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BOLT-TON.ebuses are often met among Gothic sculptures, but not in such frequency, or with an amount of humour to claim any great attention here. They are almost entirely, as in the case of the canting heraldry of seals, of late date, being mostly of the 15th and 16th centuries. They are often met as the punning memorial of the name of a founder, builder, or architect, as the bolt-ton of Bishop Bolton in St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, the many-times-repeated cock of Bishop Alcock in Henry VII’s. Chapel, the eye and the slip of a tree, and the man slipping from a tree, for Bishop Islip, Westminster; and others well known. In the series of misericordes in Beverley Minster, there are arma palantes of the dignitaries of the Church in 1520. William White, the Chancellor, has no less than seven different renderings of the pun upon his name, all being representations of weights, apparently of four-stone ponderosity. Thomas Donnington, the Precentor, whose name would doubtless often be written Do’ington, has a doe upon a ton or barrel. John Sperke, the Clerk of the Fabric, has a dog with a bone, and a vigilant cock; this, however, is not a name-rebus so much as an allusion to the exigencies of his office. The Church of St. Nicholas, Lynn, had misericordes (some of which are now in the Architectural Museum) which have several monograms and rebuses. Unfortunately, they are somewhat involved, and there is at present no key by which to read them. The least doubtful is that given below.