Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/470

 A HISTORY OF KENT brooch, though the pin is now missing, and the arms are ornamented with leaves attached to a wavy stem, while the centre is raised and slightly tapers. To the centre of each arm is attached a triangular silver plate, engraved with a looped triangle filled with niello, a favourite design in manuscripts' and metal-work in the tenth and late ninth centuries. Another relic of the Danish period is a bronze-gilt penannular brooch' (fig. 23), with- out its pin, found at the North Gate, Canter- bury, at the end of 1901. The terminals were moulded in relief with a geometrical design and grotesque animal heads that are strongly suggestive of Scandinavia, and it may be that '^:L,t™S;a^^ ^^^ brooch was lost by a Northman in the attack on Canterbury in 85 1, the year when the heathen army wintered for the first time in England. At Canterbury also was found the largest 'coin-brooch' known, (fig. 27) enclosing a medal in the style of Eadgar's coinage and bearing the legend NOMINE DOMINI and 4pVDEMAN FECID.' The brooch is of silver, over 3 inches across, and has twelve concentric rings forming a pearled border, while the back is braced with V-shaped strips of silver. The maker's name. Woodman, must have been common enough, and a moneyer of that name was minting at Shrewsbury under Edward the Confessor : the brooch was probably made about 970-80. A remarkable knife of the later Anglo-Saxon period from Sitting- bourne was described by Sir John Evans in 1872.'' It is I2| inches long and has a maximum breadth of i| inches, the tang measuring 3I inches. From the single cutting edge the blade thickens, and the back is inlaid with a strip composed of alternate pieces of silver and brass. The principal face is inlaid with the same metals in panels with a border below, and the owner's name is inserted in two parts : + S GEBEREHT M eAh. On the other face the maker's name is given in a continuous strip, + BIORHTELM ME pORTE, with inlaid borders above and below. While the latter inscription was no doubt executed at the time of manufacture, the former seems to have been inserted subsequently, when the knife passed into the possession of one Sigebereht, if that is indeed the true reading of the name. There is, however, a wide space between S and G, and no signs of an intermediate letter having dropped out. The S preceded by a cross recalls the legends of seals in the middle ages, the letter standing for Sigillum ; but in this connexion it could only have been inserted by mistake, and the name may possibly be GEBEREHT, followed by the Anglo-Saxon for ' owns me.' Here again the reading is uncertain, the more natural ' As Brit. Mus. Egerton MS. 768, opening of St. John's Gospel. = Proc. Soc. Antiq. xix. 298. 3 Ibid. xix. 210.
 * Arch. xliv. 331; Payne, Coll. Cant. in.