A NEW MONUMENT ERECTED.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 963, 2 November 1910, Page 7

A NEW MONUMENT ERECTED.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. London, October 31. ■A new cross, for St. Paul's Churchyard has been unveiled.. It is on the . site of the old "Preaching Cross?' dismantled by order of the Long Porlia- ,.: inent. Mr. Bertram Mackennal, the ' talented Australian, was the sculptor.

PAUL'S CROSS IN THE OLDEN TIME. Old / Paul's Cross was in reality an open-air pulpit, octagonal in'shape, with a leaden roof. From the summit of the .. ill f. arose a cross. The actual site is ■ still marked by. the stone: foundation'of th«- octagonal base. This. "Preaching Cross" was destroyed in 1643, and Jbotli it , and its predeoessor were kno.wn to many ■ generations of London. men and women. There - is in. fact • a' record of the existence of a Paul's Cross as far back, as 1191. It was Bupposfd to mark the spot upon which the folkmotes took place. . In the .. year mentioned William Fitz-Osbert-"de-livered.- an inflammatory, address": at the Cross, "arguing against the, divinity of . the' Crown."' In the course;of the next' century folkmotes 'were held at the Cross, Papal "bulls" were read there, and it ... was thero . that Henry 111 twice took ; leave of the citizens dn the oooasions of his. visits' 1 ; to France.-. It was ; not until 1285 that sermons ' were preached ■■ regularly at 'the Cross.- Thenceforth.it. conr tinued to be used; for ecclesiastical pur- • poses—among which the "penances "of heretics and qthers,: and the burning of ' unorthodox books were included. Jane Shore.did penance at the Cross in..1483. Nearly 40 years later, in 1521, Cardinal. Wolsey listened, in State—from doctors of divinity holding a canopy of cloth of ■ gold over his head—to a sermon preached by ooramand of •. the Pope .at John Fisher, . . Oi&hop of. .Eochester, - against, Luther, while many of the reformer's, books were burned during, the . service.. In 1588 Qileen V.Elizabeth, . "Royally. attended, - " was present at a. thanksgiving service at < the. Cross,for tlis,defeat of the Spanish . Armada. Gardiner, Kidley, and Lati-mer--and, later; • Laud—were' among the famous men-who preached at the Cross, and both Jame3 I and Charles I'.attended, . the "preachings/'.; In. 1633 "the sermons • appointed for-the Cross "were removed to the choir: of the Cathedral, and ten years later the Cross was pulled down. •.'■■■ new "Cross" is quite different in oharacter from, the Old pulpit,. It. takes the form of a tall* Doric, column, upon which "stands a figure ,of St.. Paul. It is . , being erected with .£SOOO bequeathed for the purpose by the late Sir; H. C. Rich-: grds, K.C., .Treasurer of.Gray's Inn...