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Vetusta Monumenta: Ancient Monuments, a Digital Edition

Plate 2.8: Engraving of Gloucester Cross

Plate 2.8 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the Gloucester Cross, framed by scaled-up images of the sculptures of English kings and queens that were located in the niches of the second story. By including the town hall and other buildings in the background and staffage figures in the foreground, the print emphasizes the civic importance of this fourteenth-century market cross. Engraving by George Vertue after Thomas Ricketts. 441 x 295 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1751. Current location: Originally in Gloucester, UK, the cross was demolished in 1751.

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1. Plate 2.1: Engraving of Plans for Rebuilding London, 1666 (1 of 2) Plates 2.1-2.2 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce three plans for rebuilding the city of London after the great fire of 1666. The plans were originally submitted to King Charles II in September of 1666 and February of 1668 by John Evelyn and Christopher Wren. Engravings by George Vertue after the original plans by Evelyn and Wren. 478 x 355 mm and 486 x 353 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1747. Current location: Society of Antiquaries of London. Drawings: Volume 1 [196h], fols. 68-69.
2. Plate 2.2: Engraving of Plans for Rebuilding London, 1666 (2 of 2) Plates 2.1-2.2 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce three plans for rebuilding the city of London after the great fire of 1666. The plans were originally submitted to King Charles II in September of 1666 and February of 1668 by John Evelyn and Christopher Wren. Engravings by George Vertue after the original plans by Evelyn and Wren. 478 x 355 mm and 486 x 353 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1747. Current location: Society of Antiquaries of London. Drawings: Volume 1 [196h], fols. 68-69.
3. Plate 2.3: Engraving of a Portrait of George Holmes Plate 2.3 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces a portrait (c. 1731-1733) of George Holmes, a founding member of the Society of Antiquaries and dedicated Deputy Keeper of the Tower of London. The engraving augments the original oil painting by depicting a more mature Holmes surrounded by objects symbolic of his intellectual and professional pursuits. Engraving by George Vertue after Richard van Bleeck. 332 x 215 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1750. Current location: The original portrait now hangs in the Fellows Room of the Society of Antiquaries of London, London, UK.
4. Plate 2.4: Engraving of Ancient Deeds and Seals Plate 2.4 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts two early- to mid-fourteenth-century deeds and three seals, which confirm land charters related to ecclesiastical establishments in Yorkshire. 478 x 318 mm. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1751. Current locations: Rawlinson’s collection passed to the Bodleian Library and to St. John’s and Hertford Colleges, Oxford University, UK.
5. Plate 2.5: Engraving of a View of the Savoy from the Thames Plate 2.5 of Vetusta Monumenta is the first of three depictions of the Savoy engraved for Volume II. This plate presents a picturesque view of the Savoy Hospital from across the river Thames and records the state of the site in 1736, before it was mostly destroyed by fire in 1776. The drawing was made at the same time as the drawings for Plates 2.12 and 2.14. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. 314 x 463 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1750. Current location: The only surviving building of the Savoy Hospital is the Hospital Chapel, now The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, London, UK.
6. Plate 2.6: Engraving of the Warrant for Beheading Charles I Plate 2.6 reproduces the death warrant dated 29 January 1649 for executing Charles I, who was publicly beheaded the following day outside of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Handwritten on parchment and bearing fifty-nine signatures with accompanying seals, the warrant was in the possession of Charles I’s executioner from 1649 until 31 July 1660 when, following the Restoration of Charles II, the House of Lords confiscated the warrant and used it to identify the individuals who had authorized Charles I’s execution. On 1 June 1749, James West (1703-1722) alerted the Society of Antiquaries of London “that the original Instrument and order, signed and Sealed for the taking off King Charles First’s Head”—which had been housed in the Parliamentary Archives since 1660—“was to be seen,” likely as a consequence of the centennial anniversary of the regicide. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawing. 418 x 484 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1750. Current Location: The warrant has remained in the House of Lords Record Office in the Parliamentary Archives ever since its confiscation in 1660 (Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/JO/10/1/297A), London, UK.
