CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES IN DORSET. 5 



Crusades, was one of great unrest in England as elsewhere. 

 The old feudal system was crumbling away ; the country had 

 been drained of its very necessities to furnish men for the 

 Crusades, and bands of beggared and broken men were 

 pillaging and plundering with impunity. 



One cannot fail to notice with what appropriateness and 

 singular felicity of expression the early sculptors composed the 

 figures to the recumbent position, and although the custom of 

 erecting monumental memorials with effigies became general 

 only in the course of the Xllth century, yet in the earlier, as in 

 the later, examples there is always this remarkable quality of 

 composition and appropriate disposition of the limbs. The 

 cross-legged attitude assumed by these effigies has long been a 

 vexata qu&stio among archaeologists and antiquaries, some assert- 

 ing that it has a very deep and real symbolic meaning, others that 

 it was a pure fad on the part of the sculptor. The old tradition 

 that the cross-legged position was a sign or symbol that the 

 persons thus fashioned had either fought in the wars of the 

 Crusades, or had taken vows to do so, is, I think, quite exploded. 



There are, of course, many cross-legged effigies of authentic 

 Crusaders, but there are scores of cross-legged effigies and 

 brasses to the memory of men who could not possibly have 

 made a crusade, or who are definitely known not to have done 

 so. The crusades commenced at the close of the Xlth century 

 and ceased at the close of the XHIth century, and yet in Cold 

 Higham Church there is a cross-legged effigy to Sir John 

 Pateshull, died 1350, just eighty years after the last crusade. 

 The cross-legged effigies to such men as Brian Fitz-Alan at 

 Bedall (d. 1302), John de Hastings at Abergavenny (d. 1313), 

 and Alymer de Valence in Westminster Abbey are a few of the 

 cross-legged effigies to the memory of men who are known not to 

 have gone to the Holy Wars, and an analysis of the monumental 

 effigies and brasses of any county in England would yield the 

 same result. 



What, then, was the meaning, if any, of the cross-legged 

 attitude as represented on sepulchral monuments and brasses ? 



