wooden cloisters and gabled doorways and porch, was a sight well worth seeing.  The hall or chapel was hung with painted portraits of its benefactors, including that of King Edward VI, who granted the Charter for the hospital.  This Guild of the Holy Cross assisted to build the bridges and set up in the market-place the famous Abingdon Cross, which was 45 feet high.  Standing upon eight steps, this cross had “eight panels in the first storey and six in the second; of stone, gilt and garnished, adorned with statuary and coats of arms, a mightily goodly cross of stone with fair degrees and imagerie.”  The design of the Abingdon Cross had been copied for other crosses, including, it was said, portions of those of Coventry and Canterbury; and it must have been of extraordinary beauty, for Elias Ashmole, who was likely to know, declared that it was not inferior in workmanship and design to any other in England.  The cross was restored in 1605, but when the army of the Parliament occupied the town in 1644, it was “sawed down” by General Waller as “a superstitious edifice.”  The Chamberlain’s Accounts for that year contained an entry of money paid “to Edward Hucks for carrying away the stones from the cross.”

[Illustration:  MARKET CROSS, ABINGDON. From an old print.]

The records in these old towns in the south, which had been kept by churchwardens and constables for hundreds of years, were extremely interesting; and there was much information in those at Abingdon that gave a good idea of what was to be found in a market-place in “ye olden time,” for in addition to the great cross there were the May pole, the cryer’s pulpit, the shambles, the stocks, the pillory, the cage, the ducking-stool, and the whipping-post.

In the year 1641, just before the Civil War, Abingdon possessed a Sergeant-at-Mace in the person of Mr. John Richardson, who also appears to have been a poet, as he dedicated what he described as a poem “of harmless and homespun verse to the Mayor, Bayliffs, Burgesses, and others,” in which are portrayed the proceedings at the celebration of the peace between the King and the Scots.  Early in the morning the inhabitants were roused by “Old Helen’s trowling bells,” which were answered by the “Low Bells of honest Nick,” meaning the bells of the two churches: 

  To Helen’s Courts (ith’morne) at seven oth’ clock,
  Our congregation in great numbers flock;
  Where we ’till Twelve our Orisons did send
  To him, that did our kingdom’s Quarrels end. 
  And these two Sermons two Divines did preach,
  And most divinely gratitude did teach.

After these five hours of service, the congregation again returned to church from two till four, and then proceeded to the cross in the market-place.