sides going straight down from the bowl, each panel representing a window with tracery, tending in design to Perpendicular, so that it probably dates from the end of the fourteenth century. The windows are filled with diaper work, and surrounded by a border of quatre-foils and flowing foliage. Other good Decorated fonts are at Strubby and Maltby-le-Marsh and Huttoft, all near Alford. The Perpendicular period is best seen at Covenham St. Mary, North Somercotes, Bourne, Pinchbeck, Leverton, and Benington.
It is on the panels of the handsome fifteenth century fonts that the seven sacraments are carved, leaving one panel for any appropriate subject, and these panels are often real pictures of the methods of the time, and form most valuable records; the pedestal usually has its panels filled with Apostolic figures.
EAST ANGLIAN FONTS It is curious that nearly all the thirty "seven sacrament fonts" in the kingdom are found in East Anglia; those of Walsoken, Little Walsingham, East Dereham, and Great Glenham in Norfolk, and Westall in Suffolk, are specially fine. And the churchwarden's accounts for East Dereham show that no expense was spared on the making; the total of £12 14s. 2d., being equivalent to over £200 of our money.
The sacraments depicted are Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, The Eucharist, Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony, and Extreme Unction. But to return to our own county.
Utterby, near Louth, has an open channel to drain the water off from the font into the churchyard—a very uncommon feature.
Wickenby, near Wragby, retains the old bar and staple to secure the font cover, at the time when the fonts were all ordered to be locked to prevent possibility of the water being tainted by magic. "Water bewitched" is a familiar expression for weak tea. I wonder if it comes from this.
Of later fonts the quaintest is in Moulton church, near Spalding, and now disused. It represents the trunk of a tree carved in stone, the branches going round the bowl and the serpent round the trunk, with Adam and Eve, rather more than half life size, discussing the apple. It dates from 1830, and seems to be a copy of one in the church of St. James', Piccadilly, said to have been carved in marble by Grinling Gibbons.
Mr. Francis Bond, in his charming book on porches and
