The parapet walls are perhaps a later addition. Still it served as a bridge too. Roads from Stamford, Peterborough and Spalding meet at the bridge, and tributaries of the Welland and Nene, now covered in, flow under it. The height of the arches is nine feet, and their span sixteen and a half. It would not require that span now, but the streams were bigger when this bridge was built, for we are told that Henry VI. came to Croyland by water in 1460, and that Edward IV. embarked at the wharf just below the bridge, in 1468, for Fotheringay Castle, which is on the banks of the Nene, a distance of some two and twenty miles by water.
FIGURE ON THE BRIDGE There is a stone bench along the left side of the bridge parapet, as you approach from Peterborough, and on this you find an ancient stone figure seated: it is often called Æthelbald holding a globe in his hand or a loaf of bread; but it is far more likely that it is the figure of our Lord, from the centre of the gable above the great west window of the nave, holding in his hands what Shakespeare in the lines below calls "the sceptre and the ball." The shallowness of the statue and its height—six feet when seated but even the knees only projecting ten inches—make it certain that it was only meant to be seen from the front and at a good height. Moreover, the workmanship of the statue corresponds with that of the other statues on the west front of the abbey.
The rector states as a fact that the west gable of this west front was taken down in 1720, and the statue placed on the bridge, where it must be admitted that it looks very much out of place and uncomfortable. The bridge is said to be in three counties—Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire—so, though the abbey is entirely in Lincolnshire, we can in a few steps leave the county of which Croyland is the last place we have to describe.
The "ball," or orb, is carried by the monarch at the coronation service in one hand and the sceptre in the other as symbols of imperial power. There is no finer passage in English literature than the soliloquy of King Henry V. on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, the last part of which runs thus:—
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
