At Winchester, Bishop Horne, an inveterate innovator, in the injunctions which he drew up for his cathedral church in 1571, ordered "the stone cross in the churchyard" to be "extinguished".
At Prestbury, Cheshire, the churchwardens' accounts for 1576 to 1580 record the price paid "for cuttynge (down) the crosse in the churcheyard, and the chargs of one with a certyficat thereof to Manchester" (whence, presumably, the order for the demolition came), and also the amount (14s.) received for the sale of "iron which was aboute" the same cross. This would perhaps refer to the railing for protection, required no longer when once the cross itself had disappeared.
On the other hand, according to Thomas Fuller's Church History of Britain, Abbot Feckenham built a cross at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, during the period of his imprisonment in Wisbech Castle, i.e., from June 1580 to his death in 1585. At Fyfield, Berkshire, at the expense of William Upton, a churchyard cross was erected as late as 1627.
Thus individual cases of destruction (as also of repair and reconstruction) no doubt occurred from time to time; but if any particular locality was denuded, it would have been due to the prejudice and bigotry of some individual bishop, archdeacon, or churchwarden, rather than to any systematic iconoclasm authorised by the central government. On 28th August 1643, however, the Puritan party having virtually gained the ascendancy in the kingdom, an Act was passed in Parliament, entitled "Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry to be demolished." This ordinance provides that "all crosses upon all and every ... churches or chappels, or other places of publique prayer, churchyards, or other places to any of the said churches ... belonging, or in any other open place, shall, before the ... first day of November (1643), be taken away and defaced, and none of the like hereafter permitted in any such church ... or other places aforesaid." Local committees were constituted for carrying out the orders of Parliament. Seven eastern counties were entrusted for purgation to the Earl of Manchester, who appointed, as Parliamentary visitor under him, the notorious William Dowsing. This person, though unsurpassed in vandalism, has yet been maligned so far as churchyard crosses are concerned. In 1643 and 1644 he visited, in person or by deputy, 149 churches in Suffolk, keeping a minute record of each day's proceedings; but, strange to say, among all the quantity of objects defaced, his Journal does not specify one single instance of a churchyard cross having been injured or destroyed by him.
In some cases the official despoilers met with popular opposition. Thus Richard Baxter relates how, in obedience to the order sent by the Parliament for the demolition of all images of the Holy Trinity and of the Virgin Mary to be found in churches or on the crosses of churchyards, the churchwarden of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, determined to destroy the crucifix upon the churchyard cross there, and accordingly set up a ladder to have reached it. But the ladder proved too short, and whilst he (the churchwarden) was gone to seek another, a crowd of the opposition "party of the town, poor journeymen and servants, took the alarm, and ran together with weapons to defend the crucifix"; and even purposed to wreak their vengeance upon Baxter himself, supposing him to be the prime instigator of the iconoclasm.
Numbers of places, and they not necessarily of first rank nor of special size, possessed more crosses than one. For instance, Liverpool, in the Middle Ages but an insignificant village, as compared with its present extent and importance, had its High Cross, White Cross, Red Cross, Town-End Cross, and St Patrick's Cross—five in all.
At Brackley, in Northamptonshire, "there were," writes Leland, circa 1535 to 1545, "three goodly crosses of stone in the town, one by south at the end of the town, thrown down a late by thieves that sought for treasure; another at the west end of St James' Church; the third very antique, fair, and costly, in the inward part of the High Street. There be divers tabernacles in this, with ladies and men armed. Some say that the staplers of the town made this; but I think rather some nobleman, lord of the town."
19. CHARLTON MACKEREL, SOMERSETSHIRE
CHURCHYARD CROSS