One of the earliest examples of the abbatial staff in England is on the tomb of Abbot Vitalis (died 1082) in the cloister of Westminster Abbey, and another early instance of its use is supplied by the effigy of Abbot Andrew (1193-1200) in Peterborough Cathedral. Parker, the last Abbot of Gloucester, lies buried in the Cathedral there, and Philip Ballard de Hanford, the last Abbot of Evesham, in Worcester Cathedral, each with his crosier.
Before leaving this subject an effort should be made to remove a misconception. A common modern fallacy is that there is a distinction between the crosier and the pastoral staff, the latter name being assigned to the crook of a bishop, and the former to the processional cross borne before an Archbishop. The late Dean Hook, if he was not the originator of the idea in an article in his "Church Dictionary," at any rate did much to propagate it thereby, and it is now frequently found in books of reference. But the use of the words in the past is all against it. It is true that crosier comes from the Latin _crux_, a cross, but from the same root too, come crook and crutch; so that nothing can be proved from the derivation. It would seem that the original form of the word was _crose_, as it is given in a quotation used above, whence the chaplain who bore it was a crosier. From this it became the crosier's staff, the crosier-staff, and finally the crosier; all having reference to the crook of Episcopal Authority.
After William, Duke of Normandy, came in with great toil and rout of war, on Senlac's evil day, it was not difficult to apply the poet's lines to many a proud prelate of the Anglo-Norman epoch:--
"Princely was his hand in largess, heavy was his arm to smite, And his will was leaded iron, like the mace he bore in fight."
Not that English Bishops had not found it necessary to take the field in pre-conquest times, when the old Danish wars convulsed the island, and the inhabitants suffered severely from the unbridled passion and cruelty of a barbarous and heathen soldiery.
Many a grand old Anglo-Saxon prelate found himself called upon as a Christian and a patriot to take his station in the van of the king's army, to bar the path of the invader, and fence with sword and spear the ancient churches and the fruitful plains of his beloved island.