HOLY CROSS AND HOLY SEPULCHRE.—Names commemorating the Death and Burial of the Saviour are not infrequent. The history of St. Cross, Winchester, touches that of the Knights of Jerusalem, with whom both name and badge are connected. (See p. 207.) On the common seal the master and priests are shown kneeling at the foot of the Cross; the descent from the Cross is depicted upon the walls of the church. This dedication is also appropriately associated with the hospitals usually known as St. Mary Magdalene’s at Stourbridge and near Bath, the fairs of which houses were held on the festivals of the Invention and Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The chapel of St. Thomas of Acon in Cheapside—under the Knights Templars—was dedicated to St. Cross. The church attached to St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, was probably named out of veneration for the relics of “the tree of life” which the founder used in healing (see p. 95); and once exemptions were granted “out of the king’s reverence for the Holy Cross, in honour of which the church of the hospital of St. Bartholomew is dedicated.”[159] The connection between St. Helen and the Holy Cross is best told in reference to the hospital at Colchester. Although authentic records only carry its history back to 1251, an illustrious antiquity is claimed in an episcopal indulgence purporting to be issued about 1406. The tradition is quoted (but with modernized spelling) from the _Antiquarian Repertory_:— “Moreover, in the year of our Lord 670, Constantine, the son of the blessed and holy woman Saint Elyn, sent his mother unto Jerusalem to inquire of the Holy Cross that our Saviour Christ Jesu died upon, likewise as it was shewed to him by [p249] token in the air and also by revelation of the Holy Ghost. Then the holy woman, seeing the Will of Almighty God, departed out of the town of Colchester where she was born (there where the said hospital is founded in the honour of Almighty God, the holy Cross and St. Elyn) and took her journey unto Jerusalem and there . . . did win the same Cross. . . . Then the holy victorious woman gave laud and loving to God and took one part of the Holy Cross and closed it with gold and sent it to her hospital to Colchester evermore to be abiding, with her ring, her girdle, and her purse, with other 24 curious reliques.” Finally, after relating a visit of St. Thomas of Canterbury to that house, the story of the relic, inciting to devotion, pilgrimage visits and contributions, is brought up to date:— “Also in the year of our Lord 1401, there came thieves unto the hospital by night and brake up the locks where the glorious relique was, and took it away . . . then they took the blessed Holy Cross (as it was, closed in gold the weight of 21 ounces) and cast it into the pond, but it would not sink . . . and so the folks that did pursue took it up and brought it home to the place again.”