The Round is entered by a western door--a massive oaken door superbly hung upon enormous hinges, quite modern. It closes beneath a semicircular arch enriched by deeply-recessed columns with foliated capitals of the transitional Norman style, though all this work, like the Gothic Porch which contains it, is modern restoration. The scene as we enter the Church is one of striking singularity. Near at hand is the arcaded sedile about the walls of the Round, and through six clustered columns of great elegance, made of polished Purbeck marble, which support the dome, we catch a glimpse of the polished marble columns in the Choir, the lancet windows in the North and South walls, and the three stained windows of the East End, beneath which the gilded Reredos glitters. And through the painted windows of the Round itself the light strikes upon a wonderful series of monumental recumbent figures, some of which are made of this flashing Purbeck marble too. It is a strange, unforgettable sight, that summons up unbidden the vision of the Red-Cross Knights, to the tread of whose mailed feet these pavements rang, when, beneath their baucéant banners, they gathered here to the Dedication of their Temple. These monuments, though re-arranged and restored indeed by Richardson, 1840, are still of great interest. Nine only out of eleven formerly mentioned remain. Two groups of four each lie beneath the Dome, with the ninth close by the South wall, balancing a stone coffin near the North. Two of them belong to the twelfth century and seven to the thirteenth, and these silent figures wear the armour of that period--the chain mail and long surcoats, the early goad spurs, the long shields and swords, the belts, and mufflers of mail. The Monuments in the Temple Church have been frequently described, by Stow and Weever, for instance, by Dugdale,[21] and by Gough.[22] The tradition that they represent ‘ancient British Kings,’ or even necessarily Templars, has been long exploded. The theory that every figure whose legs are crossed in effigy belonged to that Order has been consigned to the limbo of vulgar errors. But five of these effigies are mentioned by Stow as being of armed Knights ‘lying cross-legged as men vowed to the Holy Land, against the infidels and unbelieving Jews.’ And it is very probable that cross-legs did indicate those who had either undertaken a Crusade or vowed themselves to the Holy Land. At any rate, I know no evidence to show that this was _not_ the symbolism by which the medieval mason in England and Ireland chose to indicate the Crusader.