WJESTROPP — Dates on Plate belonging to Trinity College. 77 



date. For example, you may find a teapot or coffee-pot with inscribed date, 

 say, of 1560, and hall-marks of, say, 1750, or a match-box inscribed, 1750, 

 and hall-marked 1900, and say that these articles were made at the dates 

 inscribed on them. The only drawback to this assumption is that these 

 particular objects were unheard of at the earlier dates. 



There are almost equally ridiculous instances among the plate of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, if we rely on inscribed dates. 



There is an item in the College accounts I would like to draw attention 

 to, and that is the quantity of plate purchased by the College from private 

 owners and silversmiths during the eighteenth century. From 1758 to 17S1 

 there was over £1800 worth of plate bought, including £175 paid to Eobert 

 Hopkins, a Dublin silversmith, in 175S; £659 to Lord Mornington in 1759; 

 £350 to Mrs. Stone in 1765 ; and £474 to James Warren, a Dublin silver- 

 smith, in 1775. 



Taking seven shillings an ounce as a fair average of the price of silver in 

 the eighteenth century, this would amount to roughly 5200 oz. Of this 

 plate, that bought from private owners would possibly have had a family 

 crest or coat-of-arms engraved on it, and that bought from a silversmith 

 would probably have been uncrested. Now almost all the pieces of plate 

 belonging to Trinity College, Dublin, with the exception of some spoons and 

 forks, and a set of dishes and plates totalling roughly about 2000 oz., have an 

 inscription setting forth the donor's name and date, together with his arms. 

 There is no entry, so far as I can trace, in the College books of any sale of 

 plate by the College during the eighteenth century. 



My theory, which is of course open to correction, is that this silver was 

 obtained, and in many cases inscribed with donors' names and dates, in place 

 of pieces which had become broken and unsightly, or pieces for which money 

 had been given, but not actually purchased. 



If this theory is not correct, then what has become of about 3000 oz. of 

 plate bought by the College ? 



I am not including in this 3000 oz. uninscribed knives, forks, and spoons, 

 as almost all of these, amounting to about fifty-five dozen, are of nineteenth- 

 century make. 



1 shall now mention a few of the more important pieces belonging to the 

 College, and try to show why the inscribed dates arc not to be relied on for 

 dating the period of manufacture. To begin with two-handled cups. There 

 are three of these of exactly similar pattern, one inscribed with date of gift 

 1690, one 1699, and the third 1791 (this latter the Provost says should 

 be 1701). Now these three cups are all struck with the punch of the same 

 Dublin silversmith, Joseph Jackson, and bear the Dublin hall-marks for 



