A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



latter stamps, and have black-letter smalls, 

 the ornamental capital letters being re- 

 stricted to the initial letter of each word, and 

 the stop between each word omitted ; there 

 is one exception on which there is said to be 

 only stamps, without any letters ; but one of 



FIG. 4. FIGURE OF HORSE ON A BELL AT DORCHESTER (OxoN.). 



the stamps on it, to be mentioned directly, 

 shows its place to be among later bells, and 

 that it is not one of the group already re- 

 viewed. 



First in this group comes the tenor at 

 Hambleden (Bucks), with the same inscrip- 

 tion as the Chertsey bell above mentioned, 

 except that it is in ' mixed Gothic,' as just 

 described. The tenor at Hughenden (Bucks) 

 has : CRIST[?] BAPTISTA CAMPANA GAU- 

 DEAT ISTA. The last letter of Crist- is 

 doubtful ; it is not e as in Gaudeat, but looks 

 more like a long c or f. A bell at Felpham, 

 Sussex, has : <% SIT NOMEN DOMINI BENE- 

 DICTUM. 



All the remaining bells of this group (or it 

 is possible the adoption of a fixed form of 

 inscription may show a change of founder) 

 take the form of an invocation : SANCTE 

 (or SANCTA so and so, according to whether 

 the saint addressed be a male or female) ORA 

 PRO NOBIS, with a few modifications such as 

 ORA abbreviated into OR, one or other of the 

 stops belonging to the founder being used as 

 the sign of abbreviation ; or in other cases 

 the entire ORA PRO NOBIS is omitted. There 

 were until recently three bells of this group 

 in Berkshire, the tenors at Appleford and 

 Drayton, the latter now regrettably melted, 

 and one at Ruscombe (with the above noted 

 abbreviation). Bedfordshire has (or had re- 

 cently) two of these bells ; Buckinghamshire, 

 four ; Hampshire, eleven ; Oxfordshire, one ; 

 Surrey, two ; and Sussex, two. 



From this point certain names of owners 

 of this foundry have been recovered, and it 

 seems possible to sort the bells among their 

 respective founders. An additional stamp 



414 



now comes into use, the shield bearing a bell, 

 with the letters R.L. on either side and W 

 underneath (Fig. 5). The latter letter 

 obviously stands for Wokingham, but the 

 identity of R.L. was only discovered by Mr. 

 Stahlschmidt noticing an item in the Eton 

 College accounts, 1 

 under date 1448, of 

 a payment to Roger 

 Landen, of the 

 town of Woking- 

 ham, for casting 30 

 Ibs. of bronze for 

 flues, and for pro- 

 viding a portion of 

 it. Although this 

 entry does not refer 

 to the casting of a 

 bell, it is extremely 

 improbable that 

 there were two 

 founders having the 



same initials in Wokingham at the same time. 

 The bells which I suggest are by Roger 

 Landen have the same ' mixed Gothic ' 

 letterings, the inscription usually but not 

 always, taking the form of an invocation as 

 before, with the two stamps previously used, 

 and the addition of the ' R.L.' shield. I 

 know of no example in Berkshire, but there 

 are (or were recently) sixteen in other 

 counties, viz., Oxfordshire, three ; Bedford- 

 shire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, 



FIG. 5. STAMP OF ROGER LANDEN. 



Somersetshire and Surrey, two each ; and 

 one example apiece in Hampshire, Hertford- 

 shire and Sussex. Besides a few possible 

 additions not yet discovered, there may be 

 one or two others belonging to this group, 

 confusedly described by Mr. Ellacombe in 

 his Somerset, etc. 2 



H. W. Clark, History of Cambridge University, 

 i. 405, footnote. 



2 See Church Bells of Buckinghamshire, p. 55, 

 footnote. 