7. Plate 2.7: Engraving of Greensted Church with Objects Commemorating St. Edmund Plate 2.7 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts a range of objects that find commonality in their association with St. Edmund the Martyr. The central image of the Church of St. Andrew, Greensted, Essex, is rendered along with the burial shrine of St. Edmund and a seal fragment from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, both in Suffolk. Engraving by George Vertue after Smart Lethieullier and John Lydgate. 312 x 447 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1752. Current location: The church still stands in Greensted, Essex, UK; the shrine of St. Edmund was destroyed during the Reformation and the abbey was suppressed, but its ruins may still be seen in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, UK; the seal fragment is attached to MS Add. Charter 17226 in the British Library, London, UK.
8. Plate 2.8: Engraving of Gloucester Cross Plate 2.8 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the Gloucester Cross, framed by scaled-up images of the sculptures of English kings and queens that were located in the niches of the second story. By including the town hall and other buildings in the background and staffage figures in the foreground, the print emphasizes the civic importance of this fourteenth-century market cross. Engraving by George Vertue after Thomas Ricketts. 441 x 295 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1751. Current location: Originally in Gloucester, UK, the cross was demolished in 1751.
9. Plate 2.9: Engraving of Roman Pavements Found at Winterton and Roxby Plate 2.9 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts three fourth-century CE Roman mosaic pavements discovered in North Lincolnshire in 1699 and 1747. Figures I-III depict two large nearly intact pavements, the Ceres and Orpheus Pavements, with a related fragment, all discovered at Winterton in 1747. Figure IV shows a fragment of a large geometric mosaic discovered nearby at Roxby in 1699. Engraving by George Vertue after Charles Mitley. 441 x 591 mm (bifolium). Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1752. Current locations: Some fragments of the Orpheus Pavement are in the North Lincolnshire Museum, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, UK; the Ceres Pavement has been reconstructed and is on display at University Campus North Lincolnshire, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, UK; and fragments of the Roxby pavement remain buried in situ at Roxby, Lincolnshire, UK.
10. Plate 2.10: Engraving of Doncaster Cross Plate 2.10 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the Doncaster Cross, which was erected in honor of Otho de Tilly, land steward to the count of nearby Conisborough from about 1165 to 1188. The dense text on either side of the cross relates a brief history of Otho de Tilly, the cross itself, and the manner in which the Society acquired the painting on which this engraving is based. Engraving by George Vertue after an anonymous early seventeenth-century painting. 509 mm x 300 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1752. Current location: The original cross in Doncaster, UK, was demolished in 1792 but was replaced by a replica ex-situ the following year.
11. Plate 2.11: Engraving of Sandal Castle Plate 2.11 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts Sandal Castle as it appeared in the sixteenth century. Engraving by George Vertue after a drawing originally produced for a survey of the properties of the Duchy of Lancaster conducted by the Chancellor of the Duchy, Ambrose Cave, in 1561. Further drawings from this cache were engraved as Plates 1.39, 1.40, 1.41, 1.42, 1.44, 1.46, and 2.13. 307 x 461 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1753. Current location: The lower courses of the barbican, foundations of some of the towers, the base of the keep, and fragments of walls from the great hall and kitchen can still be seen in Sandal Magna, West Yorkshire, UK.
12. Plate 2.12: Engraving of Savoy Hospital Plate 2.12 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the prison and chapel buildings in the Savoy Hospital complex as they stood in 1736. The Hospital Chapel, depicted from two different sides in the lower half and the upper right portion of this plate, is the only Savoy building that survives today. The drawings were made at the same time as the drawings for Plates 2.5 and 2.14. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. 459 x 334 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1753. Current location: The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, London, UK.
