6 CROSS-LEGGED EFFIGIES IN DORSET. 



In the first place we must remember that, if it meant anything, 

 it had a purely English significance, for no example of a cross- 

 legged effigy has ever been found on the Continent. It is also 

 evident that it did not apply exclusively to members of the male 

 sex, for there are many effigies of ladies thus fashioned, notably 

 at Cashel, in Ireland. Neither is it only found with effigies of 

 men clad in military habits, for there are a large number of 

 cross-legged effigies and brasses to the memory of civilians. If 

 it had any special significance, then, it must have been one for 

 which ladies, knights, and civilians could qualify themselves 

 throughout many centuries, for the latest effigy whose lower 

 limbs assume this attitude is that in Exeter Cathedral to Sir 

 Peter Carew, in 1571. 



Now, the only possible act in which all these persons could 

 have taken part is that of making a pilgrimage, and in this 

 connection it is a somewhat notable fact that on a few brasses 

 the crossed feet of the knight seem to be actually walking on 

 the animal. It is just possible, therefore, that the attitude 

 commemorates a pilgrimage, not necessarily to the Holy Land, 

 but to the shrine of some British or Continental saint. This 

 solution would include every known cross-legged effigy, but in 

 the absence of direct evidence this proposition must be one of 

 conjecture only. The great difficulty seems to me to be the fact 

 that this particular attitude is only found in England, and 

 English men and women no more had a monopoly in the 

 making of pilgrimages than in any other custom of mediaeval days. 

 Personally, I think it is much more probable that the cross-legged 

 attitude was an artistic convention, and one which had no 

 symbolic significance whatever. The flexibility of the chain 

 mail was quickly regarded as a valuable artistic asset, and one 

 which enabled the sculptors to fashion the figures in the natural 

 and easy pose of real life, which gives to our early Gothic effigies 

 that peculiar life-like appearance, as remarkable as it is unique. 

 With the introduction of more solid defences the cross-legged 

 attitude became more and more difficult if it was to be a faithful 

 representation of the living man, until with the complete 



