Public Crosses.

That “the ages of faith” considered religion foreign to no department of life, is in nowise more strikingly shown than by the public use of the emblem of Christianity. Our forefathers held it as the fittest of all ornaments, not for the Church only, but for every place where Christian men were found. Over five thousand crosses, it is said, existed at one time in the public places of England;—in the obscure village churchyard and the busy mart, the lonely highway and the crowded city thoroughfare.

Precisely how many of these now remain, it would be difficult to say; but certainly only a small proportion exists in anything like the original state. Some have survived as mere shafts, beautiful still in many cases, but shorn of almost all meaning by the loss of the one member that gave them a being and a name. In other cases an unsightly stump, a useless flight of steps, a few worn stones, an ancient place-name, or a bare tradition, keep alive the memory of the Cross, now desecrated or destroyed.

The ceaseless beating of the tide of time is responsible for much of this decay, which the local authorities, in carelessness or ignorance, have been guilty in too many instances of watching without attempting to retard; and in not a few cases the whole structure has at last been taken down simply to avoid the cost and trouble of needful repair.

Modern improvements in the streets of our towns have cost us several examples that could ill be spared. It would be as foolish as futile to decry the opening out of narrow thoroughfares to the sweet influences of sun and air, or to grumble when growing towns make due provision for growing traffic; yet one cannot but regret the many ancient landmarks that these changes have swept away, nor can one doubt that, had a proper appreciation of their worth been felt, some means might have been found to preserve most of them.

But after all it was the bigotry of the Puritan epoch which robbed us of the greater part of our public crosses, just as it was the narrow views imported into the Reformation movement from foreign sources that were chiefly answerable for the disappearance of our roods and other church crosses.

Some method of classification being needful in treating of the various kinds of crosses, one has been adopted here which is practically useful, rather than strictly accurate. Churchyard crosses, included in the preceding chapter, form a division sufficiently distinct; others, which specially commemorate some person or event, as do the Eleanor Crosses and that at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, will compose another class to be considered in the next chapter, as memorial crosses. In our present one attention is called to those which were public, in the exclusive sense of being used for public purposes, such as markets, royal proclamations, and preaching; and finally, under the names of roadside and boundary crosses, will be included many stone crosses which cannot be grouped under any of these heads.

It is confessed that this classification is not scientific, inasmuch as the classes are not in all cases mutually exclusive. No doubt several of the market crosses, besides serving the usual purposes of such structures, enshrined the memories of departed worthies; and unquestionably many village and roadside crosses were originally erected as preaching places for the brothers of some neighbouring monastery, or for the use of itinerant friars.

For practical purposes, however, the above division of the subject will be found to serve.

To notice every cross of this public sort which has at some time adorned the streets and market-places of Great Britain, even if it were possible, would be after all the compiling of a mere tedious catalogue. It will be more interesting to take a few of the more important ones as types, referring to the others as occasion may arise.

For such a purpose no example can suit us better as illustrating the secular and civil uses to which these structures were put than the Market Cross, or “Mercat Croce,” of the northern capital. This venerable erection might indeed be truly named, borrowing an American expression, the “hub” of Scotland, round which for centuries has revolved the history, not of Edinburgh only, but of the whole kingdom.

It seems not improbable that the original of this cross belonged to the class of well-crosses to be referred to hereafter, and may have been placed there by the earliest teachers of the faith in the district, an old well existing not far from the present site under the name of the cross-well. But no certain allusion to a cross standing here is found before the year 1436, when we read of the assassins of King James I. of Scotland meeting their punishment “mounted on a pillar in the Market Place in Edinburgh.” Nearly three hundred years before this, however (in 1175), William the Lion ordered that “all merchandisis salbe presentit at the mercat and mercat croce of burghis,” which may well be taken to imply that the first burgh in the kingdom was not at that time without its “croce.” Our next reference is in a Charter of S. Giles’ Church, dated 1447, in which occur the words “ex parte occidentali fori et crucis dicti burgi,” and its use as a Market centre is clearly defined in a letter from James III. to his citizens, written in October 1477, in which he orders “all pietricks, pluvaris, capones, conyngs, checkins, and all other wyld foulis and tame to be usit and sald about the Market Croce and in na other place.”

