The medieval rite of baptism was a very serious and important ceremony, full of rich meaning and symbolism. Without baptism, there was no hope of heaven and together with the Eucharist it was regarded as one of the two most significant of the seven Sacraments considered necessary for salvation.[1]

The baptismal service was very much longer and more elaborate than it is in the Anglican Church today.[2]  It was in two parts and began in the porch, or outside the door if there was no porch.  The priest made the sign of the Cross three times, recited appropriate prayers and commanded the Devil to depart from the child, often opening the north door, known as the Devil’s door, to allow him to escape.  Jesus’ welcome to children (Mathew 19, 13-15), ‘Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’, was read and the godparents joined the priest in repeating the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary and Creed, in Latin.

The child was then taken into the church, to the font, which was invariably placed in a prominent position just inside the principal entrance (usually on the west side of it), to remind people that baptism is the door by which a child was brought into the Church.[3]  For Penn, the main door in the early Middle Ages was on the south side, directly opposite where it is now.  There was no south aisle and so the font would have been in the nave near the south door.  The door led out into a large porch, of which you can still see the line of the gabled roof above the central arch of the nave.

In the mid-14^th C, a south aisle was added on each side of the high porch.  It had a low sloping roof attached to the outside of the nave.  The porch retained its high gabled roof but would have lost its side walls to allow a continuous new aisle and was presumably extended, if not already long enough, to form a new porch outside the new aisle.  The font is likely to have been moved at that time from the nave into the south aisle, just to the west of the new door from the porch.   There is a photograph of it in that position in 1899.  The font was still there in the 1950s, when it was moved to its present position in front of the west door, partly because it was then believed, although there is no evidence for it, that this was once the main door to the church.[4]

The setting of the font was sometimes enhanced by mounting it on decorated steps, by having an extremely elaborate cover, or even by a ciborium, a canopy of beautifully carved wood or stone.  Penn had none of these additions, but even so, until wooden pews became customary in the 15^th C, there would have been an uninterrupted view of the font across the church.

After lengthy prayers at the font, the priest poured holy oil into the water.  The godparents renounced Satan and made their profession of faith and the child was anointed with the ‘oil of salvation’ and then baptised, naked, with three immersions in the name of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  It’s forehead was then anointed with sacred chrism (holy oil) and a white chrisom cloth was bound round it as a symbol of the cleansing of its sins, and was kept in place for the following week.  Finally, the child was dressed in a white chrisom robe, which, if the child died within a month, was used as a shroud.  The child was given a blessed, lighted candle, which therefore had the power when lit, to banish the Devil.

At various stages the priest carried out what the Protestants described as ‘dark and dumb ceremonies. He blew air into the child’s mouth as a symbol of the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, blessed and placed salt on the tongue with the words, ‘Receive the salt of wisdom’.  He put his saliva on the child’s ears and lips and made the sign of the cross on head, breast and hands.[5]

The godparents were charged to teach the child the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary and Apostles’ Creed, to return the chrisom and to bring the child to confirmation as soon as the bishop came within seven miles of the church.   They were thereafter regarded as related both to the child and to eachother.  If two godparents of the same child wished to marry, they needed a dispensation to do so.

Holy water was treated with enormous care and reverence.  Not only was the font covered with a lid, but between the lid and the rim there was a font cloth made of linen or silk in order to protect the holy water from dust.  Until 1236, the water was left in the font and changed only twice a year, at Easter and Pentecost.  Thereafter it had to be changed each week and it was not until after the Reformation that the water was changed for each baptism.

The used holy water was drained through a small pipe in the bottom of the font directly into the earth in order to be unsullied by human hands.  There is a ¾ inch diameter drain pipe in the bottom of our font for this purpose.   Godparents who handled the newly baptised child were required to wash their hands before leaving lest any of the chrism adhered to them and the water used for washing was then tipped into the font and down the drain.  After a private baptism in a home, both the holy water and the vessel that contained it had to be either burnt on the fire or carried back to the church for disposal there.