13. Plate 2.13: Engraving of Clithero Castle Plate 2.13 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts Clithero Castle as it appeared in the sixteenth century. Engraving by George Vertue after a drawing originally produced for a survey of the properties of the Duchy of Lancaster conducted by the Chancellor of the Duchy, Ambrose Cave, in 1561. This concludes the sequence of eight drawings of castles preserved in the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster, including Plates 1.39, 1.40, 1.41, 1.42, 1.44, 1.46, and 2.11. 317 x 466 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1753. Current location: The ruined stone keep and parts of the curtain wall remain along with buildings that were added in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Clitheroe, Lancashire, UK.
14. Plate 2.14: Engraving of a Plan of the Savoy Plate 2.14 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduces an annotated ground plan of the various buildings comprising the Savoy Hospital as they stood in 1736. This plan concludes the sequence of views of these buildings presented in Plates 2.5 and 2.12. Engraving by George Vertue after his own drawings. 479 x 356 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1754. Current location: The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, London, UK.
15. Plate 2.15: Engraving of Canterbury Cathedral and Priory with a Portrait of Eadwine (1 of 2) Plates 2.15-2.16 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce two images from a twelfth-century manuscript, the Eadwine Psalter. The first is a plan of the monastery precinct at Christ Church, Canterbury, including Canterbury Cathedral as it stood prior to 1174. The second plate reproduces an author portrait of Eadwine of Canterbury, after whom the entire manuscript is named. Engravings by George Vertue after drawings of the manuscript made at Cambridge in 1753 by an unknown draftsman. 590 x 465 mm (bifolium) and 342 x 225 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1755. Current location: The rebuilt cathedral and some architectural remains of Christ Church Priory are at Canterbury, Kent, UK; the Eadwine Psalter is at Trinity College (MS R.17.1), Cambridge University, UK.
16. Plate 2.16: Engraving of Canterbury Cathedral and Priory with a Portrait of Eadwine (2 of 2) Plates 2.15-2.16 of Vetusta Monumenta reproduce two images from a twelfth-century manuscript, the Eadwine Psalter. The first is a plan of the monastery precinct at Christ Church, Canterbury, including Canterbury Cathedral as it stood prior to 1174. The second plate reproduces an author portrait of Eadwine of Canterbury, after whom the entire manuscript is named. Engravings by George Vertue after drawings of the manuscript made at Cambridge in 1753 by an unknown draftsman. 590 x 465 mm (bifolium) and 342 x 225 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1755. Current location: The rebuilt cathedral and some architectural remains of Christ Church Priory are at Canterbury, Kent, UK; the Eadwine Psalter is at Trinity College (MS R.17.1), Cambridge University, UK.
17. Plate 2.17: Engraving of a Roman Bronze Lamp with Vase and Bells Plate 2.17 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts a Roman lamp, an amphora-style vase, and two hand bells from 1366 (left) and 1547 (right). Engraving by George Vertue (his last for Vetusta Monumenta) after his own drawings. 455 x 300 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1756. Current locations: The lamp, vase, and bell on the right are all untraced, but the bell on the left is in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London (LDSAL 133), London, UK.
18. Plate 2.18: Engraving of Two Roman Bronzes (Silenus and a Lamp)
19. Plate 2.19: Engraving of a Medieval Seal and Mantelpiece Plate 2.19 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts the third conventual seal of Canterbury Cathedral (13th century) and a segment of a wooden mantelpiece from a house in Saffron Walden featuring carved images and letters (16th century). The plate itself contains commentary on the objects in cursive script. Engraving by James Green after drawings provided by John Ward. 444 x 303 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1758. Current locations: Impressions of the seal are located at National Archives, Kew, UK, and the British Library, London, UK; the mantelpiece remains in situ in the house in Saffron Walden, Essex, UK.
20. Plate 2.20: Engraving of Bronze Age Horns with Medieval Brooch, Arm-Rings, and Shield Plate 2.20 of Vetusta Monumenta depicts two silver arm rings and three bronze horns from Ireland, a fifteenth-century buckler from Wales, and a Viking Age brooch from the Western Isles of Scotland. This engraving documents a conscious effort by the Society of Antiquaries to systematize graphic practices in antiquarian illustration. Engraving by James Basire Sr. after his own drawings. 459 x 330 mm. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1763. Current locations: The arm rings, buckler, and brooch (Canmore ID 10515) are untraced, as is the first horn. The two remaining horns (Figs. IV-V) are in the collection at Mount Edgcumbe House, Cornwall, UK.