No data remain from which to reconstruct with any certainty the ancient cross in the original form. The “pillar of the cross” now standing is the same as that named in the earliest historical notices of the structure, perhaps even the very one that was first set up, but whether it stood at the outset on an elevated platform as it now does and long has done, or whether it surmounted a flight of steps in the way usual in England, cannot be determined. In the reign of James III. great improvements were made in Edinburgh. The church of S. Giles, for instance, was enlarged and made collegiate, and its independence of all but papal jurisdiction was guaranteed by a Bull; it seems therefore not improbable that the same royal patron of the arts added at that time dignity to the city cross by building the lofty stone platform from which it could more unquestionably dominate the market. In 1555 some alterations were made in the structure, which are described as “bigging the rowme thereof,” which has been thought to imply that the open circles, which probably first supported this platform, were filled in so as to form the “rowme.” The following extracts from the accounts of the city treasurer at any rate imply that the enclosed base, entered beneath by a door, was standing shortly after this date. In 1560 we read “Item for ane band to ye Croce dur,” “Item for mending of ye lok of ye Croce dur;” and again in 1584, “5 Julii, Item, ye sam day given for ane lok to ye Croce duir, and three keyis for it.” An old birds-eye view of the city as it appeared in 1647 shews the main outlines of the building to have been then very similar to what we see it to-day.

This type of cross was peculiarly Scottish. A similar one remains in good condition at Prestonpans, and another very fine one at Aberdeen; Perth and Dundee had similar ones now unfortunately destroyed, and the capital itself had a second cross of like design in the Canongate. It may have been that the metropolitan cross was accepted as the model for the other burghs of the kingdom.

The treasurer’s accounts cited above, give evidence also of the early erection of another feature peculiar to the Edinburgh cross, namely the surmounting of it with the national emblem. In 1584, is an entry, “Payit to David Williamson for making and upputting of the Unicorn upon the head of the Croce.”

In the year 1617, the “ald croce,” was taken down and “translated by the devise of certain mariners of Leith, from the place where it stood past the memory of man to a place beneath in the High Street.” The stone for building the new substructure was “brocht frae the Deyne,” and on the 25th March “the Croce of Edinburgh was put upon the new seat;” the total cost of its removal and re-erection being £4486 5s. 6d. (Scots). Amid the Puritan violence of the Protectorate, the cross was defaced, among other things the Royal arms were torn down, and “the crown that was on the unicorn was hung upon the gallows by these treacherous villains;” as a consequence the city accounts show payments for repairs to Robert Mylne, a descendant of John Mylne, who had been one of the “Master measones” at the re-erection. At this time the cross, or some part of it, perhaps the heraldic carvings, was adorned with colour, a sum being given “to George Porteous for painting the Croce.”

On March 13th, 1756, the Market Cross of Edinburgh was demolished. Some of the carved medallions which had decorated it passed years later into the hands of Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were built into a wall at Abbotsford, where they now are. The pillar, which was allowed to fall and break in the course of demolition, was acquired by Lord Somerville, who set it up near his house at Drum. The site was marked out with stones, and a plain stone pillar “was erected on the side of a well in High Street, adjacent to the place where the cross stood, which, by act of Siderunt, was declared to be the Market Cross of Edinburgh from that period.” But even this was not allowed to remain long, the chief argument for the removal both of it and of its great predecessor being the alleged obstruction which it offered to traffic.

Efforts were made from time to time to persuade the city fathers to restore a structure so long and so intimately bound up with the national history, and at last “the pillar of the cross” was brought back to Edinburgh, and placed upon a pedestal within the railings of St. Giles’ Church. So matters were allowed to remain until 1885, when by the generosity of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, then Member of Parliament for Midlothian, the original pillar was re-instated on a new and imposing base of the ancient type. The following translation of the Latin inscription which appears on one of its eight faces, and which is dated the day whereon it was formally handed over to the Corporation, appropriately closes the record of the changes through which it has passed: “Thanks be to God, this ancient monument, the Cross of Edinburgh, devoted of old to public functions, having been destroyed by evil hands in the year of our salvation, 1756, and having been avenged and lamented in song both noble and manly by that man of highest renown, Walter Scott, has now by permission of the city magistrates been rebuilt by William E. Gladstone, who through both parents claims a descent entirely Scottish. November 23rd in the year of grace 1885.”