There was an absolute belief in the objective power of sacred things, gestures and formulae, particularly the sign of the cross, to banish the Devil.  One of the parish clerk’s ‘perks’ was the payment he received from every household for taking round a supply of holy water.   It was sprinkled on the hearth to fend off evil, and in byres and on fields and even on the marriage bed to encourage fertility.  Sick animals were given blessed salt to eat and holy water to drink.  Blessed candles were lit during thunderstorms to drive away demons from the agitated air, and placed near women in labour and in the hands of those dying, to keep the Devil at bay.[6]

The Protestants were brutally dismissive of what they saw as this superstitious idolatry.  Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1532 to 1556, was the author of the first two versions of the English Prayer Book.  He was the principal architect of the Reformation until burned as a Protestant martyr by Queen Mary when he famously thrust the hand that had recanted his Protestant belief first into the fire.  It is very largely his baptismal service of 1552 that passed into the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which we still use today, and it was his chaplain who pointed out that in biblical accounts of baptism, there was,

‘neither hallowed font, nor holy water, salt, oil, cream, spittle, candle, or any other part of   papistry’.   Elsewhere, he wrote, ‘For Baal’s priest, before the child can be baptised, bewitcheth the water, shutteth the church door, conjureth the devil out of the poor young  infant, bespueth the child with his vile spittle and stinking slavering, putteth salt in the child’s mouth, smeareth it with greasy and unsavoury oil, &c.’

Typical Puritan views were ‘hawlowed oyle is not better than the Busshop of Rome’s grese or butter’, and ‘holy water, if ther be put an onyon therunto, it is a good sawce for motton’[7]

[1] These were baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, matrimony and holy orders.
[2] I am particularly grateful to W.Norman Paul who has been the source of many fruitful ideas, through correspondence;  his book  Enjoying old parish churches, I (1996); and his article  ‘English fonts and font covers: developments in styles and designs’, The  Local Historian 23, No 3 (Aug 1993).  J.G.Davies, The architectural setting of baptism (1962) provided much useful background. Elliott Viney, until recently the President of the Bucks. Arch. Soc., who knows Penn church well, has kindly commented helpfully on the typescript.
[3] J.G.Davies, op. cit., pp. 61-3
[4] Conversation with the Rev. Oscar Muspratt, Vicar of Penn 1944-89
[5] J.G.Davies, op. cit., p.92
[6] Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars (1992), pp.280-1
[7] J.G.Davies, op.cit., p.94

© Miles Green, January 2004.

The font derives its name from the Latin fons, meaning a spring of water and it often provides one of the oldest pieces of evidence for the age of a church because it frequently survived the extensive expansion and re-building of the medieval period. There were good reasons for this.  It could survive because it was not part of the fixed structure;  it would be expensive to replace;  and as we have seen, the importance of baptism as a sacrament meant that parishioners tended to want to keep the font, hallowed by use over generations.

In 1240, in a dispute between Merton Priory and the Turville family, about who had the right to appoint the priest, Penn is referred to by Merton Priory as a capella or chapel of the church at Taplow.[1]  This is significant when considering the font because mother churches jealously guarded their lucrative rights to baptism as well as to burial, marriage and other ceremonies that brought income to the church.  Thus a capella parochialis would usually have neither font, bells nor graveyard.[2]

There is no doubt about Penn’s early status as a chapel of Taplow.  The question is when was it separated from Taplow?   In 1183, Geoffrey de Turville, the Clerk (priest) of Taplow, agreed to pay Missenden Abbey £3 yearly from the revenues of Taplow church.  The agreement was signed in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Hugh, Clerk of Penn, was also present as a witness.  He was described in exactly the same way as Geoffrey de Turville with no suggestion of subordinate status or of any obligation to contribute.[3]
It seems unlikely that a humble curate would be invited to such a prestigious occasion and appears to suggest that Penn was already independent.   A few years later, in 1197, when the Turvilles relinquished their lordship of Taplow to Merton Priory together with the patronage of the church, they specifically added that ‘the vill of La Penne which was said to be a part of Taplow, remained with the Turvilles ‘and the Canons can claim nothing therein.’[4]

