So far as can be judged from documents and existing remains, it would seem that certain principal features were common to the design of all the crosses of the series, although they varied in minor details. The general outline was borrowed from that of a spire of diminishing stages. A statue of Queen Eleanor occupied each of the niches in the middle storey; a notable peculiarity being the multiplication of the effigies of the person commemorated. Three or four statues of the queen occur in one and the same monument, standing, backs to the central shaft, their faces looking forward in opposite directions. The lowest stage or storey was carved with blind tracery, so designed as to divide, with a vertical moulding, each side, or cant, into two panels, with trefoil cusping in the head, having heraldic shields, one in each panel. The shields respectively bore the arms of (1) England (three leopards only, for the kings of England had not yet arrogated to themselves the sovereignty of France); (2) quarterly, Castile and Leon, the arms of Queen Eleanor's father; and (3) Ponthieu (three bendlets within a bordure), the arms of her mother, Joanna, Countess of Ponthieu, in Picardy. Not the slightest remains of any of the original crosses exist _in situ_, except at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham. Regrettable as is the disappearance of all but three crosses of the series, it is yet a matter for congratulation that those which do happen to survive represent each of them an individual variety of treatment; for, however much they may resemble one another in details, or even in their main scheme and proportions, the difference of plan is a fundamental factor, and such that necessarily results in striking divergences. Geddington cross is triangular, Waltham cross hexagonal, and Northampton cross octagonal on plan. Of these three there can be no question that that at Geddington (Figs. 124 and 125), on account of its triangular section, is the least satisfying aesthetically; indeed, its optical effect is, in certain aspects, decidedly unpleasing. Not only does it look as though part of the fabric were missing, or the whole structure lop-sided, but the anomalous position of the shafts, or standards, rising at each outer angle right before the face of the figures, gives the latter a caged appearance, and, by intercepting a direct view of them, infallibly detracts from the prominence which is their proper due. The triangular shape, then, is more diverting as an ingenious planning experiment than admirable as a model for reproduction. In plain words, it is an architectural eccentricity. Again, Geddington cross, encrusted as is the entire surface with sculptured diaper patterns, and lacking as it does the dignified reticence of contrasted plain spaces, such as occur in Northampton (Figs. 1 and 126) and Waltham (Figs. 127, 128, and 129) crosses, must compare unfavourably with either of them. Whoever the designer