73 ee ee 
205 
his small volume upon “Church Plate in the Archdeaconry of 
Worcester,” assigns the date 1571 (not earlier) to all the Elizabethan 
plate which he has found, and the same rule will hold good of the 
chalices and patens in Devon and Cornwall (and probably in 
Somerset also), and, indeed, all over England. Archdeacon Lea says 
(Introduction, p. 13): “ They are all nearly of the same pattern, and 
_ have the same ornamented band, though they vary in size from five 
to nine inches high, and they all seem to have been made in 1571. 
There are 84 cups of this date in the Archdeaconry of Worcester, and 
though they are found of the same pattern and with the same 
ornament and hall-mark in every part of England, yet no order for 
their pattern has ever been discovered. And this uniformity, as 
compared with the great variety at other dates, seems to make it quite 
certain that there was a pattern. Now, was the new pattern prescribed 
by the Queen herself? or was it given by Archbishop Parker, or by 
Convocation? or was there a monopoly granted for the provision of 
cups? . . . It was early in 1571 that the Queen was formally 
excommunicated by Pope Pius V. ; might not this great issue of cups 
in that year, and the inscription of 1571 upon them, have some 
connection with this? It might be looked upon as a practical answer 
to the Pope’s Bull. It is this 1571 cup which is known in some places 
as ‘the £5 cup,’ from an old tradition that £5 was granted to poorer 
parishes for its purchase. In confirmation of this, it may be said that 
_ this sum would have been about the price of the larger size of this cup 
at that time.” I have thus traced the origin of the dearth of ancient 
- Church Plate. 
