MEDIEVAL PAVEMENT AND WALL TILES OF DERBYSHIRE. 13 I 



attempted to localize those of Wirksworth and Repton, thereby 

 implying that they were specially struck for these places. Our 

 ex-editor, assuming that the Morley tiles were made at Dale 

 Abbey, thus explains the difficulty :— " There are others [families] 

 who do not seem to have been connected specially with Morley, 

 but whose arms had been struck by the canons [of Dale] either 

 for particular churches, or else because they were benefactors of 

 the abbey. The moulds would subsequently become part of the 

 ordinary stock-in-trade of the kiln-master [Did religious houses 

 have kiln-masters .?] , and would be used whenever fresh tiles were 

 required." But xMr. St. John Hope, writing about the same timd 

 (1878) upon the tiles of the abbey itself, remarked an "absence 

 of any connecting link between the benefactors of the abbey and 

 the arms of many [he might have said, mosl] of the tiles," and he 

 suggested that " most of the moulds were originally made for the 

 monasteries of Leicester and Thurgarton." He might have added 

 those of York, Hull, Burton, Aldgate, and Coventry; and then 

 have asked how Dale came to be possessed of the stamps of so 

 widely distant places. The theory of a travelling company, on 

 the other hand, fully meets the difficulty, and is in accordance 

 with mediaeval usage. By way of example, there are tiles at Dale 

 Abbey bearing the arms of the Cantilupes of Ilkeston (No. i6, 

 plate D). These tiles have also been found at Morley, Ashbourne, 

 Wirksworth, Thurgarton, and Rossington, Yorkshire— places with 

 which, so far as I am aware, this family had no connection. 

 Now suppose the canons of Dale had this tile struck off to com- 

 memorate the gift of the rectory of Ilkeston by a member of this 

 family in 1386, we can understand how the makers, carrying the 

 stamp with them, might use it again for purely decorative pur- 

 poses in distant places. Similarly, the fact that the curious 

 heraldic tile with the three bells, No. 14, plate D, is found so 

 widely spread as Morley, Dale, Lenton, Leicester, and York, is 

 no disproof of Dr. Cox's suggestion, that it was originally made to 

 commemorate John Statham's gift of bells to Morley Church in 

 1454- But while a ducally crowned Hon-rampant was often assumed 

 by the Stathams of Morley after their alliance with the older 



