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CO. Somerset, which Chalice bears the annual letter for 1479. It is, therefore, not 

 unreasonable to suppose that the same maker who made the Nettlecombe 

 Chalice in 1479, and Dean Darby's in 1496, also made the Bacton and Old Hutton 

 Chalices, somewhere in or between those years, for be it remarked that Old 

 Hutton, Dean Darby's, and Bacton Chalices have identically the same "toes." 

 For reasons which it would take too long to state here, I prefer to consider the 

 Bacton Chalice to be of the latter rather than of the former date, that is, to have 

 been made between 1490 and 1500. 



The next questions are : how did it get to Bacton ? and how came it to 

 remain there when scarcely a piece of mediaeval plate remains elsewhere? Upon 

 this point I would direct your attention to the engraved words which may be seen 

 on the Chalice. The engraving of Our Blessed Saviour on the Cross with hands 

 drawn up over the head to fit the shape of the hexagon is found on most 

 mediaeval Chalices, but the two words engraved on two hexagons are not so easy 

 to understand. One is obviously John, the other was suggested in London to be 

 Caputt or Capell: i.e., the head of St. John; or the Capella, Chapelry of 

 St. John. The first would have no obvious meaning ; by the secimd we might 

 understand that the Chalice once belonged to a Chapelry of St. John. I may 

 say passim that Bacton Church is de<licated to St. Faith. 



The fourth letter is, however, almost certainly "u"not "e,"and to Mr. Fallow, 

 of Redcar, I am indebted for the hint tliat the name was probably John CapuU or 

 Capell, the donor of the Chalice. In the Inventories of Winchester College he 

 had found that there was once a Chalice inscribed with the name of "Johannes 

 Bedill," a benefactor to the College, and again at Lincoln Minster that Dugdale 

 had recorded a Chalice " having a scripture in the bottom Johannes Cynwell." 



Here then wore two Chalices— both long ago destroyed— inscribed with the 

 donors' names, but the Bacton Chalice is probably the only one now existing in 

 England, having the name of the giver engraved on it. I followed up Mr. Fallow's 

 kind liint, and knowing that the family of Capels, of How Caple, had been an 

 influential one, sought the aid of Prior Eaynal, of Belmont, when he most kindly 

 searched the valuable MSS. of the late Mr. Robert B. Phillipps. Here, he 

 informs me, he finds record of John CapuUe or Capell of the How Caple family, 

 Mayor of Gloucester in 1484. This date might well fit the period of the Bacton 

 Chalice, but it may Le asked, what has the Mayor of Gloucester to do with 

 Bacton ? In answer to this question, with much diffidence, I venture to suggest 

 that John CapuUe, Mayor of Gloucester, gave the Chalice to the Fraternity at 

 New Llanthony near Gloucester, that it was by them transferred to their brethren 

 at Old Llanthony, and that the priests of Llanthony either gave it to Bacton or 

 left it there for sacramental use. Bacton in common with most of the adjacent 

 parishes, was, I believe, dependent on Llanthony Abbey, as regards both civil 

 and ecclesiastical rights. But the Chalice may have been given to Bacton by a 

 member of a family of Capel, apparently an influential one at Peterchurch in 

 Henry VIII. 's reign. I find in the late Mr. Bird's MSS., Vol. iii., p. 73, an extract 

 from Mr. Berrington's memoranda to the eifect that Sir Richard Cornwall, 

 Knight, sold lands at Halton [Howton?] and Didley, in the parish of St. 



