CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES IN DORSET. 



is probable that no county in England 

 can show more interesting remains of 

 its former ecclesiastical grandeur than 

 the county of Dorset. The great monastic 

 foundations (surpassed in number only by 

 Yorkshire) the Abbeys of Sherborne and 

 Milton, the Minster of Wimborne, the ex- 

 quisite fragments left of Cerne, Abbotsbury, 

 Bindon, and many another famous edifice 

 point to a monkish activity and a deep 

 religious fervour almost without parallel. That 

 these churches and abbeys were at one time 

 filled with statuary and sculpture is beyond 

 question, although their exact number or 

 quality will never be known ; and all we have 

 to guide us in refurnishing these stately structures with monu- 

 ments and brasses are the faint records of them mentioned 

 by our old county historians. Hutchins mentions many of 

 these vanished monuments, but those recorded form only a very 

 small proportion of the great numbers which were broken up at 

 the dissolution of the Priory Churches, or at the so-called 

 "restoration" of others. 



However deeply we may deplore the loss of these priceless 

 treasures, we must be thankful for what is left, and when we 

 consider the neglect, the vandalism, and the misdeeds of certain 

 Puritan iconoclasts, it is less a matter of wonder that so much 

 has vanished than that any should have survived. 



From what remains to us in the county of Dorset alone it is 

 quite apparent that an English school of sculpture of the highest 

 excellence existed from the middle of the Xllth century to the 

 end of the XVth century. The dawn of the XVIth century, 

 however, saw a marked deterioration in monumental sculpture, 

 and, except those that are known to have been the work of 

 Flemish or Italian artists, the effigies of this period are coarse, 

 heavy, and entirely lacking in the finer qualities of refinement 



