The donor of this cup, Thomas Barnes, was tenant of the College Manor of Sydling in Dorset. In his will he bequeathed to the College a piece of plate worth £10, the cost to be raised from the profits of the manor which had passed to his son-in-law, Hubert Hussey. The College Accounts for 1626-27 contain the entry: ‘Pro poculo inaurato ex legat Mri Barnes – Xt’ [for a gilt cup from the legacy of Mr Barnes – £10]. The purchase was evidently of a second-hand cup, as the present piece is dated 1615. Barnes also bequeathed a piece of plate to the Warden of Winchester, Nicholas Love, and a gold ring (worth twenty shillings) to each of the Fellows. None of these other gifts are known to survive. There is a tablet to Barnes’ memory in Buckland Newton church, near Dorchester.

The cup is of a distinctive English form known as a ‘steeple’ cup because of the tall finial on the cover. Nearly 200 examples are known, dating from 1599 to 1646. They were intended as drinking cups and for display on a buffet, but many were donated to churches for use as communion cups. This cup is near to the upper end of the range of sizes for English steeple cups.

Mitchell (Silversmiths in Elizabethan and Stuart London) lists 19 examples of this maker’s mark, not including the present piece, dated from 1606/7 to 1641/2. He identifies Thomas Francis as the only plateworker with the initials TF whose activity corresponds with this range of dates. Francis served his apprenticeship from 1596 to 1604, first under Thomas Flynt the Younger and then under Richard Cooke. Between 1629 and 1639 he had a number of wares broken and received small fines for substandard work. Francis was nonetheless a successful silversmith, with a total of twenty apprentices during his career. In 1630, he received the commission for a gold cup presented by the City of London to Prince Charles on the occasion of his baptism. Francis seems to have specialised in cups and made an exceptional number of surviving steeple cups. At least eleven others with his mark are recorded: Corporation of Portsmouth (two: 1606 and 1609); David Little Collection, sold Christie’s 3/12/19 (1611); Carpenter’s Company (1611/12); St James, Welland (1613/14); St Andrew’s, Norwich (1617); Warwick Cup, Kremlin (1617/8); Barnstaple Guildhall (1625); Richard Chester Cup, V&A (1625/6), and two others whose present whereabouts are unknown (Seaford House Exhibition, 1929, no. 97, 1609; Christie’s 3/6/1935, lot. 139).

Literature: Percy MacQuoid, ‘The Plate of Winchester College’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 2, no. 5 (July 1903), p. 162, plate VIa; Charles Oman, ‘The Winchester College Plate’, The Connoisseur (January 1962), p. 29 (illustrated); N.M. Penzer, ‘An Index of English Silver Steeple Cups’, Proceedings of the Society of Silver Collectors, vol. 1 (1962), p. 16 (no. 97); R. Foster, Winchester College Treasury: a guide to the collections (Winchester, 2016), p. 21 (illustrated).

Provenance: Purchased by the College from the bequest of Thomas Barnes, 1624