In the royal inventories of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, above all in those of Charles V. and of his brothers the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, and Burgundy, where there is any mention of vessels of glass, it is almost without exception of _verre de Damas_ or of _verre à la façon de Damas_ that we hear. Quite an exception is the _goblet de voirre blanc de Flandre, garny d’argent_, that we find in an inventory of the possessions of Charles V., taken in 1379. Notwithstanding this, it is evident that the French kings at this time took much interest in the manufacture of glass. When hunting in the forests around Paris, they would turn aside to visit the furnace of one of these local makers of _verre de fougère_ who already claimed the privileges of gentlemen. Thus early in the reign of Charles VI. we find an entry of a payment ‘_pour don fait par lui aux voirriers, près de la forest de Chevreuse, où le roy estait alez veoir faire les voirres_.’ This was at the beginning of the fifteenth century; later on, as we shall see, both King René and Louis XI. were patrons of the glass-makers; and yet it is doubtful if we have in our collections any examples of French glass which can be attributed to as early a period as the reign even of the latter king. [Illustration: _PLATE XXI_ GERMAN LATE MEDIÆVAL GLASS 1. CUP WITH PRUNTS 2. CUP WITH CONICAL COVER, FOR RELICS] Of glass made in Germany before, say, the end of the fifteenth century, we know even less than of the contemporary production in France. Theophilus, it is true, tells us of the manufacture of sheets of glass from cylindrical _manchons_, and this was probably until the seventeenth century a specially German process; he describes, too, the manufacture of blown glass of simple forms. But from his time, or at least from the time of the pseudo-Heraclius a little later, to that of Georg Agricola in the sixteenth century, when we find the glass industry taking an important place in many parts of Germany, there is little direct evidence on the subject to bring forward.[98] Apart, however, from a few insignificant little bottles, used as reliquaries (Plates XX. and XXI.), nothing survives from this time. On the other hand, when in the fifteenth century we come again upon evidences of contemporary glass in Germany and Holland, as above all in the pictures of the early Netherlandish and of the Cologne schools, we find a distinct form of goblet already established, the prototype, it would seem, of a famous shape that was able to hold its own at the time of the invasion of Italian glass in the sixteenth century. There is nothing in France, still less in England, corresponding to the _römer_ and its various kindred forms.