It is, of course, far easier to say what they were not, than to arrive at any true solution as to what was their general object or design. The solution that so far seems the most probable has already been elsewhere succinctly stated without awakening adverse criticism.[79] All those crosses that have been hitherto identified by myself and friends during three rambles with the old plans in our hands in three successive years, have been on important boundary lines. I believe almost the whole of them are pre-Norman, and I am at present strongly inclined to believe that they mark the setting out of ecclesiastical divisions or parishes, or parochial chapelries, soon after the reconversion of England had become an established fact, and when Christianity, under the ordering of Theodore and Wilfrid, was becoming definitely organised and ceasing to be mere scattered groups of missionary stations. There are reasons which are too long for statement here why such a planning out was probably accomplished in Derbyshire at an early date. It is obvious that if ecclesiastical bounds were to be marked out in a comparatively wild and treeless district, something artificial would be needed in far greater abundance than in ordinary districts, where large trees, river banks, ancient roads or lands pertaining to particular holders, could readily be named and utilized for boundary purposes. [79] See articles in the _Athenæum_ for July 9th, 1904; June 24th, 1905; and September 8th, 1906. The supposition that these crosses are of a township or parish boundary character is much strengthened by the frequency of their occurrence in the exact places where there are proofs of fairly early cultivation, and where there were rather intricate intersections of such divisions. Perhaps the most interesting of these seventeenth century plans is the one which includes a considerable area, and has at the head the following descriptive title, written in a straggling hand and signed by the two surveyors:— “The Mappe of the Wastes and Commons in Bowdon le Cappell, Fairefield, Ferneleigh, Shalcross and Mellor as they are eaqually devided into two eaqual parts quantity and qualitie considered and meas’^{ed} by us Thomas Hibbart and Samuel Barton two Survayors being Sworne upon our Oathes to that purpose by the Commissioners and delivered up unto the saide Commissioners the eight daye of October 1640 “By us Tho: Hibbart “Sa: Barton.” On another part of the map is written: Measured and divided by a Scale of fortie in the Inch.