Its description is as follows: Standing cup and cover, parcel gilt. Deep plain band round rim, below which is a chased laurel wreath. The rest of the cup is overlaid with an outer framework of pierced and embossed work of ornate character, which is not gilt. The design embraces foliated scrolls with griffin, and included are teazles and two rams, symbols of the Clothworkers’ Company. The cover is surmounted by a ram. The cup bears an inscription: “_Samuel Pepys Admiralitati Angl: Secretis & Societ: Pannif: Lond: Mr. An. MDCLXXVII_,” and a monogram S. P., together with the arms of Pepys. This piece belongs to the Charles II period, and is typical of the characteristic style of applied decoration, undoubtedly of French origin. This cup has the maker’s mark[3] T G or J G interlaced, and he evidently was an English craftsman working during the latter half of the Charles II period and during the short reign of James II. The vogue then disappeared. English silver plate at the end of the seventeenth century is worthy of note, on account of its technique. A noticeable feature in this period of free chased work, in pieces with large leaves and fruit or figure subjects, is the bold manner in which the leaf springs from the collet of the foot. Among some of the most treasured objects of this late seventeenth-century outburst of fine craftsmanship are sconces and mirror frames, and especially large beakers and oviform vases and covers with floriated ornament richly chased. It was at that time that Grinling Gibbons the woodcarver revelled in his intricate flower and fruit pieces carved in the soft lime and chestnut woods. There is little doubt that the same artistic impulses were in the air. Side by side with the silversmith’s art were other fashions in furniture, in silk hangings, in costume, in the building and architecture of houses and the habits of the people who dwelt in them. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with so many civil disturbances it was inevitable that easily movable possessions such as plate were the first to be realized. It is not difficult to imagine from the remnants still remaining what the plate must have been like which graced the splendid banqueting halls of the days of Elizabeth. The massive flagons, such as that illustrated page 105, and the gleaming dishes and lordly plates rightly belong to an age when courtiers wore doublets richly sewn with pearls, when dreams of conquests in the New World set men’s minds aflame, when new trade routes were opened and great companies formed, when the sturdy spirit of independence established itself in these realms to take root and develop into world supremacy on the seas, and establish an abiding place in the council chambers of Europe, and when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and Kit Marlowe, and Edmund Spenser with inspired vision penetrated into the domain of romance and won enduring fame.