USE OF GOLD AND SILVER. CHAP. XXIV. 



process of manufacturing. This ordinance was, 

 indeed, only the renewed promulgation of one of 

 the year 1602. The whole number of makers and 

 dealers in gold and jewellery was restricted to three 

 hundred persons in Paris and the suburbs, and they 

 formed a guild endowed with privileges and pro- 

 perty in houses l . 



The application of silver in France to various 

 purposes of dress, furniture, and ornaments at the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century must have been 

 very considerable. This maybe inferred from the 

 number of articles which are specified in the ordi- 

 nance of 1703, in a catalogue framed for the pur- 

 pose of fixing the parts of them on which the 

 assay mark which indicated the fineness of the 

 metal was to be stamped. These articles are more 

 than eighty in number, and show in some degree 

 what was the fashion of the age and country. 

 Besides ewers (agmeres\ porringers (ecuelles), 

 snuffers, saltcellars, chafing-dishes (rechaux), 

 perfuming-pans, warming-pans, standing waiters 

 (soucoupes}, are among the domestic utensils. 

 Those connected with the religious practices of 

 the age are numerous, and many of the articles 

 must have been heavy. Among these are cru- 



1 See Bazinghen, vol. ii. p. 370. It appears that similar 

 restrictions existed in London, where the goldsmiths all worked 

 in open shops near each other on the south side of Cheapside, 

 near St. Paul's, in houses that now are the property of the 

 Goldsmiths' Company. 



