In the summer of the year 1815, I fulfilled my long standing promise of
spending a day with an old schoolfellow at Sawston, a pleasant little
village, delightfully situated in a fertile valley about seven miles
south of Cambridge, the north of which is encompassed by the Gogmagog
hills, which appear Apennines in miniature; the south, east, and west,
are beautifully diversified with trees and foliage, truly picturesque
and romantic. After partaking of the good things at the hospitable board
of my friend, we set out for a ramble among the quiet rural scenery, and
suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a group of people, near the
road leading to the church. They were holding a conversation on a
grass-plot; from the centre of which rose a _cross_, enclosed in a small
covered building, like an amphitheatre, that added not a little to the
romantic appearance of the village; towards the bottom of the southern
slope of the grass-plot, propped with uncommon care, and guarded by a
holy zeal from the ravages of time, stood an ancient sycamore-tree; and
on the east side, to the terror of evil-doers, stood the stocks. Alas!
unsparing ignorance has, since then, destroyed this fine tree; “the
place that knew it knows it no more,” and the stocks are fallen never to
rise again.
My friend, taking me aside, informed me the persons assembled were
residents of the place, and that the meeting was convened to sell the
cross. “This cross,” continued my friend, “is the ornament of the
village. It escaped the phrenetic rage of the puritans in the civil
wars, and is of such antiquity, that when it was built is not to be
traced with certainty in the records of history. It may be supposed,
however, to have been erected by the Knights Templars, as the living
belonged to them; for, I believe, it was usual for them to erect crosses
on their property. Upon the abolition of the Templars, the living came
into the hands of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, afterwards
called the Knights of Rhodes, and lastly, of Malta. So early as the
thirteenth century public officers sat on this cross to administer
justice; at other times, the bishop’s house, near the Campion-field, was
used for that purpose: this house is now in ruins, but the cross,”
continued my friend, “we possessed as an inheritance from our
forefathers, and at this moment the cupidity and folly of the covetous
and ignorant are conspiring to destroy the venerable relic.”
Wishing to preserve a memoranda of the old cross, I took a hasty sketch
of it, (too hastily perhaps to be sufficiently accurate for an
engraving,) and having reached my home, recorded the adventures of the
day in my pocket-book, from whence the above extract is taken. Passing
through the village in the following autumn, I found that the
inhabitants had sacrilegiously levelled the cross and sold the remnants.
The Jews of old, as we’ve been told--
And Scriptures pure disclose--
With harden’d hearts drew lots for parts
Of our Salvator’s clothes.
The modern Jews--the Sawstonites--
As harden’d as the Israelites--
In ignorance still more gross--
Thinking they could no longer thrive
By Christian means, did means contrive--
Drew lots, and sold the cross!
_Cambridge._