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Updated: June 22, 2025
The grounds around the church and the ruins are still used for burial, and there are several flat tombstones and altar tombs, with crosiers engraved or carved upon them, which at first I took to be the memorials of bishops or abbots, and wondered that the sculpture should still be so distinct.
Stark-naked vivid little gipsies, as active as monkeys and as full of chatter, though a little wanting in words. Their elders were hidden from the wallowing hippopotami by the crest of the knoll. The human squatting-place was a trampled area among the dead brown fronds of Royal Fern, through which the crosiers of this year's growth were unrolling to the light and warmth.
It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chose a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech, treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken that were just beginning to break their way through the soil. As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going away from me in the direction of Pym.
Not through newspapers and parliaments, not by rubrics and reading-desks: none of the sceptres offered in the world's market-place, nor none of the crosiers there, it seems, can be the shepherd's-crook for this man.
Dress your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper angular draperies.
To my astonishment the persons who now advanced into the vacant space around the mountain fire bore surplices and other priestly garments, mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of Popish and Protestant emblems with which it seemed their purpose to consummate the great act of faith.
As the eye darts into these dusky chambers of death it catches glimpses of quaint effigies some kneeling in niches, as if in devotion; others stretched upon the tombs, with hands piously pressed together; warriors in armor, as if reposing after battle; prelates, with crosiers and mitres; and nobles in robes and coronets, lying as it were in state.
Unshed rains massed on the high tors, but towards the west one great band of primrose sky rolled out above the vanished sun and lighted a million little amber lamps in the hanging crystals of the rain. They twinkled on thorns and briars, on the grass, the silver crosiers of uncurling ferns, and all the rusty-red young heather.
I picture to myself the scene when this place was filled with the conquering host, that mixture of mitred prelate and shaven monk, and steel-clad knight and silken courtier; when crosses and crosiers and religious standards were mingled with proud armorial ensigns and the banners of the haughty chiefs of Spain, and flaunted in triumph through these Moslem halls.
But as four are certainly of thirteenth century date, and one late in the twelfth century, and as thirteen abbots ruled during that period, it may be pronounced impossible to name each one. In one instance this is not very clear. Four have their feet resting on fanciful creatures, which, in three cases, hold the lower ends of the crosiers in their mouths.
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