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488
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Southern England has on the whole less striking pieces to its
credit. Ifthe fragments ofthe Reculver cross are contemporary
with its base, set in the pavement of a seventlvcentury Saxon
church, then Kentish sculpture had reached a
fluency and ease
of representation unknown farther north; but stylistically these
date and
pieces would fit more easily with a late tenth/century
the evidence they present is too problematic for any firm state^
ment. Certainly the treatment of drapery in them is much more
sophisticated than it is in two manuscripts of the midxeighth
century, the Codex Aureus at Stockholm and the Canterbury
Psalter, now Cotton MS. Vespasian A.I in the British Museum.
In them the figures are based on classical
prototypes, beyond any
question of relapse into barbaric formulas, though the native
idiom can be seen in the decorative initials. In the kingdom of
Wessex, steadily growing in importance in the ninth century,
we have few certain pieces ofevidence. At Codford St. Peter,
between Warminster and Salisbury, there is a cross shaft with
the figure ofa man holding a branch in one hand and some small
instrument in the other; it is probably an early example ofone
of the seasonal labours. It has a beautiful dancing rhythm
and the whole design is most ingeniously adapted to the space.
Nothing at all like it survives, but it is hard to place stylistically
except as nintlvcentury work (PL 92 &). No doubt there were
many other such imaginative works swept away in the dex
structive inroads of the Danes that filled the middle years of
the century.
The return ofbetter^ordered times under Alfred and his suc^
cessors gave an opportunity for a renewal ofthe arts. The most
famous object associated, though not certainly, with the great
king himself is the Alfred Jewel, now in the Ashmolean
Museum, inscribed *
Alfred had me made*. Here the elaborate
setting is composed ofbarbaric motifs, though the technique of
the cloisonne enamel may come from continental examples.
Other influences are apparent: between 909 and 916 ^Elflaed of
Wessex, the wife ofEdward the Elder, commissioned an em/
broidered stole and maniple, which later were given to the
shrine ofSt. Cuthbert and enclosed in the saint's tomb, where