V. PREACHING CROSSES
WHETHER or not preaching crosses, for the delivery of outdoor sermons, were required before the advent of the Friars in the first half of the thirteenth century, it may be assumed that, from that time forward, they did exist and were in use. The Dominicans, or Black Friars, came to England in 1221; the Franciscans, or Grey Friars, in or about 1224; the Carmelites, or White Friars, in 1240, and the Austin Friars in 1250. Twenty years after the arrival of the first of the Friars occurs the first recorded mention of Paul's Cross, which attained afterwards to the dignity of the most celebrated of all preaching crosses, not merely in London, nor even in England alone, but throughout Christendom. It must be stated, however, that no actual record of the cross as a preaching-place is found before 1382; the cross at the outset being resorted to rather for secular and general assemblies of the people. But in course of time, perhaps by reason of its convenient situation, the cross seems to have been the focus of every phase of the life of the capital; many of the most stirring and momentous events in English history, whether civil or ecclesiastical, being enacted beneath its shadow. The full story of Paul's Cross would fill volumes. Yet a few representative episodes are enough to show of what varied scenes and movements it was the centre. At the cross took place the promulgation of laws, public announcements, political propaganda, the reading of Papal Bulls, the administration of oaths, elections, examinations, recantations, and the performance of public penances; while in the sermons preached in the pulpit of Paul's Cross, each successive variety of religious opinion was propounded from the time of the Lollards, and through the successive stages of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, until the cross itself came to an end in the reign of Charles I.
The first specific mention of Paul's Cross was in 1241, when King Henry III. met an assemblage of the citizens of London there before he set out for Gascony in connection with the French war. From that time onward there occur very numerous references to Paul's Cross, "the earlier ones, for the most part, recording meetings of the citizens there." The earliest notice of the cross as a place of proclamation was in 1256-57, when Justice Mansell read a document of the king's, assuring the citizens of his purpose to preserve their rights and liberties. In 1257 the king, having called a folk-moot at the cross, was present in person; and again met his subjects there in 1258. In 1259-60 another folk-moot was held at the cross by Henry III., on which occasion proclamation was made, requiring every stripling to take the oath of allegiance to the crown. In October 1261 a bull of Pope Urban was read at the cross by the king's order. In 1266 the king made Alan la Zouche constable and warden of the City in the presence of the people at Paul's Cross. On 13th May 1269 a bull of Pope Innocent was read; and in 1274-75 the Mayor of London was elected in a folk-moot at the cross.
141. LONDON
PAUL'S CROSS
"In 1311 the new statutes, made in the Parliament of that year, were published and proclaimed ... super crucem lapideam"; whence it has been inferred by Mr Paley Baildon, F.S.A., that Paul's Cross, or the High Cross, as it was also called, must have comprised a raised platform surrounded by a parapet, with a lofty shaft in the middle, somewhat after the fashion of the Mercat Cross at Edinburgh, the cross at Aberdeen, and other Scottish examples.