By W. Cunnington, F.G.S. 



207 



This is plainly the " C " of 1540-1. The date of the Braikenridge cup 

 is 1534-5. 



At equal distances from each other on the same part of the band 

 are engraved the crests of the three families through whom it has 

 descended, viz. : — 1, of the Perrot family, a parrot; 2, of the Lowrys, 

 two branches of laurel, with the motto " virtus semper viridis " ; 3, 

 the crest of the Barnwell family, the present owners, a wolPs head, 

 with the motto " Loyal au mort" 



Note. — From the able and exhaustive paper " on English Medi- 

 eval drinking-cups called Mazers/' by W. H. St. John Hope, M.A.., 

 communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, and published in the 

 Archseologia, vol. L., 1887, I select the following explanatory notes 

 on the nature and use of mazers. 



" Of all the drinking vessels in use from the thirteenth to the 

 sixteenth centuries, none were so common or so much prized as those 

 known to us as mazers. Under whatever name it appears in ancient 

 documents it is quite clear that the same vessel is meant, viz., a 

 bowl turned out of some kind of wood, but by preference maple, and 

 especially the spotted or speckled variety which we call bird's eye 

 maple. Although the term mazer is applied to a drinking bowl, it 

 is from the material out of which it was formed, and not the use it 

 was put to, that the name is derived. Professor Skeat says the word 

 is of Low German origin, and merely an extended form of the 

 middle High German mase, old High German masa, meaning a spot 

 — whence our word measles. (The German Maser is a spot, speck, 

 or the grain of the wood ; maser-holz is veined wood, and maserle, 

 maple wood, or the maple tree. — Cripps' Old English Plate,3rd edit., 

 p. 203.) A mazer is therefore so called from being a bowl of 

 u spotted n wood. During the medieval period mazers were used by 

 all classes of persons, from the king downwards. The inventories of 

 the religious house bear witness to the same fact : thus at Canterbury 

 in 1328 there were in the frater no fewer than one hundred and 

 eighty-two mazers; at Battle in 1437 there were thirty-two ; at 

 Durham in 1446, forty-nine. It is unfortunate that, in spite of 



