was at one time a tall cross of simple design, standing at the top of a flight of nine steps; but the upper member, the actual cruciform head, having been destroyed, a senseless stone ball has been put in its place, and sundials affixed to the shaft. At Burythorpe, in East Yorkshire, the head of what must once have been a beautiful cross is preserved in the garden of a private house. It is foliated, and of a singularly graceful pattern, but whether originally a wayside, or a churchyard cross, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. The East Riding has been specially unfortunate in the matter of wayside crosses, of the many examples which it once could boast little has been left but a number of stone sockets, so mutilated for the most part that local tradition hasforgotten their origin and purpose, describing them as stone chairs, stone coffin heads, old fonts, and so forth.
BURYTHORPE CROSS.
Several villages are happy in having preserved intact very beautiful examples of the wayside cross, or scarcely less so in having found careful and reverent restorers of them when in ruins. Gloucestershire has some good specimens, as at Hempsted and at Clearwell. The former is a very slender shaft surmounted by a cross of four equal arms within a circle; the whole, save that the cross is of the Latin and not the Maltese type, looking very like the cross-headed staff which formed the badge of a Grand Master of the Templars. The Clearwell Cross, of the fourteenth century, has the usual features of steps, square base or pedestal, and slender shaft,but the elegant cross at the head is of bolder proportions than is found in the majority of cases. A very similar erection is the White Friars’ Cross at Hereford, which can perhaps claim to be considered a memorial cross, in that it was built by Bishop Charlton, or Cherleton (1361-1370) at the time of an outbreak of the plague in the city. It is an excellent example, with a base heraldically decorated and finished at the top with battlements. The head has been restored. Another fine cross of about the same date is at Headington in Oxfordshire; it is crowned with a tabernacle, which is modern and not a good imitation of ancient work of the kind. But one of the most imposing of our wayside crosses stands at Stallbridge, Dorsetshire. It consists of three octagonal steps on which a broad low pedestal is placed, from the centre of which rises a shaft with narrow buttresses, surmounted by tabernacle work. The column is adorned with niches containing statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John, and other saints, and the tabernacle is completed with a tapering spire ending in a small cross. The whole structure is thirty feet high.
A special class of wayside crosses has been provided by the ancient custom of placing this holy sign beside wells and springs. From ancient times an idea of special sanctity attached itself to springs of bright clear water. It was so in the days of classic Rome, and the Derbyshire custom of well-dressing proves its existence in the past amongst ourselves. All over the country we find such springs with a tradition of being “holy wells,” and their frequent dedication in the names of saints illustrates the same fact. Canons of the church enacted in 960, ordered that no well should be venerated except with the permission of thebishop of the diocese; but so strong was the popular superstition, that similar enactments were called for in 1018, and again in 1102. It was no doubt out of regard for this popular estimation of wells, that in 950 they were declared to be sanctuaries, whither the hunted fugitive from justice might flee and be safe. The special fame of the wells of S. Keyne and of S. Winifred is widely known.
Such being the case it was a natural thing to erect upon this holy ground the sign of our salvation, a practice which the reader will no doubt remember is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in hisMarmion:—
“Where shall she turn? behold her markA little fountain cell,Where water, clear as diamond-spark,In a stone basin fell,Above some half-worn letters say,‘Drink, weary pilgrim drink, and prayfor the kind soul of Sybil Grey,Who built this cross and well.’”
Just such a rustic roadside erection as that to which Clare thus turned for water to slake the thirst of the dying Marmion, exists at the village of Bumpking Leys, in Shropshire. A plain oblong trough of stone surrounds the well, and beside it is a small Latin Cross, with an inscription, now indecipherable save for the sacred initials I.H.S.
We have already noticed that a well-cross is the only one left of a number of crosses once existing in the city of Lincoln. It stands near the old church of S. Mary-le-Wigford, and consists of a square building, like a wayside chapel, the gable of which once bore the cross. It is saidto be the finest well-cross in the country, and dates from the fourteenth century. The heavy base of a cross in Bisley Churchyard, in Gloucestershire, which is now simply a truncated spire, has been supposed to cover a well, which has now, however, dried up or taken some other course. And again in the same county at Hempsted, whose wayside cross was noticed above, another conduit resembling the one at Lincoln is found. This building, known as Our Lady’s Well, has the bases of two crosses on its gables, and niches for statutes beneath them. In the present century the well was closely built up. The neighbourhood of London at one time had several well-crosses. The original Cross at Tottenham, of which the present one is but a modern imitation, was not improbably of such a character; and S. Chad’s Well, S. Bride’s Well, and the Clerk’s Well (Fons Clericorum), which have given their names to the respective districts of Shadwell, Bridewell, and Clerkenwell, doubtless had their crosses likewise. Near Madron, in Cornwall, is a well-chapel covering the Madron Well. This, though only twenty-five feet by sixteen feet, was complete with stone benches, raised sacrarium, and altar, but was almost destroyed by Major Ceely in the Civil War. Helstone also has a holy well, and a third is near Grade Church, all in the same county, where in each case the well-cross has developed into a way-side chapel.
