At Chester, "the High Cross (Fig. 24) was the scene of all great civic functions. Here, again and again, royalty was received.... Here proclamations were read out with due formality, and here the (famous) mystery plays were represented." Among the official uses to which market crosses were put was that of a recognised place for public proclamations. Thus, it was at the market cross at Darlington, in 1312, that the Bishop's order, prohibiting a tournament, which had been announced to take place, was read. This particular market cross, by the way, no longer exists, but its site is perpetuated by a plain cylindrical column, surmounted by a ball, erected at the cost of Dame Dorothy Browne in 1727. At Wells it was a time-honoured custom that public proclamations should always be read and published first at the High Cross. It was from the cross at Lyme, Dorset, where he landed on 11th June 1685, that the declaration of the rebel Duke of Monmouth was read; and it was from the crosses of Taunton on 20th June, and Bridgwater, a day or two later, that, emboldened by his reception in the west, he caused himself to be proclaimed King of England--only to meet with crushing humiliation and defeat from the forces of King James II. at Sedgemoor on 6th July 1685. The strangest and ghastliest of all uses to which a village cross could be put is that of a gallows; but, unless tradition lies, the notorious Judge Jeffreys actually hanged a man on the cross at Wedmore, Somerset. This identical cross, with its tall shaft and sculptured head, still stands, though removed from its original site beside the shambles to the garden of the house in which Judge Jeffreys himself is believed to have lodged, presumably during the Bloody Assize in the autumn of 1685, following the collapse of Monmouth's rebellion.