Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/202

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Devon Notes and Queries, 145 108. An Unidentified Coat in Tiverton Church. — The Rev. Edwin S. Chalk sends us a description of a shield of arms carved on a stone weighing about a hundredweight, which he found behind the tomb of George Slee in St. Peter's Church, Tiverton. The blazon appears to be : — Per pale of three, i. P$r fess, in chief arg. two bars ax. over all a bend componie or. and gu.^ Lregh or Leigh, Co. Cheshire. In base, or. three lions passant sa., Carew. 2. Gu. a chev. betw. three birds ( ? coots) arg,, Biccombe. ^. Ak a lion ramp, sa.^ Stapleton ? Leigh of Cheshire bore, oj?, two bars arg. a bend compon^ or. and gu. But the Devonshire line, from the Visitation and this shield, appear to have made the field argent and the two bars azure, a good difference for a younger son. The Leigh pedigree, as given in Vivian's Visitations of Devonshire, does not show the matches on this shield, as it ends with Robert aged five years, and George aged two yesurs, in 1620. Thomas Carew married the heiress of Hugh Biccombe of Crowcombe, gu. a chevron betw. three birds arg, ; and his son, John Carew of Crowcombe, married in 1589 Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Southcote of Bovey Tracey. The lion rampant sable is somewhat difBcult to identify: if collared and chained or, it would be Meridith. The arrangement of this coat is somewhat peculiar. Per pale of three is a man and his two wives. The first and third being per fess may indicate that he had four wives, the first a Carew, or this may be intended to show a quartered coat dimidiated. A.J.J. 109. Font at High Bickington. — One of the best examples of a Norman font in Devonshire may be seen in the parish church of St. Mary, High Bickington, some nine or ten miles southward of Barnstaple. Apathy and neglect, however, in years past, and coats galore of whitewash upon even thicker ones of stucco and cement, apparently applied with almost insane persistency by successive generations of well meaning but mis- guided and unappreciative churchwardens, had rendered it anythmg but fair to see. Latterly, ominous cracks occurred, suggesting that at no distant period of time the old relic and sturdy Christian symbol that had stood there for nearly a thousand years, would fall in fragments to the ground. Happily, the Rev. Ernest Walter Field, M.A., rector of L