Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 75 acquaintance with Dartmoor was very extensive, renders the inscription on one side as Syward, and on the other as Bod Bonde and says it marked the "bonde" between the royal forest and the monks' moor. Many years ago I examined these inscriptions with great care, and although they are not easily to be made out, yet on the eastern face, across the arms, I think there is unquestion- ably the word Syward or Siward. It is uncertain whether the second letter is a Y or an I, and the first is not very distinct, but the last four there is not much doubt about. On the western face there is a small incised cross in the centre of the shaft, where it is intersected by the arms, and immediately below this are the letters which have been read as Bod Bond and also as Roolande and by Mr. Spence Bate as Booford but which I was the first to decipher. Siward's Cross, is, as we have already observed, named in the deed of Amicia as one of the boundary marks of her lands, which comprised, among other manors, that of Walkhampton, the village of which name we have already visited. This manor abuts on the forest, and the boundary line is drawn from Mis Tor to the Plym.* The cross, therefore, in addition to being considered a forest boundary mark, was also a manorial one, and when the lands of the Coimtess were bestowed upon the monks, it became one to the possessions of Buckland Abbey. It was this fact that enabled me to read the inscription it bears, and to convince me that the letters on it which have been so variously interpreted simply represent the word Boclond. This opinion I find is shared by all writers who have since had occasion to notice the cross. The name, as already stated, is engraved on its western face — the side on which the monk's posses- sions lay.
- " From Walkhampton to the boundaries of Dartmoor, on the northern
part of Mistor, and thence towards the south by the boundaries of the Verderers (regardorum) of Dartmoor, that is to say, by Mistorhead (Mistor panna), and by Hysf ochres, and by Si wards Cross and Gyllesburgh and Plymcrundla to the Plym.*' Deed of Amicia, Countess of Devon. Dr. Oliver's Monasticon, p. 383 ; Mr. J. Brooking Rowe's Cistercian Houses of DevoHy Trans. Devon Assoc,^ vol vii. p. 355. It would seem as though an endeavour was afterwards made to extend these bounds, for one of the abbots was, in 1478, found guilty by a jury at Lydford of intruding upon the prince's land in Dartmoor.
