THE president's ADDRESS. 139 



Diocesan Magazine "The Church, in Cornwall" (which was 

 ably edited by Canon Cornish and has been succeeded by Mr. 

 Sach's paper '•' The Church in the West.") It also appears on 

 the cover of the recent edition of Blight's Crosses. 



The scroll-work and interlaced patterns on that cross are of 

 chronological imj)ortance. They are unusually distinct (having 

 been for centuries protected from the weather), and I have 

 discovered that whilst some of them are identical with those on 

 stone Crosses (inscribed with Runes) in the Isle of Man,* the 

 central ornamentation agrees with that on the knop of a Pastoral 

 Crook (with Irish legend), which most probably belonged to 

 Kells in the 10th or early part of the 11th century. The staff 

 is of oak encased in decorated silver, brass and niello, and is 

 supposed to be the work of Mac Aeda Cerd.f 



Inability to read a date conveyed merely by the occurrence 

 of some form of ornament may be readily excused, but how can 

 we palliate being unable to decipher what has been carefully 

 written in precise terms ? This question I ask because it bears 

 upon a great defect in the education of the Clergy of the 

 present day. It applies equally to the case of most of our 

 Legal practitioners. The defect is quite modern. 



By Norman custom the Judges were chosen from those in 

 Sacred Orders. The Clergy and Lawyers were as one. Formerly 

 a Clerk and a legal Scribe could read and write with ease and 

 elegance. They could understand and copy what their 

 predecessors wrote. In those days men could plead their skill 

 as clerks actually to save their necks. Benefit of Clergy was 

 extended even to lay persons who could read and might therefore 

 become clerks. Their value was so fuUy recognized that their 

 lives were not lightly taken. For them, branding took the place 

 of capital punishment. To a certain extent other classes were 

 permitted to be illiterate, but these were expected to be deft 

 penmen and good interpreters of written mysteries. 



* The same interlaced patterns occur on the Cross at Carclinham in Cornwall, 

 and on those at Kirk Andreas ; Kirk Michael ; Kirk Christ's, Rushen ; Ballaugh ; 

 and St. John's, Tynwald ; in the Isle of Man ; and on the Irish Crook mentioned. 



f See "Christian Inscriptions in the Irish language," Petrie and Stokes, 

 University Press, Dublin, vol. 2, page 116, plates 47 and 47a. 



