CUSTOM OF KNIGHTLOW CROSS. 103 



more frequent. I have been unable to find any, as I 

 expected to do, in the records of the monasteries : those 

 white cattle which ecclesiastics possessed previously to 

 the dissolution appearing to be, in the few instances 

 where facts can be ascertained — as in the parks of the 

 Bishop of Durham and the Abbot of Whalley — wild 

 ones ; thus confirming the statement of Professor Low * 

 with regard to the Scottish monastic bodies. Of course, 

 their domestic herds were numerous and valuable, but I 

 have as yet been unable to ascertain that they were 

 white. The instances of white domestic cattle are com- 

 paratively few, and confined to a few localities, and these 

 principally south of the Trent ; while there is at present 

 no well authenticated instance of a wild white herd 

 being for any length of time in existence south of that 

 river, and only one or two parks where they were kept 

 at all, while to one of these they were certainly intro- 

 duced at a late period. Further discoveries may 

 strengthen or weaken this opinion, but so the case 

 stands at present. > 



Perhaps the only evidence we have of a domestic 

 white breed allied to the wild in central England in 

 early times, is derived from a singular custom still 

 remaining in force in Warwickshire, and called " The 

 Custom of Knightlow Cross." At the northern ex- 

 tremity of the village of Stretton-on-Dunsmore, near 

 D unchurch, stands in a field a stone, which is the 

 mortice-stone of the ancient Cross of Knightlow. On 

 this spot, every year, on the 11th of November, 

 St. Martin's Day, there takes place an ancient ceremony, 

 which is said to date from a period anterior to the 

 Norman Conquest. This custom is the payment to 



* " Domesticated Animals," chap, iii., p. 235. 



