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A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE latter stamps, and have black-letter smalls, the ornamental capital letters being re- stricted to the initial letter of each word, and the stop between each word omitted ; there is one exception on which there is said to be only stamps, without any letters ; but one of FIG. 4. FIGURE OF HORSE ON A BELL AT DORCHESTER (OxoN.). the stamps on it, to be mentioned directly, shows its place to be among later bells, and that it is not one of the group already re- viewed. First in this group comes the tenor at Hambleden (Bucks), with the same inscrip- tion as the Chertsey bell above mentioned, except that it is in ' mixed Gothic,' as just described. The tenor at Hughenden (Bucks) has : CRIST[?] BAPTISTA CAMPANA GAU- DEAT ISTA. The last letter of Crist- is doubtful ; it is not e as in Gaudeat, but looks more like a long c or f. A bell at Felpham, Sussex, has : <% SIT NOMEN DOMINI BENE- DICTUM. All the remaining bells of this group (or it is possible the adoption of a fixed form of inscription may show a change of founder) take the form of an invocation : SANCTE (or SANCTA so and so, according to whether the saint addressed be a male or female) ORA PRO NOBIS, with a few modifications such as ORA abbreviated into OR, one or other of the stops belonging to the founder being used as the sign of abbreviation ; or in other cases the entire ORA PRO NOBIS is omitted. There were until recently three bells of this group in Berkshire, the tenors at Appleford and Drayton, the latter now regrettably melted, and one at Ruscombe (with the above noted abbreviation). Bedfordshire has (or had re- cently) two of these bells ; Buckinghamshire, four ; Hampshire, eleven ; Oxfordshire, one ; Surrey, two ; and Sussex, two. From this point certain names of owners of this foundry have been recovered, and it seems possible to sort the bells among their respective founders. An additional stamp 414 now comes into use, the shield bearing a bell, with the letters R.L. on either side and W underneath (Fig. 5). The latter letter obviously stands for Wokingham, but the identity of R.L. was only discovered by Mr. Stahlschmidt noticing an item in the Eton College accounts, 1 under date 1448, of a payment to Roger Landen, of the town of Woking- ham, for casting 30 Ibs. of bronze for flues, and for pro- viding a portion of it. Although this entry does not refer to the casting of a bell, it is extremely improbable that there were two founders having the same initials in Wokingham at the same time. The bells which I suggest are by Roger Landen have the same ' mixed Gothic ' letterings, the inscription usually but not always, taking the form of an invocation as before, with the two stamps previously used, and the addition of the ' R.L.' shield. I know of no example in Berkshire, but there are (or were recently) sixteen in other counties, viz., Oxfordshire, three ; Bedford- shire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, FIG. 5. STAMP OF ROGER LANDEN. Somersetshire and Surrey, two each ; and one example apiece in Hampshire, Hertford- shire and Sussex. Besides a few possible additions not yet discovered, there may be one or two others belonging to this group, confusedly described by Mr. Ellacombe in his Somerset, etc. 2 H. W. Clark, History of Cambridge University, i. 405, footnote. 2 See Church Bells of Buckinghamshire, p. 55, footnote.