It was at the sacking of Basing House, the seat of the venerable Marquis of Winchester, that Harrison, the regicide and butcher's son, shot Major Robinson, exclaiming as he did the deed, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” Hugh Peters, the buffooning priest, was of the party.
** The erection of upright stone crosses is generally supposed to have dated its origin from the custom which the first Christians in this island adopted of inscribing the Druid stones with a cross, that the worship of the converted idolator might be transferred from the idol to the emblem of his faith; and afterwards the Saxon kings frequently erected crosses previously to a battle, at which public prayers were offered up for victory. After the Norman conquest crosses became common, and were erected in market-places, to induce honesty by the sanction of religion: in churchyards, to inspire devout and pious feelings; in streets, for the deposit of a corpse when borne to its last home; and for various other purposes. Here the beggar stationed himself, and asked alms in the name of Him who suffered on the cross. They were used for landmarks, that men might learn to respect and hold sacred the boundaries of another's property. Du Cange says that crosses were erected in the 14th Richard II. as landmarks to define the boundaries between Kesteven and Holland. They were placed on public roads as a check to thieves, and to regulate processions. At the Reformation (?!! ) most of the crosses throughout the kingdom were destroyed, when the sweeping injunction of Bishop Horne was formally promulgated at his Visitation in 1571, that all images of the Trinity in glass windows, or other places of the church, be put out and extinguished, together with the stone cross in the churchyard! We devoutly hope, as Dr. Johnson hoped of John Knox, that Bishop Horne was buried in a cross-road.
The sleek rogue read his Bible * upside down, and hated his neighbour: his piety was pelf; his godliness gluttony.
* “They like none but sanctified and shuttle-headed weavers, long-winded boxmakers, and thorough-stitching cobblers, thumping felt-makers, jerking coachmen, and round-headed button-makers, which spoyle Bibles while they thumb over the leaves with their greasie fingers, and sit by the fireside scumming their porridge-pot, while their zeal seethes over in applications and interpretations of Scripture delivered to their ignorant wives and handmaids, with the name and title of deare brethren and especially beloved sisters.”-- The doleful Lamentation of Cheapside Crosse, or Old England sick of the Staggers, 1641.