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Plate 2.8: Gloucester Cross Plate: Engraved by George Vertue (1684-1756) after a drawing by Thomas Ricketts (fl. 1750s). Plate 2.18 shows the Gloucester Cross, located in the center of Gloucester, as well as the town hall, another tall building that houses a shop on the ground floor, and three streets meeting at the cross: Southgate Street, Northgate Street and Westgate Street. The plate also features three staffage figures and a small dog eyeing the wares of the shop. The view of the cross is framed on either side with images of the sculptures of English kings and queens that were inserted into the niches of the cross’s second story. To the right, from top to bottom, pictured are statues of King John, Queen Eleanor, Richard II, and Elizabeth I. To the left, from top to bottom, pictured are statues of Henry III, Edward III, Richard III, and Charles I.

Object: Gloucester Cross was a turriform, eight-sided market cross formerly located at the center of Gloucester

Transcription:

An east view of GLOCESTER CROSS, situated in the center of the city, where the four principal streets meet each other. It is not certain, when it was built; but it has been thought as antient at least, as the time of K. RICHARD III; who was himself Duke of GLOCESTER, and a great benefactor to the city. And as his statue was one of the eight, it is scarce probable, that should have been placed there after his death, under any reign of the TUDOR family. For as to the statues of Q. ELIZABETH and K. CHARLES I, they were erected for particular reasons in later times;¹⁾ and very probably in the room of others, which were either decayed, or removed to make way for them. This draught of it was made in the year 1750, in order to preserve its memory. For a act of parliament having passed the preceding year, for taking down several buildings, and inlarging the streets and market places, within the city of GLOCESTER; to answer the intention of this act the corporation found it necessary, that the cross should likewise be taken down, which has now been done accordingly.

¹⁾ See Sr. Rob. Atkyns’s Hist. of Glocestershire, pag. 190.

Tho, Ricketts, Glocester. delineavit.

A. The Tholfel or Town Hall. B. A house and shop, now taken down.
C. South-gate street. D. North-gate street. E. West-gate street.

G. Vertue sculp.
Sumpt. Ant. Societ. Lond. 1751.

Translation:

Drawn by Thomas Ricketts of Gloucester.

Engraved by George Vertue.

Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1751.

Commentary by Achim Timmermann: As the minutes of Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) record, the decision to engrave Gloucester Cross was made when Andrew Coltee Ducarel (1713-1785) notified the SAL per letter to George Vertue that the cross – “being a great inconvenience to Coaches, & other Cariages” – was to be taken down by Act of Parliament (SAL Minutes VI.36). At the meeting on 5 April 1750, the SAL agreed that a draftsman from Gloucester, who had been recommended to Ducarel, should be paid the fee of two guineas for preparing a drawing of the cross. Thomas Ricketts is named as the draftsman on the plate. This drawing was discussed at a SAL meeting that took place on 18 October 1750: it was then that the decision was made that the engraving should feature the eight statues of the kings and queens done separately and to a larger scale (SAL Minutes VI.55). The proof print was discussed and approved at the meeting on 26 March 1752 (SAL Minutes VII.11).

Formerly rising on elevated ground at the meeting of Northgate, Southgate, and Westgate Streets, and replacing a predecessor from the mid-thirteenth century, the turriform cross functioned as one of Gloucester’s civic pivots for more than four hundred years, from its erection in c. 1310–20 to its demolition in 1751, just one month after the execution of Thomas Ricketts’s drawing (on which the engraving is based). Eight-sided and developing in a succession of three principal stories, the imposing structure stood nearly 35 feet or 10.6 meters tall. Civic crosses like that of Gloucester made visible a range of ancient municipal and market rights while also symbolizing the Peace of the King; mayors and other public officials were elected, sworn into office and succeeded one another here; courts could sit in session around their bases and prosecute offenders whose actions had harmed the civic polity; appropriate punishments were meted out here or sometimes commuted to symbolic restitutions; while elsewhere their stepped socles were used as platforms for proclamations of Acts of Parliament and local notifications such as marriage banns, or helped dramatize the performance of Corpus Christi and other mystery plays, and served as assembly points for the processions of guilds, confraternities and town councilors.

At least by 1455, when the monument was first sketched in a rental of all the houses in Gloucester compiled by Robert Cole, a canon at Llanthony Priory, the Gloucester Cross – or Alta Crux, as it is called here – also served as a public fountain, with spouts emerging from each of the sides of the lowest story providing water to the civic populace. Supplied by water from Robinswood Hill to the south of the city, the cross was one of several public water conduits in late medieval Gloucester. Similar such high cross-fountains also furnished the nearby cities of Wells, Glastonbury, and Bristol (St. Peter’s Cross) with a year-round supply of potable water.

