EARLY CHRISTIAN 

 ART AND INSCRIPTIONS 



^T the time of the conversion of central England to Christianity, 

 /% after the death of Penda in 654, what is now the county of 



/ % Northampton formed part of the Anglian kingdom of Mercia, 

 and occupied a diagonal strip along its southern border extending 

 from Peterborough on the north-east to Banbury on the south-west. After 

 the treaty of Wedmore in 878, the kingdom was divided into English Mercia 

 on the west and Danish Mercia on the east, Northamptonshire lying on the 

 Danish side of the boundary between the two.^ It is therefore to be expected 

 that the earlier group ^ of pre-Norman Christian monuments in Northampton- 

 shire will be of Anglian rather than Saxon type, and that the later group ' 

 will be of Danish or Scandinavian type. Probably none of the monuments 

 are older than the time of King Offa, during whose prosperous reign the 

 conditions were more favourable for the progress of ecclesiastical art than they 

 had ever been before.* 



The sites where Saxon churches still exist, or where they are known 

 from historical records to have at one time existed, do not necessarily corre- 

 spond with the sites where sculptured monuments have been found. None 

 of the seats of the Mercian bishoprics ^ were situated within the county of 

 Northampton, but there were religious houses at the following places : — 



Castor (monastery under an abbess in the seventh century). 



Peterborough (abbey founded 650). 



Weedon (religious house presided over by St. Werburgh in the seventh century). 



Oundle (a small monastery where St. Wilfrid died in 709). 



Brixworth (a daughter house of Peterborough, c. 680). 



Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions 



The only inscription of the Anglo-Saxon period now existing in North- 

 amptonshire is upon the font in Little Billing, on the north side of the river 

 Nen, 4 miles east of Northampton. 



The font, which is of local sandstone stained brown with iron, has a 

 round bowl and a round stem with a triple bead moulding between the bowl 

 and the stem, the whole resembling one of the turned baluster shafts of the 



1 See maps in Green's History of the English People. ^ Of the eighth and ninth centuries. 



S Of the tenth and eleventh centuries. 



* Mercia was more powerful and exerted greater power over the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy during 

 the reign of Offa than at any other period. The intimate friendship which existed between Offa and Charle- 

 magne at the time of the reviv.il of learning must have had a beneficent influence on the art of both England 

 and of the Prankish kingdom. 



^ Lichfield founded 656, Hereford 676, Worcester 680, Leicester 680, Dorchester 888. 



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