CHAP. xv. WORKMANSHIP OF PLATE. 



wards attained in the hands of Benvenuto Cellini 

 at Florence and of his successors in the other 

 parts of Europe. The taste displayed in the 

 forms and the decorations of gold and silver 

 utensils was very coarse both in France and in 

 England. Voltaire, in his General History, says, 

 " the work of the goldsmiths in Paris was so bad 

 that the king (Louis 12th) in 1501 forbade the 

 manufacture, so that the French had their plate 

 from Italy." There seems good reason to believe 

 that the English of that period did not excel the 

 French artizans in the fabrication of gold and 

 silver articles. We may thus account for what 

 we find often stated in the records of the age, 

 that the religious houses, the nobility, and rich 

 individuals, gave up to the monarch on pressing 

 emergencies their plate for the public service. 

 Such a surrender in the present day, when a 

 heavy tax and the workmanship of artists make 

 plate of silver of more than double its value in 

 weight 1 , would be deemed a most oppressive 

 requisition, whereas, at the period referred to, the 

 difference between making payments in coined 

 money or in manufactured gold and silver would 

 amount but to a trifle. 



In the reign of Henry VII., and in the pre- 



1 It has been commonly reported that a service of plate 

 presented as a grateful memorial from Portugal to the Duke 

 of Wellington had cost about eighty-five thousand pounds for 

 the metals and eighty-six thousand for the workmanship. 



