broad, but P.7 most of all. It is most likely due to bad spacing, which left the niche too wide, and it had to be filled. Still we must remember, when considering breadth, that in those days there were no fireplaces and no warming of buildings and it is on record that sometimes enormous quantities of clothes were worn. It was said that in life Becket looked stout, but when undressed for burial he was found to be very emaciated.

We have now completed the circuit of the font and have come back to Adam and Eve. If we count the serpent round the tree as one, the font has twelve figures. I divide these into two groups of six. One group, now east, but I should think originally south, facing the south door, has in the centre the Fall and Expulsion from Eden, represented by four figures-Eve, the Serpent, Adam, and the Angel. This group is flanked by a figure on the one side representing the promise of redemption and defeat of Satan, and on on the other the way to redemption, through baptism.

While Christianity was gradually replacing paganism, adult baptism was much more usual than that of infants. Children were mostly allowed to grow old enough to answer for themselves. In those early times, too, baptism was performed by the bishop; and except in times of great conversions baptisms were normally done only at fixed times-on Easter Eve and Whitsun Eve. Baptism by parish priests (or their equivalent) in parish churches was legalised only in the middle of the 8th century. Cuthbert archbishop of Canterbury in the year 747 ordered all priests to baptise. But churches and priests were

He had on eight garments, one over the other: vide Spence's History of the Church of England, ii., 204.

still few and far between, and it was not till the time of Bishop Ethelwald (818-828) that the itinerant clergy, working the diocese from the cathedral of the see, were abolished in Mercia and local arrangements made for the cure of souls. Charlemagne (768) ordered fonts to be set up in all churches having the cure of souls, and all children to be baptised before they were a year old. The English King Edgar, in 960, decreed that baptism must not be delayed beyond 37 days from birth. From the 11th century onwards children were expected to be baptised within a few days of their birth. But it often meant a serious journey. The parish church might be a long way off. The Kirkby baby would have to be carried 6 to 12 miles or more, first by difficult paths through bog and moss. then over the low swampland of the River Alt, often flooded and impassable for weeks together, Next came the bleak and exposed Longmoor, then more clay and mud beside the Tue brook, till finally they climbed the steep hill to Walton. And the ceremony over, all the steps had to be retraced. One can quite understand that parents often did not get their children baptised quite as soon as the priest thought they ought.

Το

relieve the people from this trouble, and even danger, the Kirkby font was made, and one half of the bowl was carved with sculpture setting forth the doctrine of infant baptism, the possibility of which it now brought almost to their doors.

It may be argued that baptism cannot be intended as the priest wears a chasuble. Indeed, in all the representations of baptism I can recall the priest is vested in alb or surplice and stole only, but they are all late examples, and I have

already pointed out that the restricted use of the chasuble was comparatively late.

If we accept this interpretation of this half, the other half becomes, at any rate, symmetrical, consisting of six figures, as follows:-At each wing is a tonsured priest with short chasuble and book in hand (P.1 and P.6). Next to these, on either side, is a figure carrying a long staff, while in the centre stand the two mitred saints with their emblems and the serpents' heads beneath their feet.

The imagery on the walls, windows, screens and elsewhere in the churches were the lantern slides and picture palaces, and more, the very books of the middle ages. By them the doctrines of the Church and the lives of the saints and moral homilies were taught. The people could not read books, but they read into all these symbols what they had been taught from infancy. Winchester font illustrates symbolically the Eucharist and scenes from the life of St. Nicholas of Myra. The Brighton font tells of baptism and the Last Supper, with scenes from the life of the patron saint of the church. The Curdworth font, too, has incidents connected with the dedication. Kirkby font illustrates a subject of Christian doctrine-the reason for and necessity of infant baptism, and, if I am right, the other side is connected with the life of the saint whose name was given to the chapel in which it was placed -St. Chad, the patron also of the diocese in which Kirkby was until 1541. St. Chad, or more correctly Ceadda, was a very popular saint, especially in Mercia. To him its conversion to Christianity was attributed. His life of simple piety and humility seems to have appealed to all. Over 30 churches are dedicated to him, chiefly

in Mercia.1 The cathedral of the then great Mercian diocese, at Lichfield, contained his shrine, and was dedicated to him, and what is more the glorious Prince of the Apostles," Peter, had been replaced in the dedication by the simple, meek and lowly Chad, who, when removed from being bishop of York by that masterful Greek, Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury, simply replied that he gladly relinquished it, as he had never felt himself worthy of so high an office, and had only accepted it from obedience. Another evidence of the respect in which Chad was held is that his cross is the chief charge on the arms of the see.

Travellers on the London and North-Western Railway all know that a view of the cathedral of Lichfield, with its three spires, a mile away to the west, is obtained both before and after passing through the cutting in which the Trent Valley station lies. But perhaps some are not aware that just half-way between them and the cathedral is the square tower with corner turret of Stowe church, and beside it in a garden is St. Chad's Well, the water of which flows into one of the pools which add so much to the picturesqueness of the cathedral and its surroundings. St. Chad's Pool (or Stowe Pool), in which, before there was any church or font, he was wont to baptise, has now been enlarged into a reservoir, and the sacred water that used to work miracles is now, I am told, conveyed in pipes to Burton-on-Trent for beer-making.

By the church was Chad's cell, where he hung his clothes on the sunbeam. There he meditated and prayed, there the angels visited him,

1 When Offa conquered Powys (Shropshire) and took its capital, Pengwern (now Shrewsbury), he gave the site of the palace of the Princes of Powys for a new church to be built in honour of St. Chad.

and the plague seized him, and he died in 672, and beside it he was buried. Bede says: "Chad died on March 2nd, and was first buried by St. Mary's church, but afterwards when the church of the most holy Prince of the Apostles, Peter, was built, his bones were translated to it." This St. Peter's church is supposed to have been the first on the site of the present cathedral, and to have been built by Bishop Headda (691-720), but really nothing is known of it. History is quite a blank for hundreds of years. We do know from recent excavations that whatever it was, it was succeeded by a Norman church, around the foundations of which the present Early English and Decorated cathedral is built. Who built the Norman church is not known, but there is a tradition, or little more, that it was Roger de Clinton (bishop 11291148) who "built it new' in honour of St. Mary and St. Chad." So, as I have already said, St. Chad replaced St. Peter as patron saint of the diocese in the 12th century, apparently a few years before the Kirkby font was made. It may be that among other things the sculpture was intended to record this fact, showing as it does St. Peter standing aside (may I say, approvingly ?) while St. Chad gives the blessing. Another possibility has been suggested. It might have reference to the fact that Chad was twice a bishop, once of St. Peter's see of York, and secondly of Lichfield.

I think, however, it is more likely that it refers to the great controversy of Chad's time-the struggle for uniformity in the Christian Church -the throwing over of the rule of St. Columba and the acknowledgment of St. Peter as prince of the Apostles, as Wilfrid put it, or as King Oswy said in a cruder, personal and more interested