FONTELAUTUS
IT may seem in fact, it must seem strange to have included in a volume of notices of remarkable Devonshire characters a biography of an infant who did not attain to the age of two years; but I leave the reader to judge from the sequel whether I should have been justified in omitting a notice of Fontelautus.
For an account of the life and adventures of this precocious infant we are obliged to refer to the following work, published 1826: Subversion of Materialism by Credible Attestation of Supernatural Occurrences … Pt. I. Memoirs of Fontelautus, infant son of Prebendary Dennis, comprising his demoniacal obsession, and diversified apparition, with his father's ante-nuptial vision and revelations. Pt. II. Supernatural Anecdotes of various Families' Farewell Apparitions, Supernatural Fire tokens … By Jonas Dennis, B.C.L., Prebendary of the Royal Collegiate Church of Exeter Castle."
Prebendary Dennis hurls his son Fontelautus as a bomb into the camp of atheists, materialists, and rationalists. If Fontelautus does not shatter their unbelief, they are past arguing with, past praying for.
Prebendary Dennis begins with the ancestry of Fontelautus, who was derived in direct lineal descent from Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell, the rapacious and insatiable devourer of ecclesiastical estates, made fat on the plunder of Church property by Henry VIII.
