A Tale of Two Mazers: Negotiating Donor-Recipient Relationships at Kentish Medieval Hospitals

A tale of two mazers: negotiating Donor/RECipient relationships at Kentish medieval hospitals

sheila sweetinburgh

For a journal that derives its articles from both archaeologists and historians, it may be especially appropriate to consider an investigation of two medieval objects that are specifically linked to Kent, and can still be found in two of the county’s museums. Furthermore, the study of material culture and what it can reveal about the past has grown in popularity over recent decades, both within academia and what is sometimes labelled ‘popular’ or ‘public’ history. In addition, the cross-fertilization of ideas among archaeologists, art historians and cultural historians has been enhanced by the ideas of social anthropologists and historical geographers.¹

These approaches can be extremely fruitful when examining different social groups outside the elite; and among the areas of investigation that has benefitted is the study of gift-giving, including an exploration of the gift itself. The classic text remains Marcel Mauss’ The Gift, but valuable recent scholarship includes Arjun Appaduria’s The Social Life of Things and Natalie Davis’ The Gift.² As well as exploring what might be seen as the final result, the acquisition of an object, there has been a realisation that perhaps even more noteworthy is the process whereby the gift(s) moves to its new owner(s). This process might be explained as the passing of object ‘B’ from ‘A’, as donor, to ‘C’ as recipient. When this process involved a charitable institution, such as a hospital, it might be envisaged that the action of ‘A’ could be labelled gift-giving; that is an event within what Robert Swanson called the ‘spiritual economy’.³ Consequently, it seems feasible to look beyond this first action and instead to see it as the beginning of a series of events: the act of giving by ‘A’ and receiving by ‘C’ likely to produce a response from ‘C’, a reciprocal act of giving where a second object/action ‘D’ was received by ‘A’.⁴ John Davis has examined the significance of this process, and both he and Pierre Bourdieu believe that the timing of these two linked, although in some ways separate, events requires particular consideration.⁵

Among the issues these acts of gift-giving raise are the ways relationships were established and maintained by benefactors and beneficiaries, where the inner world of the hospital met the outer world of society, which in turn had implications for how each side saw themselves, saw others and were seen by others. Sometimes such events were recorded in written form, for example, saints’ lives, chronicles, charters and registers, which together with objects such as relics, reliquaries, seals and books, were used to construct and foster foundation legends and histories about particular religious houses. This production of a narrative about an institution’s creation and development, and its relationships with patrons and benefactors was made by and relied heavily on the social memory of those in the house’s community. By retelling legends about the institution’s past, including displaying these objects and pointing out these texts, the community established its identity, which was important for those living in the present, but equally for future generations.⁶ To take an example from Kent, in the early thirteenth century the prior and canons at St Gregory’s Priory in Canterbury apparently employed such measures as they sought to establish their house and its credentials in the city’s increasingly congested spiritual economy.⁷ In their case, they seem to have used oral memory, texts and material culture. The survival of the priory’s cartulary and second seal means that using the ideas discussed above the actions of the canons can be investigated regarding their relations with others, but where only the presumed gift survives the task of the historian becomes far more difficult.

In these circumstances an understanding of the object’s cultural value in history may require both an investigation of the piece itself, but also comparable assessments that draw on theoretical approaches from other disciplines. Regarding these mazers, two ideas from Daniel Miller’s edited collection Material Cultures: why some things matter would seem to be especially valuable: the first relates to the notion that it is fruitful to ‘address the materiality’ of the object.⁸ For example, one of the essays looks at banners in Ulster, which means it is necessary to explore what a banner is made from, what it portrayed on it and how this is done, which in turn would provide the researcher with a better understanding of its role in the political arena. Moreover, it would then offer a means to compare banners to other forms in the same environment, such as murals and marching.

The second concept from Miller concerns what he calls the ‘idea of “mattering”’ which he believes is best understood through what people actually did with things rather than what they said. For Miller and his contributors this required careful and close studies that needed to take account, for example, of the places producers and users of objects deployed, which might involve public spaces such as meeting halls. In these instances the primary audience would be the participants themselves as the community which produced the object, but this might be extended outwards as an expression of that community to others. This second audience brings ideas about ‘the other’ into the equation, who may view themselves as either witnesses or bystanders. Such plurality has implications concerning how participants and audiences see themselves and how they are and/or wish to be seen by others. Moreover, these ways of seeing can change over time in response to particular events that are likely to involve the use of objects, and thus personal and group identity is often unstable, being open to manipulation. Employing these ideas for the study of these two mazers has offered a means to explore contemporary ideas about the uses and meanings of gifts in later medieval society, even though little if anything is provable about the mazers’ early history.

