Ecclesiastical candlesticks have been in use from earliest times. The pricket form, that is with the spike for sticking the candle on, may be seen in use to-day. This form has survived in spite of its obvious inconvenience. It might have been of use for candles of great size, but even then long candles were apt to turn over if not kept upright by the attendant priests. The pricket or spike form may be at once dismissed, although older, as being outside the field of the domestic candlestick. Whatever may have been the receptacle for candles in common domestic use in Elizabethan days, it is now lost. The candlestick has not been so fortunate as the spoon to escape the melting-pot. Even early Stuart examples are rare. Specimens of candlesticks of the first half of the seventeenth century are so rare as to be beyond the average collector’s pocket. We are enabled to produce an early example of the time of Charles I, bearing the London hall-marks for the year 1637. This is the very year that Hampden refused to pay ship-money as taxes. Under cold and unimpassioned examination, it would appear that these patriots stood really on technicalities. The country gentleman, the man of Buckinghamshire environed by cornlands, refused to pay ship-money; that is, money to be devoted to safeguarding our coasts. The men of Devon, the men of the Kentish coasts and the Essex estuaries, the Lincolnshire ports, the Yorkshire seaboard, the city of Bristol, and estuary of the Thames guarding London, these were the fit and proper persons to pay for safeguarding the shores; the country gentleman whose thoughts could not soar above the soil, straightway became a patriot because he would not co-operate with the rest of his country in paying taxes for common defence. The Dutch could sweep the Channel and Van Tromp could carry a broom in derision at his masthead, but many of the country gentlemen of the Puritan days talked of turnips, and to resist payment of ship-money was deemed patriotic. It will be seen that the example illustrated is simple in form. It is not so delicate as the brass candlestick of a slightly later day (illustrated p. 129). The bottom is like an inverted wine cup, and the straight pillar holds the candle. The marks on this are on the rim of the bottom, upside down, which has led some persons to suppose that the base might be used as a wine cup, which is absurd. [Illustration: CHARLES II CANDLESTICKS. LONDON, 1673. Height 11 in. (_By courtesy of Messrs. Crichton Brothers._)]