A HISTORY OF CORNWALL In addition to the foregoing there are still to be reckoned some fifty or sixty early cross-bases with empty sockets, scattered about the county, and representing all that now remains of the original monuments. The crosses once belonging to these have been used as gate-posts or applied to some other utilitarian purpose, 1 and in some cases wilfully destroyed. Moreover, it seldom happens that a year passes without one or two more examples being brought to light, so that a list of this kind cannot hope to be complete while such a probability of further discoveries continues. The two principal classes of monuments, i.e., the inscribed stones and the crosses, are so closely allied that it is impossible to separate them. This is clearly established by the forms of lettering being identical on both, and since the dates of the various alphabets are known it is possible to assign an approximate date to an inscribed cross having Celtic ornament, and by inference to those crosses which have similar ornament but no inscriptions. Before attempting to deal with the monuments in detail it will be necessary to glance briefly at the scanty notices relating to Cornwall in early Christian times, 2 to see how far it was in communication with other countries and to what extent its monuments were influenced by that intercourse. It is impossible to determine the exact date when Christianity was first introduced into Cornwall, since no structures, monuments, objects, or other remains have as yet been discovered in this part of Britain to show that the inhabitants were anything but pagan during the period of the Roman occupation, and history throws no light up ?n the matter prior to the fourth century. A review of the dedications of the churches seems to prove that Cornwall was more intimately connected with Brittany and South Wales than with Ireland, and, as will be seen subsequently, this is fully sub- stantiated by the character of the inscriptions on the early pillar stones and the style of ornament on the later sculptured crosses. For it was in Ireland and North Britain that the peculiar Celtic patterns were most highly developed ; and generally speaking, the decoration of the Christian monuments from 700 to 1 1 oo found in the south and west of England is of a different kind and often of an inferior quality. The Celtic ornament on the Cornish crosses is more akin to that occurring in Wales than to those in Ireland, Scotland, or Northumbria. A few Christian inscribed stones are found in Brittany having points in common with those in Cornwall, but as a rule there is an entire absence of inter- laced work or other ornament. Leland in his Itinerary, 1 530 37, notices the inscribed pillar stone at Castle Dor, and Carew in his Survey of Cornwall, 1 602, 1 29, gives a quaint little woodcut of the inscription on the Redgate cross-base. Camden's Magna Britannia contains very few illustrations of the inscribed stones, 1 See ' A list of the different purposes for which the Cornish crosses have been re-used.' Langdon, OU Cornish Crosses, 22-24, I2 3- 8 J. R. Allen in Journ. Brit. Arch. Asiac. xliv (1888), 301. 408
