(From a Photograph by Mrs W. A. Lochée.)
On the top of the wall-plate was found a very interesting chrismatory, lately in the possession of Mrs Chesshyre of Barton Court, but now placed in a vestry-drawer used as a museum for curiosities connected with the church. It cannot lay claim to the same renown as the ampulla said to have been used at the baptism of Clovis, when legend relates that the clerk who bore the chrism was prevented by the crowd from reaching his proper station, and, as the moment of unction arrived, St. Remi raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "when lo! suddenly a dove, white as snow, flew towards him, bearing down in his beak an ampulla filled with chrism from above."
Not even the most enthusiastic devotee of St. Martin's could claim this chrismatory as having been used at the baptism of Ethelbert, for it is clearly of the date of the fourteenth century.
At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 16th, 1880, it was thus described:—"It is a brass box 6 inches long, 2 inches broad, and 2 inches high. The lid is high-pitched, with slanting gable-ends nearly equilateral, and surmounted by a vertical crest or ridge pierced with quatrefoils. The extreme height of the lid is 2-⅜
inches; that of the vertical crest is ⅞
inch. The lid is attached behind by two hinges, each ½ inch broad, and of which the raised plates are riveted to the back and lid of the box. The lid is fastened, not locked, by a hasp attached by a plate, and dropping on to a moveable catch on the face of the box. The upper and lower edges of the box, and its ridge, are mounted with mouldings attached by rivets. On opening the lid we found three oil-pots, all of them in fragments, and to none of them are the lids still remaining. At the bottom of the pots, however, are traces of some fibrous material. The pots, unlike the box itself, are of pewter." The necessity of keeping the three oils—(1) the holy chrism, (2) the oil for the sick, (3) the oil for catechumens—in distinct compartments is insisted upon by Archbishop Ælfric: "Ye ought to have three flasks ready for the three oils, for we dare not put them together in one oil vessel, because each of them is hallowed apart for a particular service."
The oil was contained in tow or cotton wool on a metal prong, and so moistened either the thumb of the priest or the person of the sick.