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2 THE CHURCHES OF CORNWALL The story of the saints of Cornwall and the wonderful way in which they impressed their names on the local nomenclature, as well as on the churches themselves, is one of great interest and of no small difficulty. It would be idle, in this brief book on the old parish churches, to enter even upon the threshold of such a subject ; 1 suffice it to say, that in no other part of the British Isles are there near so many actual remains of ancient crosses, chapels, holy wells, and sanctuaries or oratories, all testify- ing to holy and devoted lives, as is the case with Cornwall. There is not a single parish in which such remains cannot be found, in greater or less degree. It may, however, be succinctly added that Corn- wall can boast not only of possessing a far larger number of inscribed monumental stones than any other county, but that it also contains a far greater number and variety of EARLY CROSSES. The in- scribed stones, from the 5 th or 6th centuries down to the 10th or nth centuries, number 43. The erect early crosses of great variety of design are upwards of 350 in number. There are also four coped stones in the respective churchyards of St. Buryan, Lanivet, Phillack, and St. Tudy ; and five early cross slabs in the churchyards of Lanivet, 1 The best and most recent work on this subject is Mr. W. C. Borlase's The Age of the Saints : A Monograph of Early Christianity in Cornwall (1893).