Engraved with the arms of the See of Winchester empaling White.

The arms engraved on this tankard associate it with John White (Warden, 1542-54), the donor of Election Cup (Si1). White’s legacies are recorded in the College’s Register ‘G’ (f. 203) and among these was ‘one silver gylte tanakarde’. The present piece was presumably taken in exchange for, or remade from, White’s original gift.

Mitchell (Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London) lists five pieces with this maker’s mark, not including the present piece, all dated 1635/6 to 1638/9. An undated ewer and basin in the College’s collection – Si7 & Si8 – also bear the same marks. Mitchell tentatively identified the goldsmith as Richard Carter, but the use of his mark would be posthumous here since Carter is recorded as having been buried in 1647.

The silversmith has imitated the staves and bands of a wooden tankard.

Literature: Percy MacQuoid, ‘The Plate of Winchester College’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 2, no. 5 (July 1903), p. 162, plate Vc; Charles Oman, ‘The Winchester College Plate’, The Connoisseur (January, 1962), p. 7 (illustrated); Charles Oman, Caroline Silver, 1625-1688 (London, 1970), p. 43, plate 25B; Michael Clayton, Collectors Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 398; Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 261.

Provenance: Acquired by the College, c. 1649

Location: Treasury, Gallery 1