nerally unimportant as the building and
repairing of village churches, were considered deserving of being
recorded.

With regard to the various proprietors of Fontaine-le-Henri, much
information is to be gleaned from Laroque's History of the House of
Harcourt. The laborious author, after having completed his general
account of the Norman nobility, in a single folio volume, devoted four
others to the genealogy and fortunes of this one illustrious family.
From him it appears that, during the period when Normandy was under
the sway of its own Dukes, the parish of Fontaine-le-Henri was in the
hands of the family of Tilly, one of whom is to be found among the
companions of the Conqueror, in his descent upon England. Early in the
thirteenth century, during the reign of King John, they held the
lordship of Fontaine-le-Henri conjointly with the castellany of Tilly.
Mention of them occurs repeatedly in the Ecclesiastical History of
Ordericus Vitalis, as well as in the annals of the abbeys of St.
Stephen and of Ardennes, near Caen; and it was from the baptismal name
of Henry, commonly borne by that branch of them, who were possessors
of Fontaine, that the parish took its present distinctive appellation;
a distinction not a little needed, considering that there are fifteen
other places in Normandy, called by the general name of Fontaine. John
de Tilly, the last of the male line of the family, who were lords of
Fontaine-le-Henri, died about the year 1380: he was succeeded in the
inheritance by his sister, Jane, who, in 1382, married Philip
D'Harcourt, and thus added the property to the immense domains of the
Harcourts.

The first of the plates appropriated to this building, embraces only a
portion of the western compartment of the south side of the chancel,
drawn in rapid perspective, the view being taken from immediately
beneath the corbel-table, for the sake of embracing the soffit of the
arches, and the projecting mouldings. Here, as at Bieville, the lintel
or transom-stone of the arch of entrance[126] assumes the form of a
pediment, but rests upon the jambs of the door-way, on a level with the
capitals. To the instances of a similar formation, adduced under the
preceding article, should be added the very remarkable one at Pen
church, in Somersetshire, figured in the _Antiquarian and Topographical
Cabinet_. On the lintel is sculptured the Lamb bearing the Cross,
enclosed within a circle, flanked on either side by a nondescript