346 Notes on the Church Plate of North Wilts. 



i 



century, but the bowl is rudely made and has a curious travesty of 

 the Elizabethan strap-work belt upon it. 



Lydiard Tregoze has a large and massive cup in which the pro- 

 jecting flange which is placed close under the rather short square 

 bowl on the otherwise plain stem is a more marked feature. It is hall 

 marked 1649. No other occurs like it in North Wilts, but similar 

 specimens are engraved in the Carlisle Church Plate and elsewhere. 



Alderton and Langley Burrell have cups bearing no hall marks, 

 the former inscribed 1663, which, without being remarkable in 

 shape, are singular in having a belt of engraving round the bowl in 

 poor imitation of the Elizabethan ornament. 



In the eighteenth century the cup loses its straight sides, which 

 instead bulge out somewhat towards the bottom. The knot re- 

 appears on the stem in the form of a fillet or band, and the sacred 

 monogram with rays almost invariably ornaments one side of the 

 large bowl. About 1790 a number of goblet-shaped cups with 

 slender stems and sometimes square bases are found, accompanying 

 the classical flagons of that date. They are much the shape of the 

 ordinary modern prize cups, and are seldom very large. Some, 

 however, of the chalices given to small parishes during the last half 

 of the eighteenth century are of huge size, and though during the 

 first half of the nineteenth century the size of the bowl was generally 

 reduced, the type was by no means improved, — the vessels of this 

 period being undoubtedly in many cases the most hideous of any. 

 About 1840-50, however, ecclesiastical art began to revive, and the 

 mediaeval shapes have come more and more into fashion, until some 

 of the modern plate rivals the ancient mediaeval work in beauty and 

 excellence of workmanship. 



Handsome modern sets exist at Marlborough College, the two 

 Savernake Churches, East Grafton, Wootton Bassett, and other places. 



The presence, however, of a modern mediaeval chalice — by no 

 means always o£ excellent workmanship or design — too often means 

 that the sixteenth or seventeenth century plate has been ruthlessly 

 got rid of to make way for it, — a thing to be greatly regretted, from 

 an historical, an archaeological, and I cannot help thinking also, 

 from an ecclesiastical point of view. 



