THE SHALL-CROSS. 209 



may safely assume that, at some time during the thousand years 

 and more that it has stood, one parish has encroached upon the 

 other and so set back the corner or point of union, for the 

 word Bow itself means " a corner." This is almost proved by 

 the fact that within half a mile of the present junction, where 

 one of the boundaries points directly for the Bow Stones but is 

 again deviated, there is another double cross stump on the moor. 

 This, although Saxon, is of the ordinary type and of later date 

 than the Bow Stones, and its finely carved crosses are no doubt 

 those preserved at Lyme Hall. There is, therefore every indica- 

 tion that originally the three ecclesiastical parishes met at the 

 Bow Stones. Later, but prior to the Conquest, the point was 

 deviated eastward to the Whaley Moor crosses, and again in 

 more modern times to its present site. This is the more certain 

 for each of the three lines is pointing directly for the Bow Stones 

 in its original course, one actually approaching them within 

 about half a mile and then, turning backward at an acute angle, 

 runs in a straight line to within fifty yards of the Whaley Moor 

 stump, where it again turns, this time at a right angle, and joins 

 the other two boundaries. 



I have endeavoured to show some probabilities that the class 

 of crosses which we are considering was derived from a wooden 

 prototype, that the prototype was designed in that portion of 

 Mercia which is north of the Trent, and includes this county, 

 that its date must have been between a.d. 627 and 685, that the 

 mission of Paulinus in 632 was the most natural occasion, that 

 as such the type would be venerated in this particular district 

 and reproduced in stone for a long period afterwards, when other 

 designs were more popular elsewhere, and finally that these 

 crosses, amongst others, marked the original boundaries of the 

 ancient parishes. I will now return to the origin of the 

 parochial system. 



When at the close of the seventh century Archbishop Theodore 



issued bis mandate that the country was to be divided into 



ecclesiastical parishes, the movement would probably be slow 



in its progress and difficult in its solution. It would not be 



14 



