By the Rev. E. H. Goddard. 



349 



comparatively small parishes, in pairs — as for example, at Lydiard 

 Tregoze and Broad Hinton. Judging from present needs people 

 are apt to wonder what possible use such large vessels could have 

 served, but we must remember that in those days the number of 

 communicants very far exceeded that of the present day — indeed, 

 that probably every person in the parish who was of age to receive 

 the communion did so. In reference to this a very curious and 

 interesting order from the Bishop of Salisbury to the curate and 

 churchwardens and parishioners of Aldbourne is given in vol. xxiii., 

 p. 255 of this Magazine, wherein it is ordered "to the end that the 

 minister may neither be overtoyled nor the people indecently and 

 inconveniently thronged together " that thrice in the year at least 

 notice be given of four communions upon four consecutive Sundays, 

 and " that there come not to the communion in one day above two 

 hundred at the most." Probably, therefore, the flagons — there is 

 a very large one at Aldbourne still — huge as they appear to us— 

 were not larger than was considered requisite at the time they were 

 given. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century a few flagons are 

 found with pear-shaped body and spout — like a domestic hot-water 

 jug — of which there are examples at Box, Market Lavington, 

 Ramsbury, and Hartham. And again at the end of the century 

 there is a departure from the otherwise prevalent tankard fashion in 

 the flagons of the elegant classical shape well known in articles of 

 domestic plate manufactured about 1790, due to the sudden and 

 transient revival of taste in designs after classical models consequent 

 on the publication of the discoveries of ancient art in Pompeii and 

 Herculaneum. 



Of these flagons, which, though not ecclesiastical, are at least 

 elegant in form, specimens exist at St. Mary's Devizes, Sopworth, 

 and Manningford Abbots. The plain goblet-shaped cups with small 

 stem which accompanied them are found in greater numbers. 



A large and massive flagon, given to Erchfont in 1764, does not 

 fall into either of these classes. It has a ewer-shaped body with a 

 spout and high lid— handle, base, lid and spout having a good deal 

 of florid ornament about them. 



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