Our cut, No. 22, taken from the Anglo-Saxon calendar already mentioned (MS. Cotton. Julius, A. vi.), represents a party sitting at the _heah-setl_, the high seat, or dais, drinking after dinner. It is the lord of the household and his chief friends, as is shown by their attendant guard of honour. The cup-bearer, who is serving them, has a napkin in his hand. The seat is furnished with cushions, and the three persons seated on it appear to have large napkins or cloths spread over their knees. Similar cloths are evidently represented in our cut No. 16. Whether these are the _setl-hrœgel_, or seat-cloths, mentioned in some of the Anglo-Saxon wills, is uncertain. [Illustration: _No. 22. An Anglo-Saxon Drinking Party._] It will be observed that the greater part of the drinking-cups bear a resemblance in form to those of the more ancient period which we find in Anglo-Saxon graves, and of which some examples have been given in the preceding chapter. We cannot tell whether those seen in the pictures be intended for glass or other material; but it is certain that the Anglo-Saxons were ostentatious of drinking-cups and other vessels made of the precious metals. Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, has collected together a number of instances of such valuable vessels. In one will, three silver cups are bequeathed; in another, four cups, two of which were of the value of four pounds; in another, four silver cups, a cup with a fringed edge, a wooden cup variegated with gold, a wooden knobbed cup, and two very handsome drinking-cups (_smicere scencing-cuppan_). Other similar documents mention a golden cup, with a golden dish; a gold cup of immense weight; a dish adorned with gold, and another with Grecian workmanship (probably brought from Byzantium). A lady bequeathed a golden cup weighing four marks and a half. Mention of silver cups, silver basins, &c., is of frequent occurrence. In 833, a king gave his gilt cup, engraved outside with vine-dressers fighting dragons, which he called his cross-bowl, because it had a cross marked within it, and it had four angles projecting, also like a cross. These cups were given frequently as marks of affection and remembrance. The lady Ethelgiva presented to the abbey of Ramsey, among other things, “two silver cups, for the use of the brethren in the refectory, in order that, while drink is served in them to the brethren at their repast, my memory may be more firmly imprinted on their hearts.”[7] It is a curious proof of the value of such vessels, that in the pictures of warlike expeditions, where two or three articles are heaped together as a kind of symbolical representation of the value of the spoils, vessels of the table and drinking-cups and drinking-horns are generally included. Our cut, No. 23, represents one of these groups (taken from the Cottonian Manuscript, Claudius, C. viii.); it contains a crown, a bracelet or ring, two drinking-horns, a jug, and two other vessels.