mer resting-place, and the farm again was undisturbed by
tumultuous spirits. Some of these crosses have been used for
gate-posts. Vandals have sometimes wanted a sun-dial in their
churchyards, and have ruthlessly knocked off the head and upper part
of the shaft of a cross, as they did at Halton, Lancashire, in order
to provide a base for their dial. In these and countless other ways
have these crosses suffered, and certainly, from the aesthetic and
architectural point of view, we have to bewail the loss of many of the
most lovely monuments of the piety and taste of our forefathers.

We will now gather up the fragments of the ancient crosses of England
ere these also vanish from our country. They served many purposes and
were of divers kinds. There were preaching-crosses, on the steps of
which the early missionary or Saxon priest stood when he proclaimed
the message of the gospel, ere churches were built for worship. These
wandering clerics used to set up crosses in the villages, and beneath
their shade preached, baptized, and said Mass. The pagan Saxons
worshipped stone pillars; so in order to wean them from their
superstition the Christian missionaries erected these stone crosses
and carved upon them the figures of the Saviour and His Apostles,
displaying before the eyes of their hearers the story of the Cross
written in stone. The north of England has many examples of these
crosses, some of which were fashioned by St. Wilfrid, Archbishop of
York, in the eighth century. When he travelled about his diocese a
large number of monks and workmen attended him, and amongst these were
the cutters in stone, who made the crosses and erected them on the
spots which Wilfrid consecrated to the worship of God. St. Paulinus
and others did the same. Hence arose a large number of these Saxon
works of art, which we propose to examine and to try to discover the
meaning of some of the strange sculptures found upon them.

[Illustration: Strethem Cross, Isle of Ely.]

In spite of iconoclasm and vandalism there remains in England a vast
number of pre-Norman crosses, and it will be possible to refer only to
the most noted and curious examples. These belong chiefly to four main
schools of art--the Celtic, Saxon, Roman, and Scandinavian. These
various streams of northern and classical ideas met and were blended
together, just as the wild sagas of the Vikings and the teaching of
the gospel showed themselves together in sculptured representatio