72 ON- DERBYSHIRE PLUMBERY, OR WORKINGS IN LEAD. 



for baptismal purposes. The lining of the stone font with lead 

 was an invariable necessity, for the font used always to be kept 

 filled with water, and this could not have been done without the 

 use of such a lining. But lead sometimes played a still more im- 

 portant part in this connection. The material of a font, according 

 to the Council of Lerida and Ivo the Canonist, was to be of hard 

 stone, without porousness or any fracture ; the bowl was never to 

 be of wood which is absorbent, or of brass, which is subject to 

 tarnish with rust, but if of metal, tin was to be used. Bronze fonts, 

 however, became common in Germany and Belgium, and there 

 are some specimens of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; but 

 they were rare in England and France. There was a celebrated 

 one of copper at St. Alban's, brought there in 1644, from Holyrood 

 Chapel, wherein the royal children of Scotland used to be baptized. 

 England has a single and most interesting example of a brass font 

 at the church of Little Gidding, near Oundle. There used to be 

 a font of silver at Canterbury, which was carried to Westminster 

 Abbey for royal Christenings ; there is also a small silver font in 

 the church of St. Mary de Castro, Guernsey. Queen Elizabeth 

 gave two presents of golden fonts, one to Mary Queen of Scotland, 

 and the other to Charles IX. of France, each costing one thousand 

 pounds. 



In England, however, at an early date, another metal was occa- 

 sionally used for fonts, namely, lead. The only other part of 

 Christendom, so far as we are aware, where lead fonts were ever 

 in use is the north of France, and these seem to have been im- 

 ported in a finished condition from England, and are found in 

 districts where we know that there was considerable intercommuni- 

 cation between the Religious Houses of the two countries. There 

 are some good examples of leaden fonts in the museums of Rouen 

 and Amiens. 



English fonts of lead are chiefly of the Norman period ; recent 

 attention to the details of ecclesiology has considerably extended 

 the list. About the beginning of the present century, it was stated 

 in the Antiquarian Itinerary that only five were known. In 

 Simpson's Ancient Baptismal Fonts (1828), eight are mentioned. 



