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Updated: June 5, 2025
Had you entered the Council of Henry VII. when Parliament sat at Westminster you would have seen a crowd of mitres and of croziers, bishops and abbots of the great abbeys, among whom, here and there, were some thirty lay lords.
Over this dreadful face, its dust and decay and its mocking grin, hung a crown sown thick with flashing brilliants; and upon the breast lay crosses and croziers of solid gold that were splendid with emeralds and diamonds. How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death!
Out in the open air again, one felt a sensation of well-being, of relief, which one lost on traversing the ruins of the isolated chapel and penetrating, by a cellar door, to the crypt below. This chapel, low, squat, its vaulted roof upheld by massive columns on whose capitals lozenges and bishop's croziers were carved, dated from the eleventh century. The altar stone survived intact.
A quick-tempered, revengeful lot were the men of those Border clans. On the Northumberland side the quarrels were as frequent as they were amongst those hot-headed Scots Kers and Scotts, Elliots and Turnbulls and Croziers. In the sixteenth century one of the most powerful of the clans in the wild Northumbrian country was that of the Reeds of Redesdale.
And Percival Reed, in all innocence, soon heard rumour of a foray by the Croziers, and confided in his friend Girsonfield exactly how he meant to meet it. This information speedily found its way to the Scottish side of the Border, and in Hall of Girsonfield Reed found a more than usually willing supporter.
There were Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size, made of solid silver, each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand to two millions of francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth eighty thousand; there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds, carved in solid silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and eight feet high, all of virgin gold, and brilliant with precious stones; and beside these were all manner of cups and vases, and such things, rich in proportion.
And it should also be observed, that all the ancient reliques preserved in Ireland, whether bells, books, croziers, or other remains, have invariably and without any single exception, been preserved and venerated only as appertaining to the original founders of the churches to which they belonged."
Is not the memory of these ancient insignia preserved in our own day, and may they not have been the original forms of the sceptres of our kings and the croziers of our bishops? Staff of office made of stag-horn pierced with four holes. Staff of office found at Lafaye. Staff of office in reindeer antler, with a horse engraved on it, found at Thayngen.
Things had been going badly with the Croziers. Their beef-tubs were empty. The Borders were evidently going to the dogs. It was no longer possible for any hard-working reiver to make a living on them. Percival Reed would have to get his leave, or it was all up with reiving in Redesdale. To all of these complaints Hall lent a willing ear; nay, more, to their surprise, a sympathetic one.
The Shannon re-echoed with their profane songs and laughter, as laden with chalices and crucifixes, brandishing croziers, and flaunting vestments in the air, their barges returned to the walls of Athlone. In all the Gaelic speaking regions of Ireland, the new religion now began to be known by those fruits which it had so abundantly produced.
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