CLXVIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



a handsome board school in which hundreds of children receive a free 

 education and are being trained for the peaceful pursuits of our modern 

 city life. 



The High Cross in Bristol was, in accordance with ordinaiy usage, 

 the centre of all civic life, interest, and movement. It is constantly 

 referred to in this way in old documents, and is therefore the memorial 

 of many changes which, though they belong to ancient history, have had 

 their influence in making Bristol what it is to-day. The cross which 

 occupied the site in the fifteenth century was erected in the year 1373, 

 and it is said upon the faith of an old chronicle to have been preceded by 

 an earlier one, possibly constructed of wood. It had at the time of its 

 erection, and continued to have for two hundred and sixty years, only the 

 lower range of figures representing the kings, John, Henry III., Edward 

 III., Edward IV. (?) Then, in 1633, it was raised by the addition of four 

 other figures, representing Henry YL., Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. 

 A hundred years later, in 1733, upon the plea that it was a source of 

 danger, it was removed from its distinguished position at the centre of the 

 city and was re-erected in College Green. There it was deemed to be a 

 nuisance, because it interfered with the promenading of the wives of the 

 rich citizens, in the wide-spreading garments of the period ; and in 1763 it 

 was again ignominiously taken down and stowed away in some corner of 

 the cathedral. The dean of the day. Dean Barton, did not want what he 

 looked upon as rubbish laying about there, so without stopping to ask 

 whether it was his to give, he gave it away to Sir Eichard Hoare, who at 

 least knew how to value it. He erected it in his beautiful grounds at 

 Stourhead in Wiltshire, and there it stands to this day, not as of old, in 

 the midst of the busy life of the town from which it might well have been 

 deemed inseparable, but in the midst of the charms of nature, to which it 

 is a beautiful but incongruous addition. Bristol to-da}^ has to be content 

 with an inferior copy of this original, which, like its predecessor, stands 

 in College G-reen. How much would the once despised original now be 

 valued by Bristol citizens ! 



I might tell you many interesting things about it ; how it is supposed 

 to have been erected to commemorate the granting of the charter of 

 Edward III., by which, amongst many other things, Bristol was made a 

 county in itself, a distinction which meant a good deal in those days ; 

 how, in 1399, Thomas Despencer was hurried to the cross, as the place of 

 execution, by an angry populace, and there beheaded ; how, at the frequent 

 visits of the early English sovereigns, it was the custom for the High 

 Cross to be newly painted and gilded, the cost on one occasion being care- 

 fully set down at 20 li. ; how every proclamation of a new sovereign was 

 made from within its canopy ; and, therefore, how, when Elizabeth died 

 and James ascended the throne, " first the trumpets sounded mournfully 

 for Queen Elizabeth three times, and then they sounded joyfully thrice 