Previous articles (Parts 5 to 8) have concluded that there was an earlier wooden church on Church Knoll.  As a chapel, it is unlikely to have had a font.  The lack of a font was not then seen as an unusual difficulty because Rome required baptism to be confined to Easter and Pentecost except in cases of extreme need.  Moreover, in theory, baptism and confirmation were still parts of one rite and so required the presence of the Bishop, necessarily intermittent because Penn came under the Bishop of Lincoln who had to cover a huge diocese.   Papal legates were still trying to enforce this rule well into the 13^th C, although the English, believing that the unbaptised child had no hope of heaven, had for centuries obstinately preferred early baptism and this ultimately led to a need for a font in every church.[5]

The absence of any trace of a churchyard at Church Knoll, or of any burials, despite considerable digging of deep foundations in recent years, supports the likelihood that it was a chapel.  In contrast, our present church has the rectangular churchyard of almost exactly one modern acre that was entirely typical of a Norman layout, known throughout the Middle Ages as ‘God’s Acre’.[6]

[1]  Curia Regis Rolls (1240), XVI, 1423
[2]  J.G.Davies, op. cit., pp.57-8
[3] Missenden Cartulary, I, 245
[4] Feet of Fines, 8 Rich I, Case 12
[5] J.G.Davies, op.cit.,p.53.  Even in the 16^th C, both sacraments were administered together to both the future Queen Elizabeth and her brother Edward VI
[6] W.Norman Paul, Enjoying old parish churches, I (1994), p.59

© Miles Green, January 2004

The dating of the various components of the font matches this historical data (Previous article, ‘Historical Background‘). 
All the principal authorities (RCHM,[1] Clive Rouse,[2] NADFAS[3]), agree that the Purbeck marble stem and base are 12^th C (Clive Rouse thought late 12^th C).  They also agree that the circular platform on which it stands is formed of a ring of clunch (hard chalk) with a filling of red brick and cement that looks like it was once the base of a Norman, 12^th C, pillar. There was no font cover shown in a pencil sketch of the font made in 1819.[4]  The present octagonal, oak lid is Victorian, its shape laid down by the leaders of the Gothic Revival as representing the seven Sacraments and crucifixion.

The Purbeck marble of the stem and base is likely to have come from one of three sources – the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, Petworth in Surrey or Bethersden in Kent.  Ready-made pieces were produced in these factories.  It is not a true marble but a hard limestone chiefly composed of fossilised fresh water snails varying in colour from creamy white, grey, light brown, green and blue.  It can take a high polish and can be darkened to a near black with varnish or oil.  The beauty of the highly polished marble was preferred to richness of design, but if left in damp conditions, over the centuries it flakes and roughens, as ours has done, and this is why Purbeck marble went out of fashion in the 14^th C.[5]

The dating of the cup-shaped bowl itself presents problems.  It is not a solid lead font, it is a stone font covered with lead.  The stone is completely concealed, inside and out, under a layer of lead, which is generally dated to the16th or 17^th C, presumably on the basis that graffiti scratched into the lead on the outside of the bowl, run from 1626 to 1776.  RCHM assumed that the bowl itself was probably 16^th or 17^th C; Pevsner declared it to be a bowl of uncertain date[6]; Clive Rouse thought that the lead was 16^th or 17^th C, possibly covering an original bowl; and NADFAS declared the bowl shape to be of the Transitional period, c.1200.

However, there is a visible clue to the age of the bowl that all these eminent authorities appear to have missed.  A church law, dating from 1236, required medieval fonts to be kept lidded and locked to prevent the theft of the holy water, highly valued for cures and for witchcraft.  The lids were required to be secured by a padlocked metal bar across the top.  The metal bar usually passed through two large iron staples set opposite eachother in the top rim of the font.  This arrangement was probably in general use before 1236, but thereafter, throughout the Middle Ages, Bishops’ visitations included a check that it had been done.[7]

This requirement ceased abruptly with the Reformation, after which belief in holy water was regarded as idolatrous.  The staples were removed, often leaving either a stump or a hole, and their presence is firm evidence of a pre-Reformation font.   We have exactly this evidence on our font.  On one side of the rim there are two 5/16 inch diameter stumps standing just proud under the lead about 2 inches apart, and directly opposite there is one corresponding sunken hole of similar size.

We can therefore be confident that we have a medieval stone bowl whose dimensions (2 ft 2 inches wide, 1 ft deep) and shape are consistent with the late 12^th C.

