Pagans, Danegeld and Church Plate

Our Saxon forefathers suffered greatly from invasion by the piratical hordes from the north, who for several hundreds of years in the 'Dark and Middle Ages' marauded in search of the riches stowed in the churches, monasteries and villages of England. Eventually the Celts were largely driven from England by the Norsemen, until they occupied only the western fringes, meanwhile the weak rulers of the English tribes were forced to submit to a " Danegeld" a sort of tax/plunder lump sum levied in order to appease the invaders and buy them off.  Chief plunderers with such exotic names as Hakon Jarl, his son Jarl Eric, Old King Blue-Tooth, Otto Svein of the Forked Beard, later Prince Royal of Denmark and King Svein of the Double- Beard,  together with Olaf Tryggveson son of  Tryggve benefited from the yearly stipends extorted principally from King Ethelred. Anxious to stop much of Kent, Hampshire and Sussex and also to prevent London from being looted and burnt, Ethelred parted with some 16,000 pounds of silver, which increased yearly through 30,000 and 48,000 to eventually 72,000 pounds in silver. We ask where did these colossal amounts of silver emanate from? how did Ethelred have access to such large hoards of silver? ------we shall examine this in a later article.

Ethelred's attempt to control the Danegeld outpourings by slaughtering those Danes settled in England backfired, and the incurring wrath of the invaders eventually drove him into exile in France, allowing Svein to succeed the throne of England in 1013, in time to prepare for the upcoming Norman invasion which once more supplanted the incumbents.

By the time of the Reformation the English stocks of silver had recovered, in time for Henry VIII to strip out all the valuables from cathedral, church, monastery and wherever else he could lay his hands on it. In one church alone, St Lawrence in Reading in the year 1517, 700 ounces of silver in the form of vessels, crosses, candlesticks, censers, chalices, incense containers and much more; was purloined. Henry's son Edward VI continued with the dissolution of the chantries which greatly contributed to the ruination of the churches.

Mediaeval church plate can comprise all manner of silver articles, traditionally secured in the aumbry, a cabinet in the wall or sacristy for storage of chalices and other vessels.  There is a chalice in the British Museum dating from between 1250 to 1275, formerly used in a church in Berwick, Wiltshire, and at one time the oldest piece of church plate in daily use was at Wyke chuch in Winchester, which was a paten, illustrated above and dating from  AD1280. Its interesting to note that the later patens incorporated a sexfoil foot instead of the previous rounded foot, in order to prevent rolling around when it was placed on its side.

Other specific objects of church plate comprise censers, incense burners (generally swung on chains), candlesticks, crucifixes, books bound with silver clasps, basins, silver reliquaries (containing the bones or other relics of saints), pyxes, (a gold or silver box reserved for the sick and infirm), paxes, (small silver tablets used in the High Mass), chrismatories, (for holding the Holy oils), silver sacring bells, silver cups,  collection plates, alms dishes, flagons, a monstrance, (displayed on the altar and used in processions; often adorned with precious jewels). Not forgetting of course the crozier, which could be fashioned from a variety of precious metals and also likely to be adorned with precious stones. 

Considerable church plate would no doubt have evaded the various plunderers by being secreted in the coffins of deceased bishops and other religious dignitaries. Post Reformation plate is less interesting and less valuable as much pewter was used, nevertheless it makes an interesting study.