Leicester No. 2 / Ledecestre

There are ten entries for Leicester [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SK5804/leicester/] [accessed 18 August 2015]; one entry reports two churches and 3/4 hide of church lands in it; two other entries report two additional churches in each; another entry mentions no church but includes a priest among the households. Carte (1792) writes in a letter dated 21 January 1755 to 'Archaeologia' about the paradoxical situation in which many churches found themselves when "upon or after the Restoration" they had to re-purchase the very fonts they had discarded during the worst excesses of the Reformation. Carte (ibid.) mentions one such example: "In my papers concerning Leicester I have some memorial of the sale of the font in the church of St. Martin, and also of the purchase of it again for the use of the parish." Carte (ibid.) mentions that the only ornament he recalls are "two or three cinquefoils in basso relievo upon the font in St. Martin's." Later still in the same source Carte describes the canopy over the font: "there is an octagonal cover of oak of different angles, raised one above the other, and rising gradually in height, decreasing in their dimensions towards the the center, and terminating in or upon a pyramid of wood, at the top of which was erected or set a c[r]oss pattée fitchée gilt, but this was afterwards taken away, and instead thereof a carved pigeon placed and painted white, by whose order or advice I know not" {Carte (ibid.) indicates that the replacement probably took place in his own lifetime]. Bond (1908) [re-telling the same story?] refers a story about the old stone font of St. Martin's: the old stone basin was sold in 1645 to buy a fashionable "bason" [plain, wash-basin like]; a few years later, in 1662, the old stone basin had to be bought at a loss from the buyer to be re-installed in the church. The transcribed entries of the parish accounts appear in Parker (1850). The Leicester Research web site [http://uk.geocities.com/st_martins_leicester] notes the addition of a new font to this church in 1849. The Victoria County History (Leicester, vol. 4, 1958) notes: "The advowson of St. Martin's was presumably one of those given in 1107 to the college of St. Mary de Castro and transferred in 1143 to Leicester Abbey. [...] The church is first mentioned in 1220, when it was already appropriated to the abbey. [...] The earliest known church of ST. MARTIN was a cruciform building of the 12th century [...] The font, presented in 1860, stands under the gallery. A footnote in the VCH entry (ibid.) reads: " Inscrip. on font. The carvings are reputed to be those of the Queen, the Bishop of Peterborough, and the donor's relatives: White, Dir. Leics. (1877), 301."