Rochester silver plate in the British Museum, 16th-17th century
/By fortune four pieces of silver plate all made in the same decade of the sixteenth century and all associated in some way with Rochester have come is to give the Friends of the Cathedral a description and some comments on them.
Mazers were among the most valued of drinking vessels in the late Middle Ages. The term mazer refers to a drinking vessel in the form of a bowl made
The large number of references in wills and inventories of the later Middle Ages to such vessels indicates their popularity and that they were often mounted with silver.
The Rochester Mazer (front cover) is of maple wood (H. 7 cm, diam. 18.5 cm) mounted with an inscribed silver band. In the centre of the inside of the mazer is a roundel. This has the engraved and enamelled figure of a saint with crozier and book, standing between two plants possibly meant for herb bennet. The figure is clearly identified by his name on one side S BENIT for St Benedict. This was particularly suitable since Rochester was a Benedictine foundation. The inscription on the outside of the upper band consists of large capital letters against a hatched background and reads:-
+ CIPHUS. REFECTORI. ROFENSIS.PER. FRATREM. ROBERTUM. PECHAM
which may be translated 'The Bowl of the Refectory of Rochester given by brother Robert Pecham’. Robert Pecham was a monk at Rochester. Only two facts appear to be known about him. They are the gift of this bowl and that his name is appended to the acknowledgement of the King's Supremacy executed by the Prior and Convent in 15347. He does not appear in the list of monks allotted pensions in 1540 and so he may have died by then? The gift by Robert to the refectory took place a year or two before the acknowledgement since the silver bowl is hallmarked with a lombardic P, the London date-letter for 1532-3. The maker's mark, an open hand, does not appear to be recorded elsewhere. It is not known how the bowl survived the suppression of the Priory but it reappears in the collection of Mr. Fountaine at Narford Hall.
Norfolk, in the early part of the nineteenth century. At the sale of this collection in 1884 it was purchased by A. W. Franks who bequeathed it to the British Museum
We know from inventories that monastic houses often possessed large numbers of mazers, at Canterbury, for instance, in 1328 there were 182 mazers in the refectory; at Battle Abbey in 1437 there were 32; and at Waltham and Westminster in 1540 we find 15 and 40 respectively. Durham in 1446 possessed 49 and The Rites of Durham, a work written in 1593 but reflecting the life in the house in the years before the Dissolution gives us a picture of the way in which mazers were used in a monastery
Within the said Frater house door, there is a strong Ambrie in the stone wall, where a great mazer, called the Grace-cup did stand which did service to the monks every day, after grace was said to drink in round the table.
Which cup was largely and finely edged about with silver and double gilt with gold, and many more large and great mazers of the same sort.?
There lay also in the same ambrie the goodly cup called St Bede's bowi, the outside whereof was of black mazer, and the inside of silver double gilt, the edge finely wrought round about with silver and double gilt: and in the midst of it was the picture of the holy man Saint Bede, sitting as if he had been writing.
And every monk had his mazer severally by himself to drink in, and had all other things that served for the same Convent and the Frater house in their daily service and at the table. And all the said mazers were largely and finely edged with silver, and double gilt, and a fair basin and ewer of latten, the ewer pourtrayed like a man on horseback, as he had been riding or hunting, which served the Sub Prior to wash at the foresaid table, where he sate as chief.
This gives a very clear indication of the way in which such mazers were used. The accounts of Canterbury College, Oxford, which was dissolved for the foundation of Christ Church give descriptions of the mazers in use in the college. The more valuable pieces of plate the 'iocalia' were kept in the Warden's room, while those for more everyday use in the Hall were kept in the promptuary such as mazer bowls mounted with silver with inscriptions and imagery on the roundel at the bottom of the bowl - the martyrdom of St Thomas or St Dunstan and the Devil. The interest of the Rochester mazer is that it gives a rare example of a mazer used in a monastic refectory.
The two tazzas and cover (pl 1).
Whilst the mazer can be linked to pre-Reformation Rochester by its inscription, the two tazzas or standing dishes that were sold by the Dean and Chapter to the British Museum in 1971 cannot be firmly associated with the priory or the bishopric before c. 1670.
Unfortunately there are no inventories of the plate of Rochester Cathedral before c. 1670. In an undated inventory of the plate ornaments and utensils in the Cathedral in the handwriting of John Crome, chapter clerk, written in about 1672 there is mention of 'one payre of wrought gilt pattens with one cover to them'. In the inventory of 9 July 1689 by Mr John Gilman the plate was kept in a great wainscott chest in the Treasury and included 'one pair of gilt wrought pattens, with one cover for them both 8.
The vessels have broad saucer-shaped bowls whose interior is decorated with a series of circular depressions. The thick stem has a knop at the top ornamented with embossed four-leaved flowers and rosettes, beneath which it is decorated with a repousse imbricated pattern. The foot is ornamented with repousse lobes running down to the edge of the plain moulded base.
The dishes are very similar in decoration. On the inside of the rim of their bowls is the inscription BENEDICAMUS PATREM ET FILIUM CUM SANCTO SPIRIT. The inscriptions are the same except that the second (1971, 5-2,2) has the word SPER instead of the word SPIRITU. The wording of the inscription "Let us bless the Father, and the Son with the Holy Spirit" derives from Compline.
