Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/280

 ''*St. Gregory and Hepworth, and one at Thirsk'' in Yorkshire which rises to the height of twenty-one feet. Sometimes the cover takes the form of a canopy, as at Swymbridge in Devon, and more beautifully in that erected by Bishop Cosin at Durham in 1663. The Sudbury font-cover has doors in it, as we see in the Jacobean cover in Burgh-le-Marsh church, and in the beautiful modern cover at Brant Broughton, both in Lincolnshire.

There were at one time many Saxon fonts, most of which were swept away and replaced in a different form by the Normans. One of the earliest we have is in St. Martin's Church, Canterbury, the lower part of which, built of twenty-eight wedge-shaped stones, is Saxon or Romano-British, the upper part being Norman put on to heighten it, with the old Saxon rim crowning it, though by some this is called Transitional. This font was inside the church when King Ethelbert was baptised by St. Augustine in the ninth century. But we get back still further when we find runic inscriptions, as on the wonderful square tub font at Bridekirk, Cumberland, and on the little low hollowed stone at Bingley, Yorkshire, attributed to the eighth century, and having three lines of runes which are read thus:—

"Eadbert, King, ordered to hew this dipstone for us, pray you for his soul." He reigned 737 to 758, when as Æthelred King of Mercia in 675, had done at Bardney Abbey in the previous century, he resigned the crown and took the tonsure. Mellor, in Derbyshire, has a Saxon font, but without inscription.

The remarkable font at Bag Enderby, Lincolnshire (see Chap. XXX.), with its Scandinavian myth, is unique among fonts, though it has counterparts on many of the pre-Norman crosses in Northumbria. The font at Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, is also a very early one, and covered with Celtic scroll-*work, this, though of the same kind, is bigger than the usual plain little stone tubs which, as a rule, mark the Saxon period.

The Norman fonts also are mainly of tub form, but often ornamented with cable moulding and arcading, as at ''Silk Willoughby'', Lincolnshire.

The lead fonts, twenty-nine of which are in existence, are all Norman; most of these have arcading all round and figures within the arches; perhaps the best is at Dorchester, Oxon, showing the apostles. But at Brookland, in Romney Marsh,