The first English antiquary who is known to have called attention to this class of relics is Thomas Gardner, who, in his History of Dunwich (1754), has given several engravings of leaden pouches or ampullæ found on the shore near that town; he describes them as "small portable leaden vessels, called by some Pilgrims' Pouches, by others Lacrymatories, thought to hold liquid Relicks or Tears;" those engraved he attributes to the shrines of St. James of Compostella, Our Lady of "Walsingham, St. Thomas of Canterbury, &c. and concludes, " but their proper Name, Use, and Dependency, I leave to the Opinion of the Curious." The " Curious " appear however to have thought little of them, and it has not been till comparatively recently that relics of this kind have been properly investigated or rightly understood. In the year 1836 a great many were discovered in making the approaches to New London Bridge, some of which passed into the British Museum and other collections, especially into that of Mr. Charles Roach Smith. That gentleman communicated a memoir on the subject of these antiquities to the British Archaeological Association[1] in 1816, and has since published several other notices relating to them in the Collectanea Antiqua.[2] In 1849 Mr. John Gough Nichols made some observations on such objects in his edition of Erasmus' Pilgrimages to "Walsingham and Canterbury, and the subject has also been alluded to in Canon Stanley's Historical Memorials of Canterbury. The discovery of antiquities of this description has generally taken place in rivers : they have been found not only in the Thames, but also in the rivers at York and Lynn ; as well as in those on the continent, especially in the Somrne, at Abbeville, and the Seine, at Paris. The foreign examples have been noticed by Dr. Rigollot, of Amiens, and in the Bulletin Monumental by M. Hucher.[3]
Although the subject of Pilgrims' signs has thus engaged the attention of several archaeologists, I am not aware that they have been brought prominently before the Fellows of our Society ; and I may, therefore, perhaps, be allowed to give a short summary of what research has brought to light on the subject. No custom during the middle ages was more completely identified with the everyday thought and life of all classes, than that of making pilgrimages to
favourite shrines. For this the earlier part of the year was usually selected, when
- ↑ Journal of British Archæol. Assoc. vol. i. p. 200. Sec also Wright's Archæological Album.
- ↑ Collectanea Antiqua, vol. i. p. 81, pi. xxxi.–xxxiii., p. 115, pi. xliii. ; vol. ii. p. 43, pi. xvi. xix. ; vol. iv. p. 165, pi. xxxiv.
- ↑ Rigollot, "Monnaies des Eveques des Innocents." Paris, 1837. Bulletin Monumental, tom. xix. p. 504. A work has lately appeared entitled "Notice sur des Plonibs histories trouves dans la Seine, par Arthur Forgeais.' Paris, 1858," in which many specimens are described and engraved.
