Scattered all over Lancashire are the remains or traces of roadside crosses, which at one period must have been very numerous, many of them being of great antiquity. At Burnley, near to the church, is one of these, which is of undoubted Saxon origin; it is known as Godly Cross, and associated with it is a tradition to the effect that long before the church was built religious rites were celebrated on the spot indicated by the cross, and that Paulinus baptized his converts in the waters of the Brun, which flows close by. The legend further asserts that upon an attempt being made to build an oratory on an adjacent site, the stones were nightly removed by supernatural agents, in the form of pigs, to the place where ultimately the church was erected. Similar traditions as to the removal of foundation-stones obtain as to the parish churches of Winwick, Rochdale, and one or two others. Very few parishes in Lancashire are without some trace (if only in a name) of these ancient crosses. The following furnishes a good example of the use to which these relics of a past age were applied as late as 1624. John Stirzaker and others, on July 25 in this year, confessed to the Bishop of Chester that they had been present and assisted in carrying the corpse of Thomas Bell of Garstang to the parish church there, and that they were in the company and consented "to the settinge downe of the said corse att crosses and yielding obeysance to the same superstitious manner as they went alonge, and that they carryed, or agreed thereto, the sayd corps by the church porche, and afterwards it was buryed without the mynister's ayd or any prayers made at the buryall thereof." The Bishop's sentence was that the offending parties should acknowledge their faults "in their accustomed apparel on the Sundaie next, being att Morning Prayer tyme," and also be prepared to receive the Holy Communion before the Feast of St. Michael, or in default they were to be excommunicated. In this same parish of Garstang there still exists near Cross House the socket of one of these crosses, about which a curious bit of folklore obtains, to the effect that any persons troubled with warts or similar excrescences would get instant relief by washing their hands in the water from time to time collected in the hollow place where the base of the upright shaft once stood.