Like many of its counterparts, the Gloucester Cross underwent a series of modifications during its long life, reflecting different forms of use, the advent of new artistic fashions, and changing attitudes toward the function of public monuments. The cross is said to have been restored in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII; in 1635 it was repaired and railed off at the instigation of Bishop Godfrey Goodman who donated £20 toward the cost, and it was again repaired and re-gilded in 1694 and 1712. As sketched by Ricketts on the eve of its demolition, the cross still retained many of its fourteenth-century forms, but also bore testimony to a series of later alterations. While the two lowest stories, with their blind crocketed arches and elaborate trefoiled and crocketed niches, bear all the marks of the English Decorated style, the top stage, with its castellations and girouettes, appears to be seventeenth-century work, which replaced the original cone-shaped and cross-topped steeple shown in the 1455 drawing by Robert Cole. When exactly the figures of the eight English sovereigns were inserted into the niches of the second story, whether some antedated others, or whether they were conceived as a single coherent group, cannot be answered on the basis of Vertue’s engraving or other surviving primary sources. As identified by the local historian and topographer, Robert Atkyns, in c. 1710, the statue series depicted King John, Henry III and his wife Eleanor of Provence, Edward III, Richard II, Richard III, Elizabeth I and Charles I. The original statue of the last sovereign was taken down from the cross in 1650 or 1651 after some of Cromwell’s soldiers had defaced it, and replaced by a new one during the Restoration. The choice of John, Henry III, Richard II, and Richard III may well have been dictated by charters of liberties granted to Gloucester by those kings, while the image of Queen Eleanor might have been intended to reflect her tenure of the lordship of the borough during her widowhood.

Swept away in the wake of the civic corporation’s Improvement Act of 1750 – one of the very first of its kind – the Gloucester Cross, like many of its peers, is all but a very distant memory now. Vertue’s engraving indicates that it was of considerable art historical significance, for its design appears to have been partially based on the famous Eleanor Crosses of Edward I, a series of twelve microarchitectural cenotaphs erected between 1291 and 1294 that marked the overnight resting places of Queen Eleanor of Castile’s funeral cortège from Lincoln to London in 1290. Though not nearly as elaborate as the Eleanor Crosses (see Plate 1.7, Plates 3.12-3.17), which had cost Edward a staggering £2,000, the Gloucester Cross likewise presents itself as a polygonal, multi-stage miniature tower orchestrating a program of statuary in its second tier. In the early fourteenth century this type of public monument was still a relatively rare sight, especially in the West Country of England. With its gabled, blind arcading encircling the first story and its gabled statue niches adorned with hanging, curtain-like tracery, the Gloucester Cross comes particularly close to the design of the Hardingstone Cross near Northampton (Plates 3.12 and 3.13 of the 3.12-3.17 series), begun in 1291 by John of Battle, and one of only three Eleanor Crosses still in existence today. While the concepteurs of Gloucester’s Alta Crux obviously lacked the kind of financial wherewithal that Edward I could throw behind the artistic commemoration of his beloved queen, they nevertheless managed to create an edifice that was both au fait with the latest microarchitectural trends and that transplanted a type of monument hitherto associated with royal patronage into the public sphere and visual discourse of the late medieval city.

Works Cited:

Aston, Margaret. 2016. Broken Idols of the English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Atkyns, Robert. 1712. The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire. Gloucester: Robert Gosling.

Brooks, Alan and David Verrey. 2002. Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Dancey, C.H. 1901. “The High Cross at Gloucester.” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Historical Society 24: 293-308.

Herbert, N.M., ed. 1988. A History of the County of Gloucester, 4: The City of Gloucester. London: Victoria County History.

Pooley, Charles. 1868. Notes on the Old Crosses of Gloucestershire. London: Longmans, Green.

Scrase, Anthony John. 1999. Streets and Market Places in Towns of Southwest England: Encroachments and Improvements, Mellen Studies in Geography 2. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen.

Smith, Nicola. 2001. The Royal Image and the English People. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Timmermann, Achim. 2017. Memory and Redemption: Public Monuments and the Making of Late Medieval Landscape, Architectura Medii Aevi 8 Turnhout: Brepols.

Vallance, Aymer. 1920. Old Crosses and Lychgates. London: Batsford.