46 THe RuTHWELL Cross. 
This is repeated, still further debased, in the next shaft, 
which also repeats the seated saint, with a curious blunder 
in confusing the cross he holds with the fold in his drapery 
below it. The third shaft bears an archer, with late Anglian 
ornament, and figure-groups—Christ healing a woman and the 
Three Children in the Furnace—in the drawing of an age 
when the classical models were not entirely forgotten, but. 
were not so closely followed as at Bewcastle and Ruthwell. 
The same style is seen in the Madonna shaft at Dewsbury 
(Fig. 22); the Virgin and Child are already portrayed on St. 
Cuthbert’s coffin; the Loaves and Fishes at Hornby; and 
here we have the Miracle at Cana, with a scroll .bviously 
derived, but debased, from Hexham. 
The tendency in scroll-design was naturally to nake it 
looser in wide panels, and stiffer in running patterns; to lose 
_ its early naturalism and to make both plant-form and animal- 
form less graceful and more “‘ stylised.’’ This is seen in the 
second shaft at Ilkley church (Fig. 23) and in the perfectly 
preserved cross at Irton, Cumberland (Fig. 24). This had 
an inscription in which Anglian runes could formerly be 
read: one of its plaits resembles one at Bewcastle with the 
double-bead of the strap interwoven; its key-pattern recalls 
Northallerton; its chequers, in which plain squares are re- 
placed by crosslets, show an attempt to improve upon the 
Bewcastle chequers. But we cannot, on that account, take 
it out of the Northumbrian series, into which it fits as a 9th 
century work. 
The Irton stiff scroll, still further tightened and stiffened, 
appears in the tallest Ilkley cross (Fig. 25), now carrying a 
head (from Middleton Hall, formerly at Ilkley church), which 
is of the period, if not the original head to this shaft. The 
attempt to vary the scrolls shows the striving for new and 
more piquant effect, characteristic of decadence; the figures 
are very conventional, though finely decorative, already a long 
way from Ruthwell and Bewcastle. This cross must be of 
about the middle of the 9th century, not long before the 
Danish invasion of 867. 
It has been supposed that the Danes would have de- 
stroyed the Ruthwell cross, if it had existed in their day. 
