Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/349

 COUNTIES OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM. 255 shears have been considered to indicate the profession of a clothier. This trade must have indeed been a flourishing one in olden times, for I find the emblem of the shears on thirty- five grave-stones out of a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty of which I have ruljljings or drawings. In fact, clothiers must have been as numerous as soldiers, even in those days when the profession of arms was so universally followed. I was thus led to examine the emblems wnth which the shears were generally found to be associated. It is not often that any other symbols occur upon the same stone, the shears appear generalli) but not ahvat/s on the right hand of the cross. The emblem most frequently found with the shears is undoubtedly the key, and in two instances double keys are placed below the shears. Now I do not know^ how far I shall be justified in assuming the key or keys to be like- wise an emblem of the female. One of the grave-stones at Bake well church, figured in the Archaeological Journal, vol. iv. p. 49, is an example of the shears and key combined. Supposing these Avere merely symbols of trade, we must in this instance, as in the one figured above from Bamburgh, believe the deceased to have followed the two not very con- gruous employments of a locksmith and a woolstapler. The next point was to ascertain if the shears w^ere ever associated with any emblem unsuited to the female character, as with the sword, or with the bugle horn, or with any un- doubted emblems of a trade. I have, however, never in a single instance found the sword and shears on the same stone lohere there was but a single cross', nor have I seen the shears associated with the other symbols here alluded to. In one instance I found the shears forming the sole shaft of a cross or rather rosette engraved on what had evidently been a tomb-stone. Further researches elicited still more convincing proof. In differei'^t localities in Northumberland and Durham I have met with laro-e monumental slabs bcarino; two crosses, and even more. It would naturally occur to all that these double • In the 'fourth volume of iSurtees' arms of the cross, the shears are phiccd he- History of Durham, p. 47 of Memoir of low. On the reverse, opposite to the sword, Robert Surtees, is a rude engravinp; of a are two letters prohahly the initials of the small cross or headstone, on wjiicli are hnshand's name, and opposite to the shears s<-uli)tured hoth the sword and the shears. two other letters for the initials of the fe- The sword occupies the intersection of the male.