Many were the Scottish sovereigns who were greeted by their people at this, the heart of their capital. When James IV. brought home his bride, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England, a fountain at the Cross ran wine for all to drink, and a similar rejoicing took place when the ill-fated Mary, in 1561, made her public entry into the city from “Halyrud hous,” and again in 1590, when her son James VI. introduced his Queen, Anne of Denmark to the citizens.

Of the many national and civic proclamations which have been made from Edinburgh Cross, two stand out conspicuous in the history of the whole island of Great Britain. The first, in 1513, was a summons for a general muster of the Scottish army for the invasion of England before the fatal field of Flodden; and the second was in 1603, when the Lyon King-at-arms announced from that spot the death of Elizabeth of England, and the consequent union of the crowns of the two countries.

Such part as the cross has played in the religious history of Scotland, is mostly concerned with the progress of the Reformation in the north. In 1555 John Knox was burnt in effigy there, having gone to Geneva instead of answering a summons to appear before the Bishops. In 1565 a Roman Catholic priest, for the enormity of having said mass on Easter Day at Holyrood, was “tyed to the cross, where he tarried the space of one hour, during which time the boys served him with his Easter egges;” and again on the following day “he was set upon the Market Cross for the space of three or four hours, the hangman standing by and keeping him,” while the populace again as on the former occasion displayed their godly zeal and christian charity. In that stormy time for Scotland, the reigns of Charles II. and his brother James, when politics and religion were so strangely and unfortunately intermingled, that while the one party claimed to be punishing rebels, the other felt that it was suffering martyrdom, many, including the Duke of Argyle and a hundred other persons of all ranks, suffered death in Edinburgh, in most cases at the “Mercat Croce.”

England provides more than one instance in which, as in the case of Edinburgh, the present generation has in some sort replaced the town cross, hastily or heedlessly destroyed by a former age.

Bristol once possessed a handsome market cross of the fourteenth century, containing, in niches, statues of several English Kings, the whole work gorgeous in vermilion, and blue, and gold. So late as 1633, the citizens, to preserve it, enclosed it with a railing and regilt it, at the same time adding a new storey with four more statues. Yet in 1733, on the declaration of some neighbouring tradesman that it was a danger to his life and property, it was entirely pulled down. Re-erected at private cost on College Green, it was actually demolished a second time, a public subscription (to the disgrace of Bristol) defraying the charges. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, having acquired the fragments, rebuilt it in his park at Stone Head, and a subsequent age has replaced it on the Green with a copy of the original, once so scornfully flung away.

Glastonbury, again, has, by the recent erection of a new cross, made some reparation for its careless treatment of an old one. Its ancient market cross was one of the most curious in the country; substantial, simple, and unadorned, offering ample accommodation and shelter beneath its wide arches, and with a certain quaint attraction in its curious gables. On showing signs of decay, its past services to the market folk were so far from pleading for it, that it was abandoned to the plundering of local builders, who coveted its time-honoured materials, and not a recognizable vestige now remains. Its modern successor is, as one expects of a nineteenth century erection, perfectly conventional, consisting of a column with canopied niches, surmounted by a short spire.

Gloucester boasted a market cross from the days of Richard III. to the year 1750—an hexagonal tower-like structure garnished with statues, but, like Edinburgh Cross, it was condemned as an obstruction, and, less fortunate than its comrade in misfortune, has found no one to rebuild it.

