The greater number of our memorial crosses, however, preserve the memory, as was above indicated, of persons rather than of events; and amongst the earliest of these is a very ancient example of the so-called runic type in the Parish Church of Leeds. It is curiously wrought with human figures, difficult now to name with any certainty, and with several fine specimens of the varied and intricate scrolls so popular with the early stone-carvers of the north. It is supposed to be a monument to Onlaf Godfreyson, who died about 941.
Travellers in the Alps will be familiar with the memorials, pathetic in their simplicity, of those mountaineers and wayfarers who have met sudden destruction beneath the overwhelming avalanche; ever and anon the rustic cross of wood is met with, marked with the initials of the dead and with the letters “P. I.,” or perhaps the words in full, Perit ici. Spain, too, has her wooden crosses scattered along her most lonely roads and hillsides, or by the forest pathway; memorials, these, however, of more sombre tragedies, telling where the brigand or the highwayman struck down his victim.
The great type of the permanent memorial cross amongst us in England has been supplied by the devotion of Edward I. to his Queen Eleanor, and any land might well have been proud of the splendid series of crosses which he raised to her memory.
NORTHAMPTON CROSS.
Queen Eleanor died at Hardeby, in Nottinghamshire, on November 28th, 1291, her husband being at the time in the north, entering upon a Scottish campaign. The body was embalmed; and as the solemn procession, which the King joined ere its start, made its slow way to Westminster, a spot was chosen at each halting place, on which a monument was to be raised. The total number of these is not quite certain, but the following is probably a complete list of them, namely:—Lincoln (where those parts of the body removed in the embalming were buried in the Minster), Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony-Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, S. Alban’s, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing. All have now disappeared except those at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham; and these three survivors, singularly enough, illustrate three distinct styles of construction, the ground plan of the first being a triangle, of the second an octagon, and of the last a hexagon.
With so many crosses varying so largely in design it is probable that there were several architects, but not many names have come down to us; John de la Battaile is said to have designed the one at Northampton, and Pietro Cavallini the Waltham one, Alexander of Abingdon, and William de Ireland executing the work. All the existing crosses have several statutes of the Queen, so that we may conclude that this was a feature common to the whole series; and all were adorned with the arms of England, Castile, and Ponthieu. The design in each case is beautiful, and the detailed carving, whether in the diapering of the surface, or its enrichment with flowers, crockets, and other architectural features, both elaborate and exquisite. Charing Cross, the cross of “the beloved Queen” (chèr reine), the last of the series, more nearly approached the Northampton Cross than either of the other two which remain, but its plan was hexagonal. Not a trace or a description of the original condition of most of the other crosses has been handed down to us.
Geddington Cross is in a singularly perfect state, wanting only its upper member with the actual cross. That at Northampton is similarly truncated. In the reign of Queen Anne a new cross, quite out of keeping with the rest of the design was placed upon the latter by the local justices of the places, who also adorned its faces with sundials; these have happily been again removed. Waltham Cross, which had become seriously decayed, was restored early in the present century, and again more carefully and satisfactorily in 1887 as a memorial of the jubilee of the reign of Queen Victoria.