came, and although the cross still appears on the flat stone, the design
on the shaft of the cross merely represents a hunting scene; and a Saxon
bowman is shown shooting at some animals. The religious conceptions of
an earlier and purer time have disappeared. The moustache of the
sportsman also shows that the stone belonged to a period very near the
Norman Conquest, when that fashion of wearing the hair was in vogue.

England is remarkable for 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