¹ Chamberlains' Accounts, Abingdon, 1643–4, ‘Allowances, fees and wages’; Berkshire Record Office, Reading, A/FAc 3. I am most grateful to Miss A. J. E. Arrowsmith, formerly County Archivist, for kindly providing a transcript of the relevant entries.

² Edward, , Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (ed. Warburton, Bishop) (Oxford, 1849), III, pp. 360–3.Google Scholar

³ Mercurius Aulicus, 31st May 1644, 1002–3; facsimile reprinted in Jeffs, Robin (General Editor), The English Revolution, III, Newsbooks, I, Oxford Royalist, Vol. 3 (London, Cornmarket Press, 1971), pp. 94–5.Google Scholar

⁴ Smith, Lucy Tomlin, The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–1543, 5 vols. (London, 1907–1910). Leland's description of the Abingdon cross (I, p. 122) dates from 1542.Google Scholar

⁵ London, British Library, Harleian MS. 965, ff.244–5. Symonds's account of his visit to Abingdon is dated 3rd May 1644 (f.243).

⁶ B.L., Harleian MS. 6466, ff.37–8^V. A transcript of the contract for the Coventry cross is among the papers of the nineteenth-century antiquary J. Richards in the B.L., MS. 28666, pp. 432–4 (J. Richards, Berkshire Collections, VII); another transcript is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Gough MSS., Berkshire, VI, p. 145. The document was published for the first time by Hearne, Thomas, Liber Niger Scaccarii (Oxford, 1728), pp. 601–4.Google Scholar

⁷ Stephens, W. B. (ed.), Victoria County History, Warwickshire, VIII, City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick (London, 1969), pp. 143–4Google Scholar, gives an account of the Coventry cross and summarizes its history. See also Gilbert, Virginia, ‘The old cross’, The Coventry Cross (Coventry, 1976).Google Scholar

⁸ Morris, Christopher (ed.), The Journeys of Celia Fiennes (London, 1949, rev. edn.), pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

⁹ Sir William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire (London, 1656), p. 94.

¹⁰ Nutall, P. Austin (ed.), The History of the Worthies of England by Thomas Fuller (1662) (London, 1840), III, p. 269Google Scholar; Freeman, John (ed.), Thomas Fuller: the Worthies of England (London, 1952), p. 579.Google Scholar According to Poole, Benjamin (Coventry: its History and Antiquities, 1870) the statuary included some saints (Michael, George, Peter, James the Less, Christopher, ‘and two religious habits’) as well as English Kings and figures personifying Justice and ‘other gracious attributes’Google Scholar

¹¹ Sir Dugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, revised by William Thomas (London, 1730), p. 144.Google Scholar

¹² For the history of the Fraternity of the Holy Cross and Christ's Hospital in Abingdon, see Preston, Arthur E., Christ's Hospital, Abingdon (Abingdon, 1929).Google Scholar

¹³ Cobham, C. D. (ed.), A Monument of Christian Munificence; or, An Account of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross and of the Hospital of Christ in Abingdon, by Francis Little, 1627 (Oxford and London, 1871). The original manuscript by Little is among the archives in the care of the Master and Governors of the Hospital of Christ of Abingdon.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 22.

¹⁵ Preston, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 30, 51.

¹⁶ Both the portraits and the picture of the bridge builders remain in the possession of the Master and Governors of the Hospital of Christ of Abingdon; full details are given in the catalogue appended to Preston, op. cit.

¹⁷ The painting can be dated to about 1608, since it also shows in the background a view of the Long Alley almshouses with the porches and cupola added during the 1605–7 reconditioning: Preston, op. cit., p. 51.

¹⁸ Liversidge, M. J. H., The Bristol High Cross (Bristol, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1978). The Bristol cross survives at Stourhead in Wiltshire whither it was removed in the eighteenth century to become a garden ornament.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Cobham, op. cit. (note 13), p. 21.

²⁰ For the Fraternity, see Preston, op. cit., pp. 12–21.

²¹ In honour of ABINGDON as on the Seaventh Day of Septembers Solemnization, 1641, by JOHN RICHARDSON, SERJEANT of Abingdon in the county of Berks. (Printed in the yeare 1641).

²² Preston, op. cit. pp. 23–4; the reference, citing the Liber Niger of the City of London, is published in Berkshire Arch. J. II, old series (1891), 71Google Scholar, but could not be located by Townsend, A. E. Preston. James, A History of Abingdon (London, 1910), refers in his account of the cross to Hearne, op. cit. (note 6) (pp. 597–8 give an account of the cross copied by Hearne from Francis Little's manuscript).Google Scholar

²³ Bodleian Library, Oxford, Gough MSS., Berkshire, VI, 149.

²⁴ The names of those to whom the charter was granted for the Fraternity included the Bishop of Sarum, William Earl of Suffolk, Thomas Bekynton (the King's secretary) and John Golafre, as well as a group of Abingdon men. It may be relevant that a journal kept of Bekynton's movements in June 1442 shows that he was in Abingdon at the same time as the Bishop of Salisbury: ‘In prandio apud Abyndon cum domino Abbate, ubi fuit episcopus Sarisburiensis’ (Williams, George (ed.), Official Correspondence of Thomas Bekynton: Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1872), II, p. 177).Google Scholar

²⁵ In medieval times, freestone crosses of the kind were usually completely painted and gilded in order to protect the stonework from the effects of weathering: the histories of the Coventry and Bristol crosses, for instance, reveal that they were regularly repainted to preserve them. Many, like the Bristol cross, fell into disrepair in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because they were not properly maintained, and the absence of records to show that the Abingdon cross regularly received such attention may explain why a comprehensive rebuilding had to be undertaken in 1605. Apart from an entry in the St. Helen's Churchwardens Accounts for 1564, ‘Payde for reparations of the Cross in the market place … 58 2d’, and a similar reference in the Borough Chamberlain's Accounts from 1584–5, ‘Itm payd to mathew bostocke for iiij boshels of lyme to mend the Crosse … ijs and payd thomas bradford for iiij boshels to mend the crose also … ij s iiij d’, there seems to have been very little done to preserve the monument. Compared to the £20 it cost in 1491 to paint and gild the Bristol High Cross, Abingdon's effort appears very meagre indeed. It has to be remembered as well that the fine details and carving of such monuments and their total exposure to the elements inevitably meant that they were more susceptible to decay than many other kinds of structure. A comparable case is encountered in the history of the Cheapside cross in London: originally one of the Eleanor crosses, it was erected in the 1290s but in 1441 it had become so decayed that a replacement was ordered. That, too, deteriorated and in 1606 was entirely rebuilt—a history that corresponds quite closely to that of the Abingdon cross.

²⁶ Gibson, Edmund, Camden's Britannia … with Large Additions and Improvements (London, 1695), p. 138.Google Scholar