96 



household book of the Duke of Northumberland in 15 12 orders 

 that " ledder pots be bought for those serving for liveries and meats 

 in my lord's house." Thus in collections of medieval earthenware, 

 it is rare to find dishes or small drinking cups ; they generally 

 consist of pitchers of various sizes and shapes, suitable for bringing 

 large quantities of liquor to table at once : even these are rare. 



In regard to elegance of form and fineness of material, they 

 exhibit a great falling off from the manufacture of the Roman 

 period, when even vessels of the coarsest clay had a pleasing 

 effect. 



Costrels, and cruces, and Jeroboams, and jacks, and kitties, and 

 greybeards are among the various names by which mediseval 

 pottery was known. The costrel was a bottle with ears on either 

 side of the neck, by which it could be slung with a string; a 

 cruce was a little drinking cup ; the greybeards, or longbeards, or 

 Bellermines, were stone pots or jugs with a spreading belly and a 

 narrow neck, on the top of which was represented a rudely 

 executed face with a long flowing beard. These were called 

 Bellermines after the celebrated Cardinal Bellermine, who was 

 the object of much protestant satire ; he was a short, stout, pot- 

 bellied man, of hard features, and he must have been ugly indeed, 

 if the portraits on these jugs are like him. 



There is a broad distinction between the pottery I have been 

 describing to you, and the mediaeval pottery — that lies in the 

 m2X\.tx oi the glaze. The Celtic pottery is unglazed. 



The Roman pottery found in this country is either, like the 

 amphora, unglazed, or is polished, which its hard paste admits of; 

 or is glazed, like the Samian ware, with a coat of some sort of 

 glass, put on so thinly as almost to defy attempts to analyse it. It 

 is mainly absorbed into the ware, and leaves only a faint polish on 

 the surface. 



Glaze is a covering or coating applied to porous ware to make 

 it capable of retaining liquids. And glaze is of two kinds — vitreous 

 or glass glaze, and plumbeous or lead glaze, both of which are trans- 

 lucent. Enamel or tin glaze is also used for the same purpose, 

 and is white and opaque. Copper also produces a brilliant blue 



