lining was universal even in carly Fonts, is this:-that they were always kept filled with water;* and this could hardly have been done in ordinary cases without the use of lead. Hence, in part at least, arose the use of wooden covers, which were not, as some suppose, mere useless ornaments, but designed to keep the water always fresh and clean. The reason assigned by Lyndwode is propter sortilegia—to avoid magic influences. The earlier Fonts were covered with a flat board, fastened down by staples fixed in the stone, and projecting above the upper margin. These very frequently remain, though the covers have long disappeared from time or violence. Very often the staples themselves have been forcibly extracted, and the stone shattered in consequence. No doubt the covers were locked upon the Fonts by these means. At Wickenby, Lincolnshire, the original fastening remains, consisting of an iron bar, one end of which is thrust through a hole in an upright wooden handle in the centre of the cover, and into a staple at the side, the other end has an eyelet or loop which is padlocked to a similar staple on the opposite side. It does not appear that the lofty spire-canopies of which such exquisite examples remain at Sall and Castleacre, Norfolk, St. Gregory's, Sudbury, Worlingworth, and Elsing, Suffolk, Ewelme, Oxon, Freiston, Lincolnshire, and many other places, were in use before the fifteenth century. That at Elsing is probably the earliest. They continued, however, to be made till a period long after the Reformation; and many exist of Jacobean Σ
- Lyndwode, p. 241.
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