356 



Old Church Plate in Wilts. 



still rich in the possession of fine examples of Church plate. Those 

 specimens which have come under the notice of the writer, mostly 

 within a short distance from Salisbury, have already produced two 

 chalices of pre-Reformation times of unusual interest, namely, those 

 o£ Berwick St. James and Wylye, also the fragments of a third at 

 Codford St. Mary, besides an early paten belonging to the Church 

 of St. Edmund, Salisbury. There are also to be found fine old 

 examples of secular plate adapted to Church use, notably at Barford 

 St. Martin, Teffont Ewyas, Fugglestone St. Peter, and St. Martin's, 

 Salisbury. 



Before describing any still existing specimens it will be as well 

 to say a few words on the causes which have led to the almost entire 

 destruction of mediaeval plate, both sacred and secular, and more 

 particularly to give some few historical notices relating to the form 

 which the chalice has assumed at different epochs. 



It is now very rare to find any examples at all of the goldsmith's 

 craft even as early as the thirteenth century, a period so rich in 

 English art. Few, indeed, are the chalices, patens, or other sacred 

 vessels of the English Church, still existing of the fourteenth or 

 fifteenth centuries ; while of cups, goblets, or other vessels of 

 domestic use scarcely an example is to be found which belongs to 

 the earlier middle ages. If formed o£ the more precious metals 

 they have been melted, or coined, or re- worked into more fashionable 

 shapes. There was, of course, a special reason why England should 

 suffer more than any other country in the loss of its Church plate 

 during the troubled period of the sixteenth century. It is much 

 to be regretted that Henry VIII., disposed, as he was, to patronise 

 art in some of its forms, had not something of the spirit of a 

 collector, and did not use the unrivalled opportunity which the 

 dissolution of the monasteries afforded him to preserve at least some 

 of the more beautiful of the vast quantity of shrines, monstrances, 

 chalices, and other vessels for sacred or domestic use, which fell into 

 his hands. 



The causes which have led to the almost total disappearance of 

 early English plate have been well summarised by a late writer in 

 the Quarterly Review : — " The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth 



