these specimens of ancient art. On the
Continent there are very few of these elaborately carved crosses; but
it is noteworthy that wherever the English or Irish missionaries went,
they erected these memorials of their faith. In Switzerland, where
they founded some monasteries, there are some very similar to those
in England.

There are several other kinds of crosses besides those in churchyards.
There are market crosses, called "cheeping" crosses after the
Anglo-Saxon _cheap_, to buy, from which Cheapside, in London, Chippenham
and Chipping Norton derive their names. Some crosses are "pilgrim"
crosses, and were erected along the roads leading to shrines where
pilgrimages were wont to be made, such as the shrine of St. Thomas
a Becket at Canterbury, Glastonbury, Our Lady of Walsingham. Sometimes
they were erected at the places where the corpse rested on its way to
burial, as the Eleanor crosses at Waltham and Charing, in order that
people might pray for the soul of the deceased. Monks also erected
crosses to mark the boundaries of the property of their monastery.

[Illustration: AN OLD MARKET CROSS]

Time has dealt hardly with the old crosses of England. Many of them
were destroyed by the Puritans, who by the Parliamentary decree of
1643, ordered that all altars and tables of stones, all crucifixes,
images and pictures of God and the saints, with all superstitious
inscriptions, should be obliterated and destroyed. In London, St.
Paul's Cross, Charing Cross, and that in Cheapside, were levelled
with the ground, and throughout the country many a beautiful work
of art which had existed hundreds of years shared the same fate.
Place-names sometimes preserve their memory, such as Gerard's Cross,
in Buckinghamshire, Crosby, Crossens, Cross Inn, Croston; these and
many others record the existence in ancient times of a cross, and
probably beneath its shade the first preachers of the gospel stood,
when they turned the hearts of our heathen ancestors, and taught them
the holy lessons of the Cross.

CHAPTER IX

ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE

Saxon monasteries--Parish churches--Benedict Biscop--Aldhelm--St.
Andrew's, Hexham--Brixworth Church--Saxon architecture--Norman
architecture--Characteristics of the style--Transition Norman--
Early English style--Decorated style--Perpendicular style.

The early Saxon clergy lived in monasteries, where they had a church
and a school for the education of the sons of thanes. Monastic hous