Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/307

 10* 8. V. MARCH 31, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of Fortescue on a tablet in the south aisle of Little Cressingham Church, Norfolk.

Possibly MR. CURTIS is aware that on an altar-tomb in the chancel of Swaffham Church there are four shields, bearing re- spectively : I. Three sacramental cups with wafers, shield of the Blessed Sacrament. II. Shield of the Holy Trinity. III. Three boats. IV. Three wimbles. Of these, Nos. III. and IV. form a rebus, wimbles being instruments essential to a wright or worker in wood. The tomb is that of John Bote- wright, D.D. ('Church Heraldry of Norfolk,' by the Rev. Edmund Farrer, 1885, p. 96).

The Rev. John Collinson, in his * Hist, and Antiq. of Somerset,' 1791, vol. ii. p. 198, says that Bishop Beckington, who was a native of the village of that name, took for his device, still to be seen in many parts of Wells, a beacon with a tun.

In St. Alban's Abbey the tomb of Abbot Whethamstead is commemorative of his great services in the repairing and embellishment of the fabric, as well as of his abbacy, arid bears representations of ears of wheat, in allusion to his name; while Abbot Ramryge's tomb bears the carvings of rams with the syllable "rydge" carved on their collars. Similarly, the Abbot of Ramsey's rebus was a ram in the sea.

Roger de Sempringham, Prior of Malton, circa 1189, is probably rebussed in the inscription which may be seen on the capital of a column in the north wall of the church of Old Malton, in Yorkshire. It is only part of the original inscription, and of what there is, a part is purposely inverted apparently.

On the central tower of Canterbury Cathe- dral is sculptured the rebus of John Morton, Arcjibishop of Canterbury from 1486 to 1500, consisting of the letters MOR and a tun (Britton's 'Cath. Antiq.,' Canterbury, p. 39).

Mr. H. W. Rolfe exhibited at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association on 26 Jan., 1853, a portion of painted glass from Canterbury containing a rebus which con- sisted of a robin in a tree, with the letters R T. (Robin Tree).

A rebus consisting of a church, or kirk, above a cask or tun, over the postern of the gateway forming the entrance to the Deanery of Peterborough, has led to the supposition that the gateway was erected by Robert Kirton or Kirkton, Abbot of Peterborough.

Camden's ' Remains,' p. 179, says that the "picture on glass of Roger Wall, Dean of Lich field, kneeling before our Lady, was in a south window there, close by a fair embattled wall (under which, near to him, sate a Roe-buck, with OER written on his side), this Distich in a scroule coming from his mouth :

Gignens virgo Deum; decus, Lux, & Flos mulierum Digneris Marum semper servare Roffcnun."

Mr. Norris Deck, in a paper read at the Cambridge gathering of the Arehseologicai Institute in 1854, gave as other examples the names of such ecclesiastics as Goldstone, Nailheart, Silkstede, and Winchcombe, all forming rebuses (Literary Gazette, 15 July, 1854, p. 660). John Newland or Naileheart, Abbot of St. Augustine's, near Bristol, in 1510, bore upon the "escocheon " in his seal a human heart proper pierced with five nails, in allusion both to the quinque vulnera and to his own surname. See James Dallaway in his 'Heraldic Enquiries,' 1793, p. 121.

In a stained-glass window in the chapel at Lullingstone, in Kent, where there are some splendid monuments of the Peche and Hart families, occur the arms of Sir John Peche, the lord deputy, who is represented also in an elaborate monument as a knight in armour in a recumbent posture. These arms consist of a lion rampant surrounded by a garland of peach- branches, the fruit bearing the letter e, which in French would form Pechee

In one of the windows of the chapel of Our Lady in Gloucester Cathedral is the rebus, in the form of a comb and *' ton," of Thomas Compton, Abbot of Cirencester. In other instances a tun or barrel occurs with the comb.

The rectory house of Buckland, in Gloucestershire, 5| miles from Chipping Norton, was built in 1520 by William Grafton, who was then rector, and whose darce (?) or rebus, the graft of a tree issuing from a tun, is displayed in one of the hall windows.

Those which do not occur in churches are perhaps innumerable those of the early typographers, for instance, like Middleton, or like Harrison in Southwark, who hung out his sign of the " Hare and Sun," to say nothing of the armes parlantes in heraldry. Of the use of rebuses in a remote period of antiquity MR. CURTIS is probably well aware. * J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAlL.

Hazelmere, Tooting Common.

In Garsington Church, Oxfordshire(chancel, north side), there is a window with the following device. A shield has a border round it, making small squares in each corner. In the top right hand is a P ; left hand, F ; bottom, S. In the centre is another small square with the letter D. The borders contain the words 4< Non est " three times ; and from each corner to the centre are parallel lines containing the word "est." P= Pater, F = Filius, S = Spiritus, D = Deus.