—————e ee 
By the Rev. EB. H. Goddard. 339 
such matters. This they accordingly did, and the story proceeds 
that, the cunning man being quite equal to the occasion, gave 
them the following excellent advice,—that they should return 
home and let it be published throughout the parish and neighbour- 
hood, (it was apparently suspected that the thieves were not 
strangers,) that the chancel door would be left open for a week, and 
if during that time the plate had not found its way back into the 
chest from which it was taken, the cunning man would forthwith 
come up from Corsham with his divining rods and all other things 
needful and would most infallibly discover the thief. There is no 
record as to what happened next, nor is there much need of any, for 
the plate is safely at Broad Hinton still. 
But the dangers which threaten the ancient plate of our Churches 
at the present day arise less from burglars than—as I have already 
said—from the small value too often placed upon it by its natural 
guardians, and it was in the hope of at least mitigating this danger 
‘by calling attention to the matter and putting on record the pos- 
sessions of each parish Church that the Bishop of Salisbury some 
five years ago first set on foot investigations into the Church 
plate of this county by sending round to every parish in his diocese 
a form of return to be filled up with the number, size, inscriptions, 
and hall marks of all the sacred vessels belonging to the Church. 
It was found, however, that in a very large number of cases the 
information given by these returns needed to be supplemented or 
corrected by a personal visit from someone with some previous 
knowledge of the subject. Accordingly throughout the northern 
half of the County of Wilts,—including that large part of it which 
belongs to the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol,—the Churches have 
been systematically visited by one or other of the gentlemen in- 
terested in the work (Mr. Bell, Mr. Plenderleath, Mr. Ponting, and 
myself), and careful drawings have been made of almost every 
piece, over nine hundred in number, whether of ancient or modern 
date, in the hope that tke information thus gained may, under the 
able hands of Mr. Nightingale, be built up into a history and 
inventory of the Church plate of Wilts, and published very shortly 
as a companion volume to his “ Church Plate of Dorset.” 