Guy of Warwick mazer

Today the Guy of Warwick mazer is housed in Canterbury’s Heritage Museum, one of four mazers belonging to St Nicholas’ hospital (at nearby Harbledown) that before its return to Canterbury was for several decades on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its presence at the prestigious London museum rested partly on its rarity, few early fourteenth-century mazers survive, but also on the quality of the piece. It is a treasured piece, and this was probably equally the case in the fourteenth century.⁹

Most mazers were made from the European maple, though occasionally these highly polished turned drinking bowls might be walnut, elm or plane.¹⁰ The wood itself provided considerable decoration, characteristically having a speckled appearance.¹¹ To this was generally added a silver or silver-gilt band around the rim and a roundel or medallion at the centre, the latter frequently engraved or possibly enamelled, or more rarely having a jewel set there.¹² Other features might include a silver or silver-gilt foot and a wooden cover, and there is an exceedingly rare example of such a painted cover in the Canterbury museum that also belongs to St Nicholas’.¹³ Varying considerably in size and quality some mazers were intended for individual use, but most were employed as communal drinking vessels, and such ceremonial pieces continue to be used at certain Oxford and Cambridge colleges, civic corporations and the London guilds.¹⁴ As items of plate it is not clear how common they were in the fourteenth century because of a lack of textual and physical evidence, but a century later they seem to have been widely used in prosperous households and institutions from the numerous references in testaments and inventories, as well as surviving examples.¹⁵

Compared to the hospital’s other mazers, and to such vessels more generally, the Guy of Warwick mazer is comparatively large and also fairly deep (Fig. 1). It has a plain silver-gilt band covering the rim inside and out, which is probably an original feature, but the foot is said to be a later addition. This silver-gilt base is thought to be an early fifteenth-century modification due to the simplicity of the ornamentation which comprises a simple four-leafed flower pattern around its circumference.¹⁶ The central medallion is also silver-gilt, with its repoussé image probably made by stamping a die on the reverse.¹⁷ Around the edge of the roundel is an Anglo-Norman inscription in Lombardic capitals: ‘GY DE WARWYC : AD ANOVN : KECI OCCIS : LE DRAGOVN ’ (‘Guy of Warwick is his name; who here slays the dragon’) (Fig. 2). Larger in scale than the other figures, the central figure is a mounted knight the type of armour judged to be compatible with an early fourteenth-century date.¹⁸ He is carrying a shield with the Beauchamp arms (gules a fess between six cross-crosslets) on his left arm and in his other hand he holds a long lance.¹⁹ The knight is shown spearing a dragon in the chest and the horse’s hooves also trample the dragon which is lying on its back. The scene bears some resemblance to images in two British Library manuscripts, the artist in both cases thought to have been working in London.²⁰ Among the illustrations in the Taymouth Hours, dated c.1325-35, is one showing Guy slaying the dragon with the beast again on its back.²¹ However Guy’s lance enters the creature’s mouth, not its chest, but perhaps more interestingly, even though Guy is named below the manuscript illustration, as he is on the roundel, his shield is blank. The absence of the Beauchamp arms in the manuscript image does not appear to be due to its being unfinished, and, even though an oversight cannot be ruled out, it does suggest that, unlike the commissioner of the manuscript, that of the mazer was exceptionally keen to link the Beauchamp family to the legendary hero.²² This difference is even more remarkable when considering Guy’s shield in the Smithfield Decretals, for here it is merely a stylised design.²³ Returning to the mazer, to the viewer’s left and in front of the horse’s head is a crouching lion.²⁴ The lion’s posture may indicate fear but, as in the manuscripts where the poem refers to its subsequent dog-like devotion and playfulness, the idea of praise and gratitude towards Guy as its saviour seems more likely.²⁵ The scene on the mazer’s roundel is framed by trees, thereby evoking the notion of a forest (wilderness) where the dragon-slaying took place.

