Other ancient customs connected with standing crosses are illustrated
by the terms in which prelates of the reformed Church condemn them.
Thus, Bishop Bentham's Injunctions for the diocese of Coventry and
Lichfield in 1565 forbid bearers to set "down the corpse of any dead
body by any cross by the way, as they bring it to the burial"; and
again, later, Archbishop Grindal's Injunctions for the Province of
York in 1571 order that none shall "rest at any cross in carrying
any corpse to burying, nor shall leave any little crosses of wood
there." In 1585 the Bishop of St David's issued an Injunction to his
diocese, among the directions whereof, under the head of "Burial," it
is ordered: "First, that there be no crosses of wood made and erected
where they use to rest with the corpse; and especially that no wooden
crosses be set upon the cross in the churchyard." These strenuous
prohibitions only prove that the custom of placing wooden crosses
for the dead upon wayside or churchyard crosses must have prevailed
in ancient days, and was still tenaciously observed by the people in
spite of the drastic change of religion. It may possibly be that the
holes, sometimes found drilled in churchyard crosses, were provided,
among other purposes, for holding the pegs on which the small wooden
memorial crosses could be suspended.
Crosses, again, were employed to define, in any given locality, the
extent of the right of sanctuary, that powerful safeguard of the age
of faith and charity against summary vengeance and injustice. Thus,
at Ripon inviolable security was assured within the radius of about a
mile around the shrine of St Wilfrid; and accordingly a stone cross
was placed close by the edge of each of the five roads leading to the
city, to mark the sanctuary bounds. Of these five crosses; the only
one whereof any appreciable remnant survives, is that of Sharow. It
consists of a massive stone step, with the broken stump of the old
shaft.
At Wansford, in Northamptonshire, the River Nene is crossed by a
fourteenth-century stone bridge; and there, embedded in the ground,
in one of the refuges, formed by the triangular space on the top of
a cutwater, may be seen the socket of an ancient wayside cross. The
upper bed of the stone is barely above the level of the roadway, but
its rectangular outline, with the round mortice-hole in the centre,
is plain and unmistakable. There seems no reason to doubt that this
singularly interesting relic stands _in situ_, and the cross must thus
have borne as direct a relationship to the bridge, as a bridge chapel
would have done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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