There were at one time many Saxon fonts, most of which were swept away and replaced in a different form by the Normans. One of the earliest we have is in _St. Martin’s Church, Canterbury_, the lower part of which, built of twenty-eight wedge-shaped stones, is Saxon or Romano-British, the upper part being Norman put on to heighten it, with the old Saxon rim crowning it, though by some this is called Transitional. This font was inside the church when King Ethelbert was baptised by St. Augustine in the ninth century. But we get back still further when we find runic inscriptions, as on the wonderful square tub font at _Bridekirk_, Cumberland, and on the little low hollowed stone at _Bingley_, Yorkshire, attributed to the eighth century, and having three lines of runes which are read thus:— “Eadbert, King, ordered to hew this dipstone for us, pray you for his soul.” He reigned 737 to 758, when as Æthelred King of Mercia in 675, had done at Bardney Abbey in the previous century, he resigned the crown and took the tonsure. _Mellor_, in Derbyshire, has a Saxon font, but without inscription. The remarkable font at _Bag Enderby_, Lincolnshire (_see_ Chap. XXX.), with its Scandinavian myth, is unique among fonts, though it has counterparts on many of the pre-Norman crosses in Northumbria. The font at _Deerhurst_, Gloucestershire, is also a very early one, and covered with Celtic scroll-work, this, though of the same kind, is bigger than the usual plain little stone tubs which, as a rule, mark the Saxon period. The Norman fonts also are mainly of tub form, but often ornamented with cable moulding and arcading, as at _Silk Willoughby_, Lincolnshire. [Sidenote: LINCOLNSHIRE FONTS] The lead fonts, twenty-nine of which are in existence, are all Norman; most of these have arcading all round and figures within the arches; perhaps the best is at _Dorchester_, Oxon, showing the apostles. But at _Brookland_, in Romney Marsh, there is a double row of arcading with the signs of the Zodiac above, and figures cleverly emblematic of the months below. At _Childrey_, Berks, the figures are without arcading and represent bishops with crosiers, all quaintly of the same attenuated shape, and in very high relief. Berkshire and Oxon have several of these lead fonts, and Gloucestershire exhibits six, all cast in the same mould; Lincolnshire has only one at _Barnetby-le-Wold_, which is noticeable, however, as being the largest of them all, thirty-two inches in diameter; that at _Brookland_ being the deepest with sixteen inches.