The romance Gui de Warewic was composed in the early thirteenth century in Anglo-Norman French. It seems to have been extremely popular among the aristocracy, and by the time the mazer was produced the romance had been translated into Old French and Middle English.²⁶ Even though Guy slew two dragons in the romance, spatial limitations meant the maker of the mazer could only illustrate one event. The use of the dragon/lion episode seems to suggest that the maker or commissioner wanted to emphasise Guy’s worthiness. For in going beyond the literal narrative of the romance, those involved could draw out deeper meanings that were entirely in keeping with medieval perspectives; thus in the cosmic battle between good and evil he had destroyed the evil dragon and saved the good lion, which in terms of contemporary symbolism might also be seen as representing Christ and/or the resurrection.²⁷ Furthermore, the idea that a single image or salient scenes might be used to encapsulate the whole narrative was well understood, and thus for the mazer’s first owner the dragon/lion scene could invoke the second dragon slaying, as well as other aspects of the legend.²⁸ In the second episode Guy killed the Irish dragon in Northumberland, an action he did at the request of King Athelstan. By so doing Guy not only demonstrated his obedience, bravery and chivalric attributes as befitted a knight by agreeing to the king’s request, but he saved the kingdom from an evil invader. Consequently he was not solely a hero in feudal terms but equally a national hero because Athelstan was king of England, an idea that in the troubled second decade of the fourteenth century may have had particular resonance nationally and specifically for the Beauchamp family.²⁹ In addition, as well as being a national martial hero Guy showed other attributes, his noble qualities placing him within the debate on what constituted true nobility, character or blood.

For one noble family such ideas were especially important, and the idea that this mattered to the Beauchamp earls of Warwick is evident throughout the later Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century the Beauchamps adopted Guy as an honoured ‘ancestor’, thereby providing themselves with an ancient and illustrious pedigree which had sprung from a chivalric knight and national hero.³⁰ Parallels between the Guy of romance and the Beauchamps can be seen in several ways, for example marriage in both cases provided the opportunity to join the great magnates. According to the legend Guy, as the son of the steward, gained his title through his marriage to Felice, the earl’s daughter; whereas William de Beauchamp became earl in 1268 when he succeeded his maternal uncle, his father’s marriage to Isabel Mauduits providing the necessary link.³¹ Earl William’s desire to highlight this close association was strengthened, in 1271, through the naming of his own son Guy. As his father’s successor, Earl Guy continued the connection between the Beauchamps and the romance of his Saxon ‘ancestor’, as well as establishing links to the Cistercian house of Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire. Among the forty books he gave to the abbey in 1305 was a copy of the Guy romance.³²

For the legendary Guy his marriage to Felice was not enough, and in seeking to save his soul he renounced the world and took up arms as a pilgrim knight. While on pilgrimage he served God by killing the Saracen giant before returning to England where he first killed the giant Colbrond to save England for Athelstan and ‘for him þat dyed on rode’, and then returned to Warwick.³³ During his absence Felice, as befitted a noble lady, had spent her time performing good works and she gave alms to Guy, not recognising him to be her long lost husband. Thereafter Guy left to become a hermit in the forest nearby, but he did not live for much longer and his soul was taken to heaven by St Michael. Such episodes highlight Guy’s role as an English hero-saint, as Robert Rouse calls him, offering the Beauchamps an exemplary model.³⁴ His extreme piety, moreover, even if not followed to the same intensity, was still shared by the family because the first earl and his brother William apparently considered going on crusade. In addition, other family members were substantial religious benefactors, while certain female members became nuns at Shouldham Priory, Norfolk.³⁵ Thus, the subject matter and, most particularly, the presence of the Beauchamp arms on the knight’s shield, appear to point to the mazer having belonged in the fourteenth century to a member of the Beauchamp family, or at the very least to a family retainer. Even though the first definitive reference to the mazer dates from 1785, it is feasible that it was among ‘four mazers’ recorded as being at the hospital in the 1540s.³⁶ In addition, tradition and the presence of several other contemporary pieces among the hospital’s possessions suggest that this object has been at St Nicholas’ hospital for centuries, and possibly since the fourteenth century.³⁷ Yet, notwithstanding the provenance of the Guy of Warwick mazer must remain speculative, it is conceivable that its presence at the hospital is linked to a member of the Beauchamp family or its affinity, and to someone who had connections to Kent.³⁸ Furthermore, as well as exploring this hypothesis in terms of who, why and the implications for the parties involved, using the ideas outlined at the start of this article and, in particular, Ginsburg’s contention that ‘other things being equal, the interpretation requiring fewest hypotheses should generally be taken as the most probable’, this investigation can be extended to consider late medieval notions of patronage, piety and the pursuit of salvation.³⁹

