statements as that of the Venerable Bede previously referred to. Only, while similar vessels are found both in France and Germany, it is claimed that a greater number and a greater variety are found in England, the inference being that they were made in this country.
So remarkable is the paucity of evidence and so absolute the dearth of authenticated examples in these Dark Ages of glass manufacture, that it has often been asserted that no glass vessels were made in England before the fifteenth century. Glass vessels were, of course, known and used, but these were probably, in the main at any rate, imported from Venice and the East. On the other hand, it is known that before the thirteenth century window glass—blown glass too, and not cast glass—was made, and very successfully. Indeed, old English coloured glass was particularly fine, and this being so, it is not easy to understand why the same art should not be applied to vessels.
Coarse glass vessels were certainly made at a very early date. The records of Chiddingfold refer to Laurence Vitrearius in 1230, William le Verir in 1301, and John Glasewryth in 1380. The record, in its transition from Latin to Norman-French, and then to Anglo-Saxon, has its philological interest as well, but it may be mentioned that John the Glasewryth made both “brode glas and vessel.”
There is, too, in existence an ancient cup of glass, disinterred from a tomb in Peterborough Abbey Church, which, from the records of the Abbey, must have been buried there, in all probability, in the first half of the thirteenth century. In the accounts of Henry, the second son of Edward I., who died in 1274, there is mentioned the purchase of a glass cup for the sum of twopence halfpenny, a fact which seems to imply that to be sold so cheaply the vessel must have been of domestic manufacture. It should not, however, be forgotten that this sum represented the daily wage of a skilled artisan in the thirteenth century. In the Taxation Roll of Colchester in 1295, three of the principal burgesses are referred to as “verrers,” and it seems hardly likely that so many important citizens were merely glaziers and not glass-makers. However, it is more than probable that the use of glass was confined to the noble and wealthy, while the common folk used vessels made of wood, horn, or leather. The “Leather Bottel” has passed into a proverb, and the Black Jack was so universal in its use that the French, naturally curious as to English habits, referred to us as a nation of savages who habitually drank out of their boots. It follows that the Black Jack of the thirteenth or fourteenth century had few of the graces of its silver-mounted and aristocratic descendant of the seventeenth century. It might be further suggested that English habits and customs in those early times were not such as to make fragile drinking vessels either useful or acceptable. Those that did exist were probably rather valued curiosities than articles of everyday utility.
There was, undoubtedly, produced during this period considerable quantities of window glass, much of it highly decorated, and exhibiting characteristics peculiar to the period to which it belongs, so that experts find little difficulty in distinguishing between the vigour of the thirteenth and the brilliancy of the fourteenth century. It would appear, too, that the home product won an increasing appreciation from the architects who employed it in their buildings; for whereas in 1547 the contractor binds himself not to use it for the windows of the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick, in 1485 it is mentioned in such a way as to imply that it was either better or dearer, or both, than “Dutch, Venice, or Normandy glass.”
In the sixteenth century, however, the fashion of using vessels of glass became almost universal in the west of Europe. Most of these came from Venice, and, spurred by the desire of establishing so lucrative an industry at home, the rulers of various countries—notably France, Holland, and England—sought to induce Venetian craftsmen to settle in them.
The glass-workers of Murano—the great glass-making centre in Venice—were, however, a close corporation, the workmen being stringently bound, under penalty of death, not to carry their trade secrets to any other country or to teach them to foreigners. In spite of this, eight Muranese glass-workers were induced to settle in England in 1549, and built their furnace in the monastery of the Crutched Friars—one of the minor orders. They derived their name Crutched (i.e. Crossed) from the ornamental cross which adorned their habits. Of the eight, seven returned to Venice in 1551, having previously petitioned the Council of Ten to remit the penalties against them. It is a reasonable assumption—but still only an assumption—that during their stay they did much to further the art of glass-making, although they merely produced glass and sedulously refrained from teaching their “mystery.”
The “Breviary of Philosophy,” published in 1557, remarks:
“As to glassemakers they be scant in this land
Yet one there is as I doe understand,
And in Sussex is now his habitacion,
At Chiddingfold he works by his occupacion.”