and so the Priory of Tewkesbury came to be advanced to the high honour of an Abbey. This honourable Robert Fitz-Haimon, after having founded this famous monastery, and performed many great actions, died, and went to heaven in the month of March, in the year 1107, and in the seventh year of the reign of king Henry I., and his body was buried in the chapter house of Tewkesbury, as was then the custom of many reverend and great noblemen. His body was afterwards received by the care of Robert, the third Abbot of blessed memory, into the church, and was honourably interred between two pillars on the right hand of the presbytery. This was done about the year 1241; and afterwards, in process of time, Thomas Parker, the eighteenth Abbot, in the year 1397, caused a chapel of stone, admirably carved, to be erected over him, and round the top to be written: En ista Capella jacet Dnus Robertus Filius Hammonis hujus loci Fundator,' and appointed mass for the dead to be celebrated every day, with the col

lect for the founders, Have mercy on us Lord, &c.' in perpetual memory of their founder and his wife."

When we remember how Robert FitzHaimon was associated with Abbot Gyraldus, in his pious intentions of founding the Abbey of Tewkesbury; how he abandoned the profession of arms to become a benefactor to his church, endowing it with his vast possessions, and employing the declining years of his life in its services; we are not surprized that so much veneration should be paid to his memory, or that Abbot Parker, 300 years afterwards, should evince his grateful estimation of his character by building an ornamental chapel over his tomb, and instituting a daily sacred service for the dead. To Abbot Parker, who was a man of refined taste and pious, we are inclined to attribute the erection of this Cross; and the conjecture receives support from the circumstance, that the costume and style of architecture are those of the fourteenth century, the period of Parker's labours.

From the foregoing considerations we conclude that this Cross is an historical monument of no common order, which was erected by Abbot Parker, at the close of the fourteenth century:

1st, As a testimony to the dependence of the church and parish of Amney Holy-Rood, to the Abbey of Tewkesbury :

2nd, To authenticate the title of the said church and parish: and

3rd, To perpetuate the memory of Abbot Gyraldus, and Robert Fitz-Haimon, the pious founders of the Abbey of Tewkesbury.