38 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and mark their earliest possible date. With most of them Mr. Westropp 

 was quite satisfied on this point. He considered, with his long experience 

 of such things, that most of the objects with early donors' dates were not of 

 the style of the donor's time, but were honest products of the ^ost-JIibcrnia 

 epoch. 



But yet I was nut satisfied. Fur there were some of the pieces so 

 manifestly very early eighteenth- or even seventeenth-century work, of the 

 age of their donors, that the Hih, mio still seemed to me very suspicious ; and 

 I could not accept Mr. Westropp's solution, that they were the result of 

 antiquarian sentiment, reproducing a bygone style. The hypothesis, there- 

 fore, that the College received money for plate during the years 1690-1730, 

 and put it by in order i" cany out the donor's wishes fifty years later, when 

 be was dead and gone, still Beemed i" me untenable. 



In my perplexity I submitted my difficulties to Mr. A. Lebas, whose 

 ancestors have loii" been goldsmiths in Dublin, and who is now the valued 

 assay master "i the (oddsmiths' Corporation. He came to see the College 

 plate and offer Ids suggestions. He entirely agreed with me, that sonic al 

 least of tin- older gifts were in the style of the donors' college days, and 

 that a middle eighteenth-century craftsman would have protested (if it were 

 ii.-. . gainst copying the bygone fashions of an older generation. But 



Mi. Lebas also found new and important evidence of rehandling which 

 bad escaped Mr. Westropp. All the salvers of the 1 T - *■ ' » transaction show 

 upon their under surface the plain marks of having Keen scraped by the 

 assay <-i. evidently after they had left the maker's shop. For no goldsmith 



Id turn out a piece with this obvious damage upon it. When I see that 

 this scratching, which I propose '." call Post-assaying, is only manifest on Bat 

 surfaces, I do not for one moment hold that objects Buch as candlesticks or 



lank. nd- in. ly not have 1 D similarly treated ; but these can be assayed 



round the foot or in other places where the scratching is not visible. Let me 

 here add that this post-assaying appears on the very objects which could 

 hardly be battered by use. Who could batter a salver out of shape ' 



I'., those not familiar with the process of assaying I may briefly describe 

 it, a.s c every week in the assay office of the Goldsmiths' 



Corporation. 1. | new article in gold or silver comes in from its maker in 

 the rough, with nothi iped upon it but his initials or maker's punch, 



without which identification the assay master will not receive it, as hi 

 bound only to assay for members of the corporation or people licensed by 

 them. It oomes in the rough, for the mas er then scrapes it in one or more 

 places with a narrow thus taking off some of the material This 



silver dust, technically called diet, is then gathered and exposed to the 