Henley has a cross which deserves mention on account of the subject carved in the tabernacled head. A crucifix fills the niche from side to side, while behind it, and with hands upraised in benediction over it, is a crowned and bearded figure representing the Divine Father. The Dove, the usual emblem of the Holy Spirit, does not seem to havebeen inserted. This is a type of carving of which few instances have been left to us in England, but one which was common in mediæval English art, whether the artist wrought in stone or in glass.
Many of these wayside crosses, besides the well crosses, had granted to them, or acquired by popular custom, the rights of sanctuary; and doubtless in early days, when the arm of the law was not long enough or strong enough to reach through all the length and breadth of the land, and when the king himself amongst his barons, was scarcely more thanprimus inter pares, the foremost of his peers, it must have been a wise and merciful policy, which multiplied these “cities of refuge,” where safety was guaranteed to the accused until his case was fairly investigated.
Others of these crosses appealed to the devotion of certain classes of the people, like one which stood at King’s Weston, on the Severn, which was emphatically the sailor’s cross. Here the mariner, after a successful voyage, or perhaps after an almost unlooked-for escape from the perils of the deep, paid his vows and offered his grateful thanksgiving.
Various civic functions, also, took place around the high crosses of the towns, or those of a similar character in the villages. The good folk of Folkestone were summoned by the blast of a horn to assemble at the churchyard cross before proceeding to elect their mayor; and at Aston Rogers and elsewhere, the court of the lord of the manor met at the cross.
The parish cross was, in a word, in bygone days the centre of the parochial life, and speaks most convincingly of the extent to which religion entered into the lives of thepeople. In times when the people’s holidays were begun by attendance at the Eucharist, when trade gilds had their special altars in the parish church, when every public function naturally included the offering of the great act of Christian worship, it was simply a part of a consistent national life that the cross should dominate the market, should offer its welcome form at each turn of the high-road, should mark the boundaries of property, and crown the hillside and the cooling spring, as well as stand where the dead lay, sown as seed for the Great Harvest, or gleam from the lighted altar, or tower above the worshippers from the rood-loft.
In the destruction of these holy emblems all England has not suffered equally. The west has been most fortunate; Cornwall, Devon, Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire, being especially rich in the number and excellence of the examples still preserved in a more or less perfect condition. The eastern counties have met with the hardest usage, Lincolnshire and the neighbouring shires having been swept almost bare of them.
Thus briefly we have reviewed the uses of the sacred symbol of the Cross in Christendom and especially in England. The field is one of well-nigh infinite extent, and there are portions that we have barely touched. The heraldic employment of the sign might fill a book full of interest, and even of romance, and every foreign land has examples worthy of record, and a history diversely woven like our own, of devotion and iconoclasm, which has its word to say both to our art and our religion. A fascinating portion of the story of the cross, which lies somewhat beyond our scope, is the legendary lore that has sprung up about it; how the wood for the true cross was matured forits high purpose, and how there was a mystic meaning in the several kinds of wood employed; how the cross-bill twisted her beak in the vain endeavour to drag the nails from her Creator’s hands, and the robin splashed his fluttering breast with the Redeemer’s blood, in a similar fruitless attempt; how the patient ass was signed with the holy sign in memory of the sacred burden that he bore on the first Palm Sunday; and a score of other legends, often full of pathos and of graceful fancy.
It is pleasant to picture those times, further off from ours even in feeling than in years, in which such fancies were woven. The smoke of factory and mine had not then blasted or blackened the foliage of half the land, nor green pastures nor rustling woods been swallowed up by an ever advancing tide of bricks. The world moved slowly then, and commerce and trade were in their infancy; yet the world was beautiful. The stately minster and the lordly abbey, the rustic church and the humble cell stood in stately grandeur or in simple grace amid the fields and farmsteads of the people. In every market place the tapering cross, then perchance fresh and white from the carver’s hands, saw the folk gather at its feet to chat and chaffer, as beneath the shelter of a friend: and every highway and byeway was marked at intervals, like the great pathway of man’s life, with crosses that are at once emblems of suffering and of salvation. In infinite variety of form, yet always elevating in purity of outline, gracefulness of adornment, and perhaps in richness of colour, these crosses taught, unconsciously to the learners, the love of the beautiful and the good.
The wonderful growth of British commercial enterprise,closely allied as it is, with the building up of our colonial empire and the establishment of our place in the family of nations, is not a fact that any Englishman can regret. But when one marks the sordid spirit, the selfish grasping for wealth, the apotheosis of mere material prosperity, which too often accompany it, he may well feel that the constant presence of a symbol which speaks of other and higher aims, is not less, but more needed now, than it was of old.
