Old Crosses and Lychgates

by Aymer Vallance

21, 22, 23. OXFORD

SOCKET OF JEWS' CROSS, PRESERVED IN ST FRIDESWIDE'S CHURCH

At Oxford there were at least two crosses, viz., the Jews' cross (Figs. [21-23]), and also a noted wayside cross, which the city records show to have been in existence in 1331. It stood without the east gate of the city, in front of the door of St John's Hospital, on or near the site of the present entrance to Magdalen College. As to the monument called the Jews' cross, its origin is historic. In 1268, on Ascension Day, "as the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St Frideswide's," and was passing the Jewish synagogue in Fish Street (now St Aldate's), "a Jew suddenly burst from the group of his friends ... and, snatching the crucifix from its bearer, trod it underfoot." Part of the penalty exacted by the Crown was that the Jews of Oxford had to erect, at their own cost, a cross of marble on the spot where the outrage had been committed. The sentence, however, was eventually modified to the extent that, instead of having to endure a perpetual reminder of their humiliation and punishment opposite to the very door of the synagogue, the Jews were allowed to set up the expiatory cross in a less obnoxious position, an open plot by Merton College. Such is the site where it used to be believed that the cross stood. But a certain passage in the city records seems, as the late Herbert Hurst pointed out, to contradict any previously received identification of the site of the Jews' cross, and to locate it rather on some spot near the north side of St Frideswide's church. The passage in question is as follows: "In 1342, Adam Blaket was indicted before John Fitz Perys and William le Iremonger, bailiffs of Oxford, for that he, on the Thursday next before Palm Sunday, feloniously entered by night the enclosure of the cemetery of the Church of St Frideswyde, and there stole and carried off one arm," or other portion (vana) "of the great (capitalis) cross of the cemetery, of the value of half a mark, and afterwards broke it into four parts." The purloined fragments were subsequently "found and seized. He (Blaket) confessed to the taking, and pleaded that he was at the time a lunatic and not compos mentis."

Anyhow, if the precise site remains uncertain, there is extant a sculptured socket, which, though it is only of stone, not marble, Mr Hurst pronounced to be "an undoubted part" of the original Jews' cross. This socket was described by Dr James Ingram in 1837 as having been then "recently discovered, on the removal of a quantity of rubbish from the foundation of the walls" of St Frideswide's, embedded in the base of the diagonal buttress at the south-east angle of St Lucy's chapel in the south transept. It is now preserved in the gallery at the south end of the same transept. The four sides are sculptured with what appear to be Old Testament subjects, although only two are now identifiable. The first is the temptation of Adam and Eve, with the serpent coiling round a tree between them; and the second is the sacrifice of Isaac. The third appears to be the sacrifice of an ox or calf; but the whole is much mutilated. Nothing remains of it but the lower part of a human being on the left, and the headless body of a cloven-footed quadruped, the forelegs of which are in a kneeling posture. Above, a hand, issuing from a cloud, lets down a pair of small tablets, or an open book. The subject of the fourth side is a puzzle which has hitherto defied elucidation. It represents three figures, the middle one seated between two upright figures turning away, both having grotesque heads like apes. Below the right foot of one of the figures is what appears to be a dragon or demon, with its leg on the ground. At each angle of the stone is a winged dragon, head downward, the tail terminating in characteristic thirteenth-century foliage. The stone is 1 ft. 11 in. high, by 2 ft. 3 in. square at the bottom, decreasing to 1 ft. 9 in. square at the top. The greatest dimension, inclusive of the figures, is 2 ft. 6 in. in width.

It goes without saying that, so long as the land of Britain continued to be open, i.e., not subdivided by enclosures—a process which dates back no earlier than the fifteenth century—boundary stones for defining the limits of contiguous parishes, as also of the properties of individuals, assumed much greater importance than would be attached to such marks in later times, after hedges had grown up and fences come into use. The ancient boundary mark might sometimes be a plain post or pillar, or it might take the form of a cross. The latter practice is illustrated by the will of one John Cole, of Thelnetham, Suffolk, dated 8th May 1527. The testator leaves 10s. for erecting a new cross at the spot "at Short Grove's End, where the gospel is said upon Ascension even," and, moreover, expressly directs that this new cross is to be made on the model of one already standing, named "Trapett Crosse at the Hawe Lane's End." The will further provides for an income, arising from certain landed estates, sufficient to yield annually a bushel and a half of malt "to be browne," and a bushel of wheat to be baked, "to fynde a drinking" on the said day in perpetuity, for the parishioners of Thelnetham "to drink at the crosse aforenamed." Here, then, is an instance of a boundary cross explicitly designed for the observances of the Rogation, or gang days.

But later on in the sixteenth century, the old order of things was reversed, and the authorities proceeded to stamp out the former time-honoured usages, one after another. Thus Bishop Parkhurst's Injunctions for the diocese of Norwich in 1569, Grindal's for the province of York in 1571, and Sandys' Articles for the diocese of London in the same year, alike prohibited the popish ceremony of "staying at any crosses" during the perambulation of parish bounds on Rogation days.

Other ancient customs connected with standing crosses are illustrated by the terms in which prelates of the reformed Church condemn them. Thus, Bishop Bentham's Injunctions for the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield in 1565 forbid bearers to set "down the corpse of any dead body by any cross by the way, as they bring it to the burial"; and again, later, Archbishop Grindal's Injunctions for the Province of York in 1571 order that none shall "rest at any cross in carrying any corpse to burying, nor shall leave any little crosses of wood there." In 1585 the Bishop of St David's issued an Injunction to his diocese, among the directions whereof, under the head of "Burial," it is ordered: "First, that there be no crosses of wood made and erected where they use to rest with the corpse; and especially that no wooden crosses be set upon the cross in the churchyard." These strenuous prohibitions only prove that the custom of placing wooden crosses for the dead upon wayside or churchyard crosses must have prevailed in ancient days, and was still tenaciously observed by the people in spite of the drastic change of religion. It may possibly be that the holes, sometimes found drilled in churchyard crosses, were provided, among other purposes, for holding the pegs on which the small wooden memorial crosses could be suspended.

Crosses, again, were employed to define, in any given locality, the extent of the right of sanctuary, that powerful safeguard of the age of faith and charity against summary vengeance and injustice. Thus, at Ripon inviolable security was assured within the radius of about a mile around the shrine of St Wilfrid; and accordingly a stone cross was placed close by the edge of each of the five roads leading to the city, to mark the sanctuary bounds. Of these five crosses; the only one whereof any appreciable remnant survives, is that of Sharow. It consists of a massive stone step, with the broken stump of the old shaft.

At Wansford, in Northamptonshire, the River Nene is crossed by a fourteenth-century stone bridge; and there, embedded in the ground, in one of the refuges, formed by the triangular space on the top of a cutwater, may be seen the socket of an ancient wayside cross. The upper bed of the stone is barely above the level of the roadway, but its rectangular outline, with the round mortice-hole in the centre, is plain and unmistakable. There seems no reason to doubt that this singularly interesting relic stands in situ, and the cross must thus have borne as direct a relationship to the bridge, as a bridge chapel would have done.