JACOBITE GLASS, SHOWING THE THISTLE
A stricter, less easily satisfied collector points out that those were “the ordinary rose glasses,” used at all fashionable dinner-tables in the eighteenth century (see [illustration], page 59). The reply to that is that the six-petalled rose and one of the buds, at least, are heraldic, not naturally represented; that the heraldic, six-petalled white rose was the Stuart rose; and that, at any rate, the “ordinary rose glasses” were sometimes used by Jacobites, particularly in general assemblies, because of their covert meaning, when it would have been unsafe to use the treasonable Jacobite glasses proper. A slight addition to the rose glass makes it truly Jacobite; thus I own a fine goblet which is made Jacobite by a monk’s-hood flower being added—a reference to General Monk. An “ordinary rose glass”—not so ordinary after all, and difficult to procure now, as well as dear to buy—which has a Stuart emblem engraved under the foot of it is allowed to pass muster by the stricter collector, but what he aims at or boasts of if he possesses one is a “Jacobite glass proper.”
THE “JACOBITE”
JACOBITE “FIRING” GLASS, SHOWING THE OAKLEAF AND THE WORD “FIAT”
Now a “Jacobite glass proper” is engraved with a portrait of the Old Pretender, or of his son “Bonnie Prince Charlie”; or with the rose, two buds, a butterfly or a bird, and also a Jacobite motto or emblem, or both; or with the cypher of the Old Pretender and the words of a loyalist song. Upon a firing glass (the rarest of the Jacobite variety) may be seen the touching emblem of a thunder-smitten tree putting forth new branches, and the motto Revirescit (It becomes green again). Upon a wine glass may be seen the word “Fiat” with a star (perhaps standing for fiat lux, “Let there be light,” or perhaps for “Let it be done”—the second Restoration of the Stuarts). Or the motto may be Redeat (let him return), or, very rare, Redi; or Radiat (perhaps a misspelling of Redeat, or possibly meant for “let him shine”). If an oak-leaf (as well as the other features) appear on the glass, it was probably used in England; if a thistle, probably in Scotland.
There still are a few Jacobite glasses lying unrecognised no doubt; two were found in a London broker’s shop a few years ago, and bought for 5s.; in 1914 a Bristol schoolmaster learned accidentally that two glasses which had stood on a shelf on a sideboard in the family for forty years were Fiat glasses, and a valuer going to a house in Sussex for other purposes, discovered a Prince Charlie portrait glass (worth a hundred guineas now) still passing incognito—there had been “the pair of it,” but that had been “smashed to bits,” the servants said.
