Hall marks on gold & silver plate

INTRODUCTION. xlv
Another of Sir A. W. Franks's mazers has a very low rim for
foot, and a somewhat deep rim above, ornamented with small pendant
leaves and the text in large letters :
"MISEREMINI: MEI : MISEKEMINI:
SALTEM: VOS : AMICI :
MEI:
MEI."
At All Souls' College, Oxford, is a deep but somewhat small
bowl, which is mounted on a tall foot and stem composed of clustered
shafts, so that the whole forms a standing cup; it was made
m 1529. With the Inquest plate at St. Giles's, Cripplegate Without,
London, there is a mazer bowl of maple wood, mounted with
a broad silver gilt rim and foot, round the stem of which is a scroll
"
ornament, above which is inscribed : Ihon Birde Mead This In
"
Anno Domine 1 568 the foot ;
is engraved with various ornaments,
and on the print inside is a merchant's mark.*
Nothing more remains to be said about mazers, as the manufacture
of them entirely ceased towards the end of the sixteenth
century.
Standing Cups.
"And guf hem echone
Couppes of dene gold and coppes of silver^
" Piers Ploughman," p. 39.
The State cups possessed by the great men of the land in the
Middle Ages were often of great value and beauty. Sometimes
these cups were made of solid gold or silver, and sometimes of
cocoa-nuts or ostrich eggs mounted with silver.
Some of these are of early date, for at the end of the thirteenth
century we find the Bishop of Durham bequeathing a cocoa-nut cup
with a foot and mountings of silver; and such cups are very fre-
quently mentioned in old wills and inventories. Many of the City
companies have specimens of these cups. The Ironmongers possess
a good cocoa-nut cup, made at the commencement of the sixteenth
century, t The Armourers and Vintners also possess such cups, that
of the latter having been ma.de in 15 18; and the late Mr. E. P.
Monckton had a good cocoa-nut cup which was made in London
in 1856-7.^
At Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, there are the remains of
what is probably the oldest cup formed by an ostrich e^^ in the
world. It dates from the fourteenth century, although the present
silver mounts are not older than 1592. The well-known ostrich &g^
cup at Exeter College, Oxford, is somewhat later in date, having
* " Archseologia," Vol. L, p. 1G7. f Cripps's " Old English Plate."
J See next page.
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