The Font. The term Font signified the fountain or spring where persons assuming the Christian profession were anciently baptized. There does not appear to have been, in the earliest ages, any vessel of this sort attached to the place of public worship. The ordinance was celebrated just as convenience served, in private houses, or at the side of rivers, or in pools, or springs. But in Popish times the font, or vessel for containing the holy water of baptism, became often a very splendid ornament to the churches, and a very important part of the sacred furniture. Since the reformation it has not been thought necessary to remove these vessels, because they answer a useful purpose, and in some instances are very fine specimens of sculpture. The font in the chapel of Saint Margaret is of stone. Its shape is octagonal, and it is ornamented with quatre-foils and roses. It possesses considerable elegance, and is a work of some antiquity, as will be seen by the annexed wood-cut, but we have not ascertained its age The Bells. At the north-west end of the chapel is a low square tower, in which there is a peal of six bells. The words Nola & Campana, given to bells used in churches, are said to have originated in the circumstance of church-bells being first invented by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola in Campania, about the year 400. "The people were first called together to prayers, at stated hours in the day, by the sound of a bell, by a decree of Pope Sabinian, the successor of St. Gregory*." "Bells, in the time of popery, were baptized, anointed Oleo Chrismatis,' exorcised, and blessed by the Bishop; these and other ceremonies ended, it was believed that they had the power to drive the devil out of the air, calm. storms and tempests, make fair weather, extinguish sudden fires, and raise the dead †." "The dislike of spirits to bells is thus mentioned in the Golden Legend by Wynken de Worde: "It is said the evil spirytes, that ben in the regon of thayre, doubte moche when they here * Faulkner's Fulham. Weever's Fun. Mon. p. 118. Lon. 1767. the belles rongen; and this is the cause why the belles ben rongen whan it thondreth, and whan grete tempests and outrages of whether happen; to the ende, that the fiends and wyched spirytes shold be abashed and flee, and cease of the movynge of tempeste." The bells in the chapel of St. Margaret were re-cast, and the chimes set, in the year 1716: the expense was defrayed by voluntary subscriptions. The following names are among the list of subscribers: 10 10 0 The Right Honble Charles Lord Os- Inscriptions on the Bells. No. 1. 10 15 0 Dan. Norton gave the cariage of the old and new bells to and from London. R. Phelps made these six Bells 1716. Mic. Browne Mic. Ravis Chappel Wardens. J. Wolfe, M.A. Vicar, J. Jacques, Lecturer of Uxbridge. |