506 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 296. 



will perhaps help me, through the medium of 

 " N. & Q.," to make a list of what remain. 



Dr. Rock's Church of our Fathers contains 

 several notices of way-side crosses ; see vol. iii. 

 pp. 16. 49. Edward Peacock. 



Manor Farm, Bottesford. 



Certainly the origin and purpose of some way- 

 side crosses has been, as the querist suggests, to 

 denote the places where funerals have rested in 

 the transfer of bodies, of the great, to places of 

 sepulture at a distance from the place of decease. 

 Witness the sumptuous crosses still remaining at 

 Northampton, Geddington, Waltham, and Tot- 

 tenham, which were erected at places where the 

 corpse of Queen Eleanor stopped on its way to its 

 place of burial at Westminster. Less pretending 

 crosses have been heretofore erected in this king- 

 dom, and are still erected in continental countries, 

 particularly in Spain, to mark the spot where a 

 murder has been committed ; and those who have 

 within a few years travelled by Ronda to Grenada 

 may recollect one of them erected on the way-side 

 to mark the spot where an unfortunate young 

 English officer was robbed and murdered. 



The day is not so distant since the same practice 

 was followed in Scotland ; and I send you, if you 

 think it worth insertion, a copy of an instance 

 which I was in the act of putting on paper for the 

 owner of the soil on which the cross still stands, 

 and which is in view of my own house with a 

 telescope, at the distance of between three and 

 four miles. 



Boon Cross. — On a piece of moor on the 

 north-east flank of Boon Hill, in the parish of 

 Legerwood, in the county of Berwick, and on the 

 farm of Boon, belonging to the Marquis of Tweed- 

 dale, stand the remains of an ancient stone cross, 

 consisting of a square freestone of a red colour, 

 rather more than a foot in height, and two feet 

 square, with a socket cut in it, one foot square, in 

 which is inserted an upright stone to fit, of the 

 same kind, a little more than two feet in height, 

 being all that remains of the shaft of the cross, 

 the upper part having been evidently broken off. 



I have known it in this state during a pretty 

 long life, but never for many years could learn the 

 cause or object of the erection of this cross. 

 There was not, and is not, a trace of a tradition, 

 or even a surmise about it. 



Some years ago, a friend of mine looking over 

 my copy of the criminal trials extracted from the 

 JBooks of Adjournal of the High Court of Jus- 

 ticiary in Scotland, published by Mr. Pitcairn, 

 discovered a trial which no doubt points out that 

 the cross on Boon Moor was erected in comme- 

 moration of a murder committed upon that spot in 

 1612. 



" Slaughter. 



"A.D. 1612, Mar. 13. — Alexander Frenche, Tutour of 

 Thorniedykis, and James Wicht, at Gordoun-mylne, his 

 sister-sone. 



" Dilaittit of airt and pairt of the slauchter of vmqie 

 Johnne Cranstoun, brother to Patrik Cranstoun of Corsbie 

 (a neighbouring property in the same parish), committet 

 be thame vpone the grund and landis of Bonn, in the 

 Merse, vpone the tent daj' of Februare lastbypast, be 

 wounding of him in the heid, leg, and dyuerse titheris 

 pairtis of his bodie, to the effusioun of his bluid in grit 

 quantitie: off the quhilkis straikis and deidlie woundis 

 the said vmq'« Johnne nevir thaireaftir convalessit ; bot, 

 vpone the first day of Merche instant, depairtit this lyfe, 

 of the saidis hurtis and woundis. 

 " Persewar, Patrik Cranstoun of Corsbie, as brother. 

 " The Persewar, be his grit aithe, declairis that he hes 

 most caus to persew : And sueris the said Dittay to be of 

 verritie, and takis instrumentis thairupon ; and Protestis 

 for Wilfull Errour gif the Assyse Acquit. 



" As also, for verificatioun thairof, haifing vset and pro- 

 ducit the Depositiones of certain famous Witnesses, quhilk 

 was oppinlie red in judgement. 



" Verdict. The Assyse, all in ane voce, be the mouth of 

 Hew Bell in Blythe, Chanceller, ffand, pronuncet, and 

 declairit the said James Wicht to be ffylet, culpable, and 

 convict of the crewal and vnmerciefull slauchter of the 

 said vmqi« Johnne Craunstoun : And siclyk, for the maist 

 pairts declairit the said Alexander Frenche, to be fiylet, 

 &c. 



" Sentence. To be tane to the Castell Hill of Edin- 

 burgh, and thair, thair heidis to be strukin from thair 

 bodeis ; and all thair moveable guidis to be escheit and 

 inbrocht to His Maiesteis vse, as convict," &c. — Pit- 

 cairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. part vii. p. 222. 



The record of the trial for murder suggests 

 several matters of interest in regard to the form of 

 proceeding in criminal cases in Scotland in the 

 time of James I. (and VI.). 



There are to be noticed the committing, the 

 circumstances, and result of each trial, to writing 

 daily in a journal (the Booh of Adjournal). 



The necessity of a prosecutor connected by con- 

 sanguinity with the murdered person. 



The verdict shows that unanimity of the jury 

 was not requisite. 



It is not quite so apparent, but it is the fact, 

 that in cases occurring in the country and tried in 

 Edinburgh, it was the practice to make up the 

 jury of the witnesses and of other persons brought 

 from the immediate neighbourhood of the place 

 where the crime had been committed. In this 

 case Hew Bell, the chancellor (or foreman) of the 

 jury mentioned as delivering the verdict, is stated 

 as resident in Blytbe, which is a farm of the Earl 

 of Lauderdale, in the adjoining parish of Lauder, 

 and the house there, equally with my own, in full 

 view of the spot where the murder was committed. 

 Thornydikes, where Alexander Frenche resided, 

 is now my own property ; and about a mile from 

 our house, Gordon Mylne, in the adjoining parish 

 of Gordon. 



The words at the end of the sentence, " and all 

 their moveable guidis to be escheit and inbrocht to 

 His Maiesteis vse," generally marred the rigid exe- 