From the point of view of the mental elevation of the people, also, the loss of so many treasures of art cannot be too deeply regretted, nor their rebuilding, if rebuilt in the old spirit, too greatly desired. We are but just awakening to the realization of the fact that Art is not an amusement for the rich, but an educating, elevating, spiritualizing power for all. We may rejoice in the wealth of our manufacturing cities, in the vast output of our foundries and our coalpits; but a factory, too hideous in its blank, bald, monotony of bareness for use as a prison amongst men with eyes and hearts, does not compensate for the loss of an abbey, whose every arch, and gable, and “storied window,” raises the soul to thoughts of the pure and the true; nor can a foundry chimney, even though its veil of poisonous smoke represent a fortune working out beneath, be accepted in exchange for the graceful, tapering cross, the very sight of which, in its calm still beauty, would cheer the dweller in our modern towns like the glimpse of an oasis in a desert.
In our schools of all grades some elementary instruction in art forms is now considered a necessity, and something is being done for “children of a larger growth” by opening to them, at times when the masses can use them, the treasures of our museums and picture galleries; how largely wouldthese attempts at popular instruction have been aided if the people had ever before their eyes the graceful forms that ignorance, carelessness, and bigotry have combined to rob us of! And what an influence might not the continued presence of such examples among us have had upon the building of our towns.
It is at least significant that in the days when these types of art were common in the land, even domestic architecture showed a certain harmoniousness of outline; the gabled roof, the timbered front, the quaintly designed chimney, formed a setting not unbecoming the jewel in our mediæval market-places, and our village streets. It is only since so many different instances of our forefathers’ taste and skill, fair copies each and all for their successors, have been taken from us, that we have learnt to build our towns in a horrid monotony of dullness.
Ruskin, in words of biting force, has defined a town of to-day as “the modern aggregate of bad building, and ill-living held in check by constables, which we call a town, of which the widest streets are devoted by consent to the encouragement of vice, and the narrow ones to the concealment of misery.” May we not hope that the wish now so obvious among us to rebuilt so far as may be, those glorious piles which are instinct with “the beauty of holiness,” is a proof that we are beginning to realize both the squalor and the sin of this condition of things? So far we have seen, it may be, but the little cloud no larger than a man’s hand; may it be indeed the earnest of that refreshing rain for which the land has panted, a reviving influence which shall make English art once more the expression of a sincere and devoted faith.
Conclusion.
Inour rapid review of the various uses to which the sacred figure of the cross has been put, we have been considering the most widely-spread illustration of a tendency of the human mind, namely, the universal love of emblems. This trait in man’s character, a strange one, perhaps, but a very powerful one, has been forgotten or ignored by the iconoclast and the Puritan, and it is owing to this characteristic that they have never been able to obtain more than a transient victory.
Scarce anything which moves the heart of man, rouses his enthusiasm, or binds him more closely to his fellows, but he has commonly represented it by a symbol.
Amongst the earliest of such influences was the family or tribal bond carrying us back to days of patriarchal simplicity. In the last blessing bestowed by Jacob upon his sons, we find the earliest allusion to thefamily emblem, in the lion of Judah, the serpent of Dan, the hind of Naphtali, Joseph’s “fruitful bough,” and the other symbols of the twelve ancestors of the chosen race. A striking parallel to this catalogue, in thetotemsof the North American Indians, will occur to almost everyone. But, indeed, the custom of selecting some natural object to denote the idea of the family was well-nigh universal. The inhabitants of the East Indies are as familiar with the spirit of totemismas their brethren of the west. In Africa, the Hottentot, the Bechuana, and others distinguish their tribes by the figure of some animal; in far off China the flowers serve the same purpose, and in Australia the same practice obtains under the name ofKobong. Not to multiply examples, we may refer only to the ancient Greek tribes as affording another instance, and suggest the parallel supplied by the crests used in mediæval and modern heraldry.
The adoption of national symbols was but the inevitable extension of these practices, consequent on the nation, and not the tribe, coming to be recognized as the political unit; and thus we get the Roman Eagle, the White Horse of the Saxons, the Black Raven of the Danes, and the countless national emblems of more modern times.
A closer analogy to the use of the cross meets us when we recall how, in all ages, the gods have been suggested to their worshippers by signs and symbols. The thunderbolts of Jove, the lyre of Apollo, the caduceus of Mercury, the hammer of Thor, are all obvious examples.
It may be true that many of these took their rise at a time when letters were almost unknown save to the learned few, and thus the emblem appealed to those to whom written words were meaningless. Yet as learning spreads to the masses of the people, the popularity of significant tokens does not decrease, but man gives a natural welcome to that which, by a few strokes or a simple outline, sums up for him the expression of a great truth.
And what figure is so expressive of the Christian faith as the hallowed symbol of the Cross? To the ignorant as clearly as the learned it tells of the sufferings which purchased our redemption, of the life of sorrow and death of agonyvoluntarily undergone by the God-Man. In the light of that Redeemer’s own teaching, it speaks of the life of self-abnegation, the daily cross-bearing, to which His followers are pledged; and to the faithful it foretells also that flashing of the “Sign of the Son of Man” across the heavens which shall announce the end of earthly time. The Christians’ faith, the Christians’ life, the Christians’ hope, all are summed up and symbolized in that one most sacred sign—the Holy Cross.