Before turning to the family itself, Robert de Herle is the only fourteenth-century member of the Beauchamps’ affinity identified so far who fulfils the Kentish criterion. According to Sebastian Barfield, Robert maintained strong links to Earl Thomas in the early 1360s even though he was in royal service as constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports.⁴⁰ Nonetheless, this seems to be a relatively tenuous association and certain contemporary Beauchamp family members would appear to have had a far stronger connection to Kent, and more specifically to Canterbury. The subject matter of the roundel, as well as more extensive landholding and other links, may suggest that a male member of the family is likely, and, in particular, one of Earl Guy’s direct descendants. Yet it is worth noting that the giving of such items was not gender specific, female members of the family did occasionally bequeath cups, bowls and covers to their offspring, as well as more frequently being the recipients of similar items.⁴¹ In addition, Maud, one of the daughters of Earl Guy, married Geoffrey de Say whose landholdings included the manor of Fredville in Nonington (halfway between Canterbury and Dover).⁴²

Among Earl Guy’s sons and grandsons (and great-grandsons) there are a number of possible contenders, but John his son and Thomas his grandson seem to be the most plausible. At his death in 1360 John de Beauchamp, Maud’s brother, similarly held land at Nonington, including twelve acres in gavelkind from his widowed sister’s manor. However he also held further lands in the area, including a much larger holding in gavelkind, comprising a messuage and over seventy-two acres, of the manor of Easole belonging to St Alban’s Abbey.⁴³ He had also been a royal office holder in the county, having been warden of the Cinque Ports, a position that presumably involved visits to Canterbury.

His other Canterbury connections are even stronger because he held lands in Kent from the archbishop and from the prior and convent of Christ Church; and he also sought to establish a chantry in Canterbury Cathedral. This wish was part of his post-mortem provisions, although presumably there had been some preliminary discussions with the prior before his death in 1360.⁴⁴ John wanted his chantry to be in the chapel of Our Lady Undercroft, staffed by a monk wearing vestments displaying the Beauchamp arms who would say mass daily for the souls of Sir John, his parents and his brother. The chantry’s endowment comprised what John referred to as his manor of Easole but the prior believed this would be insufficient for the convent’s needs and declined the offer.⁴⁵ This disinclination on the part of the prior may reflect the community’s long-standing prohibition on lay burials and associated provisions within the cathedral space, as Francis Woodman notes, especially at a time when the priory was not actively seeking donors.⁴⁶ Alternatively, it may have resulted from the prior’s engagement in other, potentially far more lucrative, negotiations regarding this crypt chapel. Assuming the dating assigned to a letter in the Christ Church Priory letter books is correct, John may have been aware of Edward Prince of Wales’ (the Black Prince) desire to establish his own chantry there; indeed it may have influenced his proposal so that in death as in life he could remain close to his lord.⁴⁷

It is probably worth remembering that John had been especially favoured by Edward III in 1348 when he was one of six knights who, with Prince Edward, received a surcoat of Indian silk at the king’s expense. Moreover, John and his elder brother Earl Thomas had been founder members of the highly prestigious Order of the Garter.⁴⁸ Both had provided distinguished service for the Crown in France being present at the battle of Crecy (1346) among other exploits, and John was raised to the rank of banneret in 1348.⁴⁹ Continuing within Prince Edward’s affinity in the 1350s, Sir John received several choice gifts including one of the Prince’s highly prized mares, wine and a cloth of ‘Turkie’, and further evidence of this relationship rests on various financial transactions between the two men which involved the Prince’s purchase of two rubies.⁵⁰ Yet notwithstanding John de Beauchamp’s standing and wealth, the prior at Christ Church had other priorities and eight years later he again refused to countenance a Beauchamp chantry in the crypt chapel when John’s nephew, the young Earl Thomas II, sought to revive his late uncle’s request. The earl’s initiative may relate to the Prince’s refurbishment of Our Lady Undercroft as his preferred burial site, the prior’s refusal apparently provoking Thomas to look elsewhere on his uncle’s behalf.⁵¹

