340 



Notes on the Church Plate of North Wilts. 



The drawings themselves, when complete, it is proposed to deposit 

 in the Devizes Museum. 



In this paper, then, I propose to speak only of the northern half 

 of the county, to which my own knowledge of the plate is confined. 

 But although the area is comparatively small the variety and in- 

 terest of the plate is very considerable. 



To begin with, Wiltshire possesses, both in the north and south, 

 more than its share of pre-Reformation plate. So clean was the 

 sweep made of the accumulated treasures of Churches under Henry 

 VIII. and Edward VI. and the subsequent injunctions of Elizabeth, 

 under which even the poor remnant of chalices which had not been 

 converted " to the King's use " were ordered to be melted down and 

 re-fashioned into " decent communion cups/'— that only about forty 

 chalices and double that number of patens of pre-Reformation date 

 are known to exist in the whole of England. 



Of these we have in the north of the county the pretty little 

 chalice still in use at Manningford Abbots — probably of fifteenth 

 century date. This is of silver parcel gilt. The sides of the bowl 

 are somewhat straight. The knot has open work and lions' heads, 

 whilst the foot, which is now round, has evidently, Mr. Nightingale 

 says, been hammered out of the original mullet or star-shaped base, 

 the engraving of the crucifix being still just visible if the chalice is 

 held at a certain angle. Possibly this alteration of the base to the 

 regulation circular shape of the Elizabethan cup and the effacement 

 of the crucifix on the foot was considered to have brought this piece 

 into sufficient conformity with the " decent " pattern, and so saved 

 it from entire destruction. The cover now belonging to it is of 

 later, probably Elizabethan, date. The second chalice is the ex- 

 tremely fine silver-gilt one at Highw*orth (No. 1 in the accom- 

 panying plate of chalices), bearing the date letter, apparently, of 

 1534. This belongs to a type of which the Wylye chalice (vol. xxi., 

 p. 383) and that of Trinity College, Oxford, have been hitherto, 

 with one other, supposed to be the only remaining examples. So 

 that Wiltshire — in addition to the earliest known " massing " 

 chalice, that of Berwick St. James, of the thirteenth century, now 

 in the British Museum (see vol. xxi., p. 368) — can claim two of the 