Another town in which the exigencies of modern business have been supposed to require the removal of a famous relic of the past is Coventry, whose cross must in its day have been one of the most ornate in the country. This cross, which Sir William Hollis reared in 1541 in the place of an earlier one, was built on similar lines to one at Abingdon, which has also disappeared. In form it was a hexagonal spire, some sixty feet in height, on a series of four steps, covered with a mass of tracery and carving, and containing a number of figures beneath canopies. It was lavishly gilded, and so solicitous were the authorities of preserving its gleaming bravery untarnished, that a fine was imposed on any one who should presume to sweep the “cheepinge,” or market, without first watering it to lay the dust. In 1668, it was repaired and regilt at a cost of £276, but barely a century later it was razed to the ground, and its memory is only kept alive by the presence of a few of its statues and some other fragments, preserved variously in the neighbourhood. Abingdon Cross was “sawn” down by the Puritan soldiery of Waller’s army, and the same brainless bigotry robbed Chester of its High cross. Holbeach had a cross of unique plan, consisting of a column supported by a pentagonal platform raised on arches, which has disappeared; as also has one at Leicester, and a boldly designed market cross at Ipswich, which must have been both useful and ornamental.

COVENTRY CROSS.It is difficult for us to conceive how constantly these sculptured shafts and sheltering arches met the gaze of our forefathers at every turn in the older cities of England. Beside the splendid cross, for instance, just described, Coventry had at one time its Swine’s Cross (taken down about 1763), a second of the same name in another part of the town, Sponne Cross, Hill Cross, Jesus Cross, the Maiden’s Cross, and the New, or Queen’s Cross, as well as others close at hand at Radford and at Whitley. A similar case meets us in Doncaster, which once could boast of a Butcher’s Cross (destroyed in 1725), a Butter Cross (removed to make room for the Market House in 1846), the Northern Cross, the Wheat, or Market Cross, the Crosses of S. James, S. Sepulchre, and Maudlin (Magdalen), Snorel Cross, and one in the churchyard. Not one of all this list remains, Doncaster’s only example being the Hall Cross, which will be referred to among the memorial crosses.

During the Commonwealth, with its temporary establishment of civil marriages, this rite was “solemnized,” if one may use the term in such a connection, in Doncaster at the Wheat Cross.

The ancient city of Lincoln is another example of a place once rich in these memorials. Only a well-cross exists there to-day, although its first Bishop, Remigius, built a town-cross, his successor, Hugh de Grenoble, added others, and yet others were erected by Hugh de Wells, all of which, as also an ancient High Cross, have gone.

Amongst the Market Crosses still left to us, a foremost place, if not the first, must be given to that of Chichester. This beautiful structure was reared by Edward Story, bishop of the diocese from 1478 to 1504, who also left an estate, valued at £25 per annum, to keep it in repair, and to provide wine at the Cross annually on S. George’s Day. It is an octagon in plan, and covers a space of some four hundred square feet. Crosses of this type, of which Malmesbury and Salisbury provide other excellent examples, are not only more beautiful, but more useful, than the solid decorated towers or spires, such as the crosses of Coventry and Abingdon, for the wide arches afford both shade and shelter to the market folk in summer heat or wintry rain and snow. A cross which is almost a combination of the solid high-cross and the large covered type is found at Shepton Mallet, having been erected by Walter Buckland and his wife in 1505. Other examples of the covered cross exist at Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire, and at Cheddar. Even in the narrower scope of the high cross, an attempt was sometimes made to provide at least so much shelter as was possible under the circumstances, as we see in the open lower story of the Butter Cross, at Winchester, and of the curious pentagonal cross at Leighton-Buzzard.

Amid all the bustle of the busy market-place, and perhaps above all times in this hurrying, grasping age, the old market cross stands with its message ever old, yet ever needful, for all who have ears to hear; testifying that there are interests of more moment than buying and selling and getting gain, and by its very antiquity speaking of the frailty of the life of man, so many generations of whom have bargained and chaffered beneath its shadow, and gone out one by one in long procession into the unknown Infinite.

Turning to those public crosses, which were used chiefly, though not quite exclusively, for religious purposes and especially for preaching, S. Paul’s Cross comes first by right both of the importance of its position, and of the prominent part which it has played in the religious history of the country.