The following are the texts in the centre, relating to inebriety, the spelling modernized:--"Woe be unto you that rise up early to give yourselves to drunkenness, and all your minds go on drinking, that ye sit swearing thereat until it be night. The harp, the lute, the tabour, the thalme, and plenty of wine are at your feasts, but the Word of the Lord do ye not behold, neither consider ye the work of His hands." In the four compartments of the margin: "Take heed that your heart be not overwhelmed with feasting and drunkenness." "Through gluttony many perish." "Through feasting many have died, but he that eateth measurably prolongeth life." "Be no wine-bibber." The sides thus ornamented, were coated with a hard transparent varnish; the reverse, which probably was the side upon which the fruit or comfits were laid, is smooth and clear, without varnish or colour. These curious fruit-trenchers were found amongst a variety of old articles at Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, about forty years since. They were exhibited during the Meeting of the Archæological Institute at Winchester, in 1845, and brought to light other sets of fruit-trenchers. One of these, belonging to Jervoise Clarke Jervoise, Esq., of Idsworth Park, Hants, consisted of ten trenchers, in the form of roundels, ornamented like those just described, and inclosed in a box, which bears upon its cover the royal arms, France and England quarterly, surmounted by the Imperial crown. The supporters are the lion and the dragon, indicating that these roundels are of the time of Queen Elizabeth. On each are inscribed a rhyming stanza and Scripture texts. Thus, under the symbol of a skull, is (modernized)-- "Content thyself with thine estate, And send no poor wight from thy gate; For why this counsel I ye give, To learn to die, and die to live." These roundels have been described as trenchers for cheese or sweetmeats. Some antiquaries, however, consider them as intended to be used in some social game, like modern conversation-cards: their proper use appears to be sufficiently proved by the chapter on "Posies" in the _Art of English Poesie_, published in 1589, which contains the following:--"There be also another like epigrams that were sent usually for New Yeare's gifts, or to be printed or put upon banketting dishes of sugar-plate, or of March-paines, &c.; they were called Nenia or Apophoreta, and never contained above one verse, or two at the most, but the shorter the better. We call them poesies, and do paint them now-a-days upon the back sides of our fruit-trenchers of wood, or use them as devices in ringes and armes."