Silver-gilt and translucent enamel, London hallmarks for 1478-9, mark, a grasshopper

Lent by St. Mary's Church, Nettlecombe, Somerset

This chalice and paten is the earliest example of a fully hall-marked piece of church plateLoan - Monksilver with Nettlecombe, Somerset

V&A Exhibition RF.2003/51

The Reformation in England
On the eve of the Reformation, churchgoing in England was a colourful, sensory experience, rich in ceremony. In the 1530s, however, Henry VIII threw off the authority of the pope. Under his successor Edward VI (reigned 1547-53) major changes in worship and church decoration were introduced.
English Reformers wanted a return to a simpler, more direct form of worship. Their boldest move was to reject the Roman Catholic belief in 'transubstantiation', in which the bread and wine are miraculously transformed during the Mass into the body and blood of Christ. They proposed instead a symbolic service of shared communion, conducted in interiors stripped of distracting furnishings and images. The congregation would play an active role in the communion, regularly taking wine as well as bread, whereas before they had been chiefly spectators.
Crown commissioners confiscated or destroyed much of the goldsmiths' work of the medieval church. Some parishes concealed or sold their silver before the commissioners arrived, but by the early 1550s, many were left with just a single cup and paten. Some churches had no precious metal at all.
Consolidation
The success of the Reformation by 1600 owed much to an ingrained culture of obedience to the crown. During the brief reign of Mary I (1553-8) England returned to Catholicism, but under Elizabeth I it swung back to Protestantism, spurred on by state propaganda that Catholicism represented a political threat. Even so, this rupture with the past met with quiet resistance as many people were attached to the old faith and its trappings.
To consolidate this break with traditional religion, the church authorities launched a programme from about 1560 to replace the 'old massing chalices' with 'decent' communion cups of prescribed design. This gave a massive boost to the goldsmiths' trade and the great demand led to the formal establishment of assay offices outside London, at Chester, York, Norwich and Exeter. About 2000 communion cups from the period survive.
This is the earliest known fully hallmarked chalice and paten, used for offering consecrated bread and wine during the Roman Catholic Mass. It is typically late Gothic, with a six pointed knop and hexagonal foot. The panel on the foot engraved with the Crucifixion was also a common feature. Here, the engraving is very deeply cut, suggesting that it once held translucent enamel as on the medallion on the paten. This shows theVernicle, the cloth with which Christ's face was wiped on his way to the Crucifixion and which miraculously took on the imprint of his face. The parishioners of Nettlecombe ensured that the chalice survived the Reformation by handing it over to the patron of the church, John Trevelyan, for safekeeping, but 'at all tymes at ther nede to be had'. When Edward VI's Commisioners came to inspect the parish plate in 1553, the chalice could safely be described as not in the church's keeping.

A chalice and paten were used during the Mass to serve the consecrated wine and bread. During the Reformation, however, major changes in worship and church decoration were introduced. The Church commissioners stripped the churches of their furnishings and images, and confiscated or destroyed much of the silverware.

The parishioners of St Mary’s, Nettlecombe, gave their pre-Reformation chalice to a church patron for safekeeping, asking that it should be returned ‘at all times on their need’. This saved it from the commissioners when they arrived in 1553.

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