By the Rev. £. H. Goddard. 349 
comparatively small parishes, in pairs—as for example, at Lydiard 
Tregoze and Broad Hinton. Judging from present needs people 
are apt to wonder what possible use such large vessels could have 
served, but we must remember that in those days the number of 
communicants very far exceeded that of the present day—indeed, 
that probably every person in the parish who was of age to receive 
the communion did so. In reference to this a very curious and 
interesting order from the Bishop of Salisbury to the curate and 
churchwardens and parishioners of Aldbourne is given in vol. xxiii., 
p- 255 of this Magazine, wherein it is ordered “to the end that the 
minister may neither be overtoyled nor the people indecently and 
inconveniently thronged together” that thrice in the year at least 
notice be given of four communions upon four consecutive Sundays, 
and “ that there come not to the communion in one day above two 
hundred at the most.” Probably, therefore, the flagons—there is 
a very large one at Aldbourne still—huge as they appear to us— 
were not larger than was considered requisite at the time they were 
given. 
At the beginning of the eighteenth century a few flagons are 
found with pear-shaped body and spout—like a domestic hot-water 
jug—of which there are examples. at Box, Market Lavington, 
Ramsbury, and Hartham. And again at the end of the century 
there is a departure from the otherwise prevalent tankard fashion in 
the flagons of the elegant classical shape well known in articles of 
domestic plate manufactured about 1790, due to the sudden and 
transient revival of taste in designs after classical models consequent 
on the publication of the discoveries of ancient art in Pompeii and 
Herculaneum. 
Of these flagons, which, though not ecclesiastical, are at least 
elegant in form, specimens exist at St. Mary’s Devizes, Sopworth, 
and Manningford Abbots. The plain goblet-shaped cups with small 
stem which accompanied them are found in greater numbers, 
A large and massive flagon, given to Erchfont in 1764, does not 
fall into either of these classes. It has a ewer-shaped body with a 
spout and high lid—handle, base, lid and an having a good deal 
of florid ornament about them. 
2B2 
