A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE suggests that four tongues were fixed to the hinges which were originally four in number round the edge. It will be noticed that the leading motive of the design is a Greek cross, on the arms of which are represented four fishes. Comparison with continental specimens' shows clearly that both the cross and the fish are here symbolic of the Christian faith ; the former taking the place of the earlier Chi-Rho monogram, and the latter long surviving the period of persecution in which it had its origin. Another highly decorated jewel was figured and described in the Gentleman s Magazine^ just a century ago. It had been found five or six years previously, but the locality is uncertain. The original account says it was associated with some human bones at a spot somewhere between Husband's Bosworth in Leicestershire and Welford which stands on the border of Northamptonshire. Whether this brooch was found within the limits of the county is therefore open to question, but the late Sir Henry Dryden made a drawing' of it now among his papers at Northampton and called it ' the Naseby brooch.' The site in that case would still be on the road leading to Bosworth, and would justify the inclusion of the object among the antiquities of Northamptonshire, but no particulars of the discovery are given in the sale catalogue of the Baker collection (1842) to which he refers, and it may be a simple error, as Naseby occurs on the line above. The brooch is in the form of a flat ring, the hollow centre being spanned by the pin. The front is of gold, half an inch in width, with gold filigree and four pearls, each set with a slab of garnet, and is fastened by gold wire to a thin plate of silver which forms the base. But better than any description is the coloured drawing in Akerman's Pagan Saxondom, pi. xxxii. fig. 2, Other minor discoveries in the county are a small urn and iron knife from Thenford, not far from Marston St. Lawrence ; the objects being figured and described as of the Roman period in Beesley's History of Banbury (p. 31), and now preserved at Northampton with one of three similar urns from Cranford. An interesting relic of the late Saxon period is a book-clasp (fig. 7) found on the site of the Cathedral singing-schools at Peterborough and now in the British Museum. It is of triangular form, with a convex surface on which is a raised design of intertwined animals, which constituted the leading ornamental motive in the art of north-western Europe after the combination of Irish interlacing with the animal forms of the Carlovingian Renaissance. A century and a half ago some remains, apparently Saxon, came to light not far from Market Harborough, and are thus insufficiently described in the Gentleman's Magazine : * ' In a gravel pit on the north- east side of Little Bowden field near the river Welland were found several ' Baudot, Sepultures Merovingiennes de la Bourgogne, pll. xii., xiii. and pp. 47, 92.
- 1800, p. 121, pi. iii. fig. I, and 1815, p. 209 ; another drawing is given by de Baye, Industrial
Arts, pi. ix. fig. 5.
- Communicated by the Curator of the Northampton Museum, whose Archaologual Survey of
Northants has been of much service.
- 1757. P- 21.
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