St. Albans No. 1 / Villa S. Albani

There is an entry for St. Albans [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL1407/st-albans/] [accessed 5 October 2016], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. A font here is noted in Camden's Britannia (1607) [cf. infra]. According to Simpson (1828) this font, now disappeared, was originally in the chapel at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and was the font in which the children of the kings of Scotland were baptised. "In 1544 it was carried off by Sir Richard Lea, captain of the English pioneers and presented to the church of St. Albans; it was afterwards destroyed by the Roundheads." This metal font was supposedly made of brass or copper, although Andre (1882) notes: "A bronze font formerly existed at St. Alban's Abbey, but perished at the time of the Commonwealth" [i.e., 1649]. This same fate is noted in Britton's Dictionary of 1838: "it was destroyed by the Puritans". Forrest (1865) traces "the history of the brazen font". The background of the font and its circumstances are related in Galloway (1878-1879). The Victoria County History (Hertfordshire, vol. 2, 1908) mentions a font here only in a foot note related to the two eastern bays of the nave: "The font stood here till 1870, and this part of the church was known as the baptistery." The VCH entry further notes that there were parish functions within the abbey from early on: "The townsmen of St. Albans appear to have had rights in the abbey church at an early date and probably had their services in the nave of the Saxon church. When Paul de Caen, the first Norman abbot (1077–93), rebuilt the abbey church he appears to have provided for the wants of the lay folk by building the chapel of St. Andrew on the north of the nave. This chapel was rebuilt and enlarged in consequence of the alteration by Abbot John de Cella (1195–1214), and again rebuilt about 1454. St. Andrew's chapel served the same district as the present parish of St. Alban, formerly called St. Andrew's parish. The staff consisted of a vicar, usually called the warden, who took the lesser tithes, the abbot being rector. There were priests or chaplains to assist the vicar, varying in number from two at the beginning of the fifteenth century to four at the end of that century". A font here is listed in Bond (1908), after Simpson. Wall (1912) mentions that Camden's Britannia of 1586 spoke of "the brass font in which the children of the kings of Scotland used to be baptized, as standing in St. Albans Abbey Church in his day, bearing a Latin inscription by Sir Richard Lee. Wall (ibid.) also mentions that "Weaver testifies to its being in the church in 1631". Wall (ibid.) then quotes from Newcourt's Repertorium: "The brass Font at St. Albans was taken away by one Hickman, a vile ironmonger, a justice of the peace proper for those times." Wall (ibid.) finally quotes Fuller's Worthies (1662) about the replacement font: "There is a wooden one to supply its place, which is said to be made of the same shape with the old font". The present font appears to be a black and white marble vessel of classical line, a roughly hemispherical basin of white marble decorated with a few human heads at the upper rim, a gadrooned pattern all around the underbolw, on a quadrangular pedestal base of black marble.