A particularly meticulous and reliable vicar of Penn, who had supervised the digging of a vault under the east end of the chancel in 1797, reported seeing the date 1177 on a foundation stone.[8]   This accords with:

1. Historical evidence that it was towards the end of the 12^th C when Penn became an independent parish and would therefore have needed its own font.
2. The age of the font.
3. The age of the nave walls as evidenced by the very yellow nature of the mortar.[9]
4. The age of the pair of tall, narrow windows with semi-circular heads in the north wall[10].
5. The age of the three consecration crosses.[11]

We can therefore be confident that our font is as old as the church and that both are over 800 years old.

[1] RCHM (Bucks) 1912
[2] E.Clive Rouse, a former President of the Bucks. Arch. Soc.‘, Notes on the church of Holy Trinity, Penn’ (c.1940). Unpublished, but held in the parish archive in Penn.
[3] NADFAS, Record of church furnishings (1984), compiled by the Thames Group, Bucks.
[4] British Museum Add 36359, f18.
[5] W.Norman Paul, The Local Historian, op. cit., pp.132-7.
[6] Nikolaus Pevsner, The buildings of England, Buckinghamshire (1994), p.595.
[7] J.G.Davies, op. cit., pp.70-1.
[8] British Museum, Add 9411.  Letter, dated 9 Aug 1802, from Rev. John Middleton, Vicar of Penn, to Lysons author of Magna Britannia.
[9] E. Clive Rouse, op.cit., and Record of Bucks (1953-4), 16, Pt I, ‘Notes’, p.51.
[10] These two windows were revealed, bricked in, when the exterior roughcast was removed in 1955, but can be seen in use in a pencil sketch of 1819 in the British Library, BM Add 36359, f 18.  They seem to be of the Transitional period (1145-89).
[11] E.Clive Rouse, Records of Bucks, op.cit.  He suggested that the crosses were 13^th C  on the assumption that the church had first been built in 1213.  This date was erroneously based on the earliest record of a vicar available at that time.  However, Ann Ballantyne, his former assistant is a conservator and has worked on these crosses.  She says that they have been repainted and that the original is on an island of the earliest mortar to which she has no difficulty in allowing a late 12^th C  date.

The earliest specific record of the font is a pencil drawing of 1819, which notes that the bowl is lead.[1]  It has not changed in appearance since then.  The font is covered with three separate pieces of lead sheet joined by seams – one flat on the bottom inside with the drain pipe in the centre; another around the inside walls turning over on the top rim; and a third around the outside, hammered into the chamfered shape of the underside.  Many porous stone fonts had inside linings of lead on the bottom and sides, but to cover the outside with lead as well seems to be almost unique and require explanation.  There seem to be two possible reasons – to conceal either decoration or damage.

Fonts were at considerable risk from Puritan zealots at the Reformation, who saw them as symbols of Popish superstition and preferred a simple basin.  They believed that ‘a child could just as well be christened in a tubb of water at home or in a ditch by the way, as in a founte stone in the church’[2]  So many fonts were being damaged or removed that, in 1561, Queen Elizabeth issued a Royal Order requiring that ‘the Font be not removed from the accustomed place: And that in parish churches the curates take not upon them to confer Baptism in basins but in the Font customably used.’[3]

Many parishes defied this royal order but the simpler and plainer a font, the more likely it was to survive.   Penn’s font is far plainer than most anyway, but it just may have decorative carving around the outside which needed to be concealed.  Elsewhere, such carving was sometimes plastered over for the same reason.  There is a mildly encouraging hollow ring when the lead is tapped.

Alternatively, and perhaps more probably, the lead might conceal damage done to the font, either accidentally but more likely deliberately.   There is some denting in two places around the underside of the bowl; the Purbeck marble stem and base have been cemented together at some stage; and the circular stone platform has been badly damaged.  We have no record of when all this damage happened, whether on one or several occasions.  It could have been the result of one of the several moves.  The 1899 photograph shows that the stone platform had already been damaged and it could have been further damaged in the most recent move from the south door to the west door in the 1950s.  However, the damage is also consistent with a violent attack on the font at the Reformation or a century later during the Civil War and Commonwealth.

[1]  BM Add 36359, f18
[2] J.G.Davies, op. cit., p.94
[3] Ibid., p.96

© Miles Green. January 2004.