io"> s. ii. A. 27, IDG*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
171
Paine, who died in 1747, it remained at the
house he occupied in Church Street, and was
used as a water cistern until 1823, when it
passed into the possession of Capt. Saunders.
It is an octagon, having upon its faces a
series of quatrefoils, two in each panel. The
new font is a replica of the ancient bowl. A
charming etching of the old font in 1853, as
it stood in a garden, from an oil sketch by
Henry Wallis, will be found in Mr. F. G.
Fleay's 'Life and Work of William Shake-
speare,' 1886. A. 11. BAYLEY.
MR. PAGE may like to know that while waiting to be ferried across the Trent from East Butter wick to West Butter wick, Lines, in September, 1901, I was shown the octa- gonal bowl of an old font in the yard of Mr. Outram, a mason of East Butterwick. My informant told me that it was formerly in the grounds of the vicarage, Messingham, a village about four miles to the east of East Butterwick ; but I was unable to ascertain whether it was originally in Messingham Church or not. CHARLES HALL CROUCH.
5, Grove Villas, Wanstead.
Desecrated fonts exist by the hundred. But upon what authority does W. T. H. assume the one at Sileby, in Leicestershire, to be Saxon ? Paley, in ' Illustrations of Baptismal Fonts ' (1844), whilst not denying that fonts of that date may possibly exist, is unable to quote an example, and adds : " We know from Bede that stone fonts were not u^ed in churches in his time." The Venerable Bede is said to have died 27 May, 735.
HARRY HEMS.
Fair Park, Exeter.
There must be few old churches whose original fonts have not been cast out at some time or other since the Reformation, though many have been put back in the last forty or fifty years. There can be little doubt that, as a very general rule, the fonts were treated, -at the change of religion, only less sacri- legiously than the altars ejected and turned to profane uses, when not destroyed. They had been consecrated by Catholic bishops, with rites described by the Reformers as " Popish greasings," and were therefore under the same ban as the altars.
JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.
Monmouth.
Under the heading of 'The Old Font of Beckenham Church,' Hone gives the following <along with an illustration) in cols. 772-3 of his ' Table Book' :-
"A font often denotes the antiquity, and fre- quently determines the former importance, of the church, and is so essential a part of the edifice, that
it is incomplete without one. According to the
rubrick, a church may be without a pulpit, but not
without a font ; hence, almost the first thing I look
for in an old church is its old stone font. Instead
thereof, at Beckenham, is a thick wooden baluster,
with an unseemly circular flat lid, covering a sort
of wash-hand-basin, and this the 'gentlemen of the
parish' call a 'font' ! The odd-looking thing was
' a present ' from a parishioner, in lieu of the ancient
stone font, which, when the church was repaired
after the lightning-storm, was carried away by Mr.
churchwarden Bassett, and placed in his yara. It
was afterwards sold to Mr. Henry Holland, the
former landlord of the 'Old Crooked Billet,' on
Penge Common, who used it for several years as a
cistern, and the present landlord has it now in his
garden, where it. appears as represented in the
engraving. Mr. Harding expresses an intention of
making a table of it at the front of his house : in
the interim it is depicted here, as a hint, to induce
some regard in Beckenham people, and save the
venerable font from an exposure which, however
intended as a private respect to it by the host of
the ' Crooked Billet,' would be a public shame to
Beckenham parish."
Later (col. 813) Hone writes in connexion with his visit to West Wickham Church, Kent :
" Worst of all and I mean offence to no one, but surely there is blame somewhere the ancient stone font, which is in all respects perfect, has been re- moved from its original situation, and is thrown into a corner. In its place, at the west end, from a nick (not a niche) between the seats, a little trivet- like iron bracket swings in and out, and upon it is a wooden hand-bowl, such as scullions use in a kitchen sink ; and in this hand-bowl, of about twelve inches diameter, called a font, I found a common blue-and-white Staffordshire-ware halfpint basin. It might be there still : but, while inveigh- ing to my friend W. against the depravation of the fine old font, and the substitution of such a paltry modicum, in my vehemence I fractured the crockery. I felt that I was angry, and perhaps, I sinned ; but I made restitution beyond the extent that would replace the baptismal slop-basin."
The following recent instance is worth perpetuating in C N. <fc Q.' On 1 August I was epitaph-hunting in the local country churchyards, among those visited on this day being that of Idle, near this city. In this churchyard I saw what appeared to be two old fonts, so during the week I wrote to the vicar (the Rev. W. Marshall) for particulars. The inquiry elicited the sub- joined reply :
" You would see an old font at the corner of the vicarage lawn. It was in the old church some 70 yards away (built 1630, on the site of an ancient one which had become ruinous. We use it now as a Sunday school. The Puritans had it some years). The font, I understand, was placed here when the present parish church, 1830, was opened on a new site. Closer to the house is another font, made for this new church, and superseded by a votive one of a much finer kind. It is not often you see two fonts near a parsonage of this kind. I found them here when I came."
