Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/194

ON A MONUMENTAL EFFIGY IN CONINGTON CFIURCH, HUNTINGDONSHIRE. To the important sway exercised in this country over the minds of many in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, by the members of those two great rehgious frater- nities the Franciscan and Dominican, may, perhaps, be traced the ehicidation of practices, once common, yet now not merely obsolete, but the very remembrance thereof altogether so completely sunk in oblivion, that in searching the records of the past, we deem our labom* not mis-spent, if we can here and there find an incidental passage or allusion which may cast even a glimmer of light on certain matters now buried in deep obscurity. For although the difference in arrangement and archi- tectonic featm*es observable in our churches are now, gene- rally, well understood, we stillmeet with exceptions — with peculiarities relating to usages as yet so insufficiently ex- plained, as to be individually regarded, even at this time, as a vexata qua.stio ; and these remarks may be applied to monumental as well as to other ecclesiological remains. Sometimes we have a popular notion professing to explain these peculiarities, the truth or converse of which may be the fact, the former being difficult of direct and positive proof. Whether, or how far, the popular belief, that the cross- legged monumental effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are those of the cruce signati, is correct, is one of those notions. This opinion, general as it is, may be per- fectly true, yet it is formed on vague, and at best inferential evidence, to confirm which we stand in need of some kind of contemporary proof, and this I have never yet been able to meet with ; I have, however, endeavoured in some measure to unravel, and trace to its source, another subject of popular belief, illustrated by a very curious recumbent effigy in Con- ington church, Huntingdonshire, and this is the oj)^^ opera- turn, or virtue which was, in certain of the medieval ages, popularly ascribed to the wearing of, aiul being buried in, the friar's mantle or cowl.