$42 Notes on the Church Plate of North Wilts. 
very handsome and remarkable piece was doubtless a domestic cup 
given afterwards for Church use. 
Of the small chalices and patens which were commonly placed in 
the graves of priests in the middle ages—and which are génerally 
of pewter or tin, except in the case of Bishops, when they seem to 
have been of silver—we have an example preserved in the vestry of 
North Bradley Church, which may be of the fourteenth century. 
This little pewter vessel had a broad shallow bowl and spreading 
circular foot, and like the paten accompanying it, is quite plain. It 
was found some years ago in a rude coffin of oak under the arch on 
the south side of the chancel. There are several such vessels at 
Salisbury Cathedral (see vol. xxi., p. 360), but I do not know of any 
others in the north of the county. 
Coming now to the “ decent communion cups” which everywhere 
supplanted the “ superstitious massing chalices” in the reign of 
Elizabeth, we find a fine series in North Wilts, giving examples of 
many of the types of ornamentation then in vogue—though the 
actual number of chalices remaining is not so large as Mr. Nightin- 
gale tells us still exist in the Dorset parishes. The general 
character of these cups may be seen from the examples Nos. 2 and 3 
given in the plate. They were small sized vessels, as a rule, com- 
pared with the large cups which came into fashion at the end of the 
seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century, with deep more 
or less bell-shaped bowls, bearing almost invariably either one or 
two bands of the strap-work engraving, filled with conventional 
foliage characteristic of .the period ; a similar band sometimes en- 
circling the base also. They were always accompanied by a cover 
fitting the cup, which was also used as the paten,—the handle serving 
as a foot when so used. Sometimes there is a belt of foliage on the 
cover, as in Fig. 2, whilst on the handle or foot is commonly inscribed 
the date when the vessel was acquired for the Church. This date 
in the north of the county is commonly either 1576 or 1577. The 
earliest is that at Bradford, marked 1564, and the latest of the 
type that of Burbage, marked 1624, when, as a rule, the cup had 
assumed a slightly different shape. The Crudwell cup of 1628 is 
of Elizabethan shape, but has inscribed within the belt “ The Parish 
~N 
