According to this table we are credited in England with 30,516 cubic millimetres of the holy Cross, and it is interesting to know where they are situated. M. Rohault de Fleury, writing in 1870, says there were pieces at Isleworth; St. Gregory, Downside, near Bath; in the possession of Lord Petre; at Bergholt East, in Suffolk; at Plowden; at the convent of St. Mary, York; at West Grinstead; at St. George’s, Southwark; and Slindon, Sussex.
These pieces of the holy Cross are not large, as the following table, in cubic millimetres, shows:—
| At Isleworth | 1,000 |
| ” College of St. Gregory | 6,120 |
| Lord Petre (two relics) | 8,287 |
| At St. Mary, Bergholt East | 1,008 |
| ” Plowden Hall, Salop | 262 |
| ” St. Mary, York (two relics) | 5,600 |
| ” West Grinstead ” | 38 |
| ” St. George’s, Southwark (four relics) | 63 |
| ” St. Richard, Slindon | 8,100 |
| Total | 30,516 |
One relic at St. Mary’s Convent, York, is very fine; it is ornamented with scroll-work of the tenth century, and bears three impressions of the seal of the Vicar Capitular of the diocese of Saint Omer, 1657 to 1662. It is a pectoral cross that is supposed to have belonged to the patriarch Arnulph, who was with Robert, Duke of Normandy.
The other is supposed to have been attached to the above, and to have belonged equally to Arnulph, patriarch of Jerusalem. This is kept in a silver reliquary, which also contains relics of SS. Ignatius Loyola and François Xavier.
We see by the Golden Legend, that St. Helena, after finding the Cross, feeling certain that the nails were not far off, prosecuted a further search for them, and they were discovered “shynyng as gold.” As with the fashion of the Cross, whether it was immissa or commissa, there is, and was, a controversy with regard to the nails, whether three or four.
Bosius in his learned and exhaustive book, Crux Triumphans et Gloriosa,[L] gives several authorities for three nails only—foremost, Gregory Nazianzen; but he does not give the passage where it may be found; the quotation, however, is
Γυμνὸν τρισήλῳ κείμενον ξύλῳ λαϐών