A cover also survives. This has a flat rim with a projecting moulded edge, and is decorated in two sections. The first is ornamented with repoussé lobes like the foot. The second is domed in shape and is decorated with an imbricated pattern like the stem. In the centre there is a handle formed of two cabled rings surmounted by a flat top decorated with radiating leaves.
From the similarity in their decoration it is clear that the three pieces belonged to a set of such dishes with covers. It was the practice in the 16th century to make such sets often with twelve pieces. However the three each have different hall marks. One tazza has the London hall marks for 1528 (letter L) and the makers mark of a crescent enclosing a mullet. The second (letter L) and the makers mark of a crescent enclosing a mullet. The second has marks which are indistinct and have therefore given rise to different interpretations. They have been seen as the London hall marks for either 1531 (0) or 1533 (Q) and the makers mark of a crown but Commander G.E.P. How felt that they were too indistinct for definite identification as such and referred to the use of examples of crown marks on the continent at this period. The cover (1971, 5-2,2;) has the London hall mark for 1532 (P) and the makers mark of a hanap within a shield. All three pieces were made by different makers and hall marked at different times.
The most comparable piece of silver was preserved for many years at the Palmer. The arms were added to the tazza after the marriage of Giles Chichester to Catherine Palmer in 1699. Since 1953 it has been in the collection of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. It bears the same date letter and maker's mark as the Rochester cover. The shallow circular bowl has circular depressions in the centre and a lombardic inscription in a border BENEDICTUS DEUS IN DONIS SUIS ET SANCTIS IN OMNIBUS*. The same maker also produced a smaller silver traveling chalicanow in the Museum The goldsmith who used the mark of a hanap within a shield was clearly a leading London goldsmith with a wide production, who was in the forefront of the development of style in goldsmiths work in the early 16th century.
The two tazzas and the cover stand at the point of change between late Gothic and the newer Renaissance style. Although the decoration is in many respects Gothic the form of the flat dish provides a considerable contrast to the shape of earlier Gothic cups. There are still many problems to be solved concerning these tazzas, their relationship with each other and with other examples of goldsmiths work of the period. The mazer and the tazzas, all produced within the same decade, provide a remarkable illustration of the plate used before the dissolution of the monastic house at Rochester and which may have been given to the Dean and Chapter soon after the establishment of the Cathedral.
Footnotes
1 I am grateful to the Revd Canon Henry Stapleton, MA., FSA, for encouraging me to write this note.
2 The acknowledgement was signed by Prior Laurence Mereworth, the sub prior and eighteen others on 10 June 1534, see Letters and Papers of Henry VIll ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1883), vol VII, no. 921, p. 336.
This list is published in op. cit. in note 2 vol XV (London, 1896) no 474, p. 196.
4 It was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries by Mr Thomas Amyot in 1829 and illustrated in Archaeologia, XXIII, p. 392. Sold in the Fountaine sale 1884 lot 1535
by W. H. St John Hope 'On the English medieval drinking bowls calied mazers' Archaeologia, L. (1887), pp 129-193, in which the Rochester mazer is referred to on pages ™34 and 168. See also Guide to Medieval Antiquities, British Museum (London 1924), p. 174; Sir C.J. Jackson History of English Plate, London 1911, Vol
Sir A.W. Franks (London, 1928), p. 2, no. 2.
Canterbury College Oxford, Vol. IV, W.A. Pantin ed., Oxford Historical Society,
N.S., vol XXX, (Oxford, 1985), pp 146-7.Rites of Durham, Surtees Society, Vol XV, (London, 1842), pp. 68-9.
The Rochester tazza were first referred to by Sir C.J. Jackson, History of English Bane. vocsin condo. ,. 9. 4),. By Commanderequent! tow, English and. Scotiah, silver spoons, (London, (957), p. 47 for cover of tazza, p. 99 for tazza (1971,
5-2,1) and p. 111 for tazza (1971, 5-2,2); and finally after their acquisition by the British Museum by G.H. Tait in Burlington Magazine, Jan, 1972, vol CXIV, pp 31-2.
8
Kent County Record Office, Maidstone. DRC. EIl 1 (c. 1670) and DRC EIl4, 1689.
For the Arlington tazza see Sir C.J. Jackson, History of English Plate, (London,
1911), pp 463-4, figs 258-9; C.C. Oman, English Domestic Silver, (1934), p. 47:
8
and Commander G.E.P. How, English and Scottish silver spoons, (London, 1957),
p. 100 (marks). The sale was at Sothebys 7 May 1953 lot 147.
19 Rosemary Weinstein, "A travelling mass set of 1534 in the Museum of London", Antiquaries Journal, vol LXVII, part II, 1987, forthcoming.
John Cherry
Dr John Cherry MA, FSA, is Deputy Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities, British Museum.
We are delighted that Bishop Say was given a replica of the Rochester mazer as a retirement present by the Cathedral congregation. It was made by Mr.
Dennis Green of High Street, Rochester.
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
Although far from the treasuries of some cathedrals and castles, a few beautiful artefacts and items of intrigue have found their way to the Cathedral in more recent years.
