Fig. 161.
Fig. 162.
In 1862 several ingots of pewter were dredged up from the Thames near Battersea Bridge, and in 1890 more were discovered. Two are in the York Museum and the rest are in the British Museum (Archæol. Journal, 48). They are stamped with the monogram of Christ in two forms, with one of which is associated the words, “Spes in Deo” (Fig. 161), and the name “Syagrius” also appears. Silver and copper ingots discovered in this country have official stamps (non-Christian), and it may not be doubted that the pewter marks were also official. A lead seal in the Reading Museum, found in the Civil Basilica at Silchester, has an XP monogram, which is very similar (Fig. 162), and this, too, was probably official. The most interesting parallel known to me of the stamps on the pewter ingots is a seal from a wine jar found at Naucratis, in Egypt (Nau. ii. pl. 22), where we find “Spes in Deo” in a circle around a cross (Fig. [163]). The circular form had long been used for official stamps (cf. a brick stamp with the name of Nero in Reading Museum). Pewter ware was popular at the end of the fourth century, and this is probably the date of our ingots. The name which appears on them was in use at a late time. One Syagrius, “last of the Romans,” was driven from his kingdom of Soissons by the Franks in A.D. 480.
Fig. 163.
Fig. 164.
At the Guildhall Museum are two small terra-cotta lamps (Nos. 17 and 18), each having the Christian monogram in the centre (Fig. [164]). These are not of British make, but they may have been imported in the Roman age. (A lamp which Sir L. Gomme made much of, with a little view of a city on it, was also of foreign origin, and there is no reason to think that the view had any connection with London.) Two other lamps in the Guildhall collection (Nos. 54 and 117) are described as having “limbs of cross on body, perhaps early Christian,” but I have not found these and some other objects which it is said may possibly be Christian.