Although presumably unaware of the difficulties regarding his proposed chantry, John engaged in further pious works, including seeking burial in London before the image of the Virgin in the nave at St Paul’s Cathedral.⁵² His nephew too, established ties to certain religious institutions outside the family’s patrimony of Warwickshire and Worcestershire.⁵³ These included joining the confraternity of St Alban’s Abbey, perhaps as a consequence of the Nonington connection, and patronising the Gilbertine double house at Shouldham.⁵⁴ Consequently it is possible that either John or Thomas might have wished to establish additional pious relationships with Kentish ecclesiastical houses, especially those in and around Canterbury, that included the provision of some form of post-mortem intercession for themselves, their family and benefactors. For Thomas (and other members of the family) this would become feasible later in his lifetime when, after about 1378, successive priors were engaged in major, long-running, highly expensive rebuilding projects involving the nave and cloisters that were still not complete when Thomas died in 1400.⁵⁵

However in 1369 (and the previous decade) such opportunities at Canterbury Cathedral were apparently limited, which may have led Earl Thomas II to St Nicholas’s hospital at Harbledown.⁵⁶ As noted above, even among their peers, members of the family seem to have particularly favoured the giving of precious items as bequests within the family (and sometimes to others), often naming the previous donor, occasionally when the gift-giving had taken place, or who had used the object. For example, William de Beauchamp (1296) bequeathed a cup to his wife which had been given to him by the bishop of Worcester; and Earl Thomas I (1369) bequeathed to William his son a casket of gold containing a bone of St George that had been given to him by Thomas earl of Lancaster at his christening, while his daughter Stafford was to receive the silver bowl he always used.⁵⁷ Thus relics and cups seem to have been highly valued as gifts, perhaps including the Guy of Warwick mazer, even though it cannot be counted as a relic of the family’s esteemed ancestor.⁵⁸

However if the donor of the mazer to St Nicholas’ hospital was Sir John or Earl Thomas II rather than another member of the Beauchamp family, the choice of this archiepiscopal leper hospital remains intriguing, notwithstanding John’s connection to the archbishop through feudal tenure and acquaintance. However, it is possible to see the logic because lepers were considered by some as special in spiritual terms. Thus although Guy of Warwick’s pilgrimage was to the Holy Land, not Canterbury, and he had exercised choice in his becoming a pilgrim and later a hermit, his spirituality was not totally alien to the ideal of the leper separated from friends and family, who, as a penitent was willing and able to place himself in God’s service through prayer, in this case for his and the hospital’s benefactors including, perhaps, John de Beauchamp.⁵⁹ As a result the mazer could have been seen as an appropriate gift to a suitable institution because as an object it conveyed ideas through the piece itself, and most particularly through the medallion about the family’s longevity, nobility, piety and charity; the hospital in some ways acting as a mirror image of these attributes. In addition, the gift-giving confirmed the status of the participants, and for John or Thomas (or other members of the family) had the potential to provide future spiritual benefits.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the hospital’s archive to indicate how this might have occurred, but assuming the mazer was such a gift, it seems likely that the actual handing over of the mazer to St Nicholas’ would have involved some sort of ceremony, possibly in the hospital chapel at the high altar, or in the chapter house.⁶⁰ The act of giving was probably followed by a feast, thereby highlighting the singularity of the object in the eyes of donor, recipient and those witnessing the event.⁶¹ How it was used thereafter remains equally speculative, but the object itself and comparative evidence may provide some ideas. For example, it might be surmised that the quality of the craftsmanship and the subject matter of the roundel would have made it a treasured piece for itself and for the connection it fostered between the hospital and the donor (the particular member of the Beauchamp family). Moreover it seems likely that the leading men at the hospital would have understood the association between the illustration, other aspects of Guy’s life, the present Beauchamp family and the hospital because the legend was well known and at least two manuscripts containing the romance were at other Canterbury institutions.⁶²

Additionally, mazers were seen as communal drinking bowls, and ones such as this were presumably used on special occasions, perhaps at the hospital’s high table in the refectory on the anniversary of the donor’s death, of its donation, or in association with the hospital’s patronal day as part of any confraternity celebrations. Also, it is conceivable that this celebration would have included the donor during his lifetime as an honoured guest, even though its taking place at a leper hospital may have raised certain difficulties.⁶³ Yet whether the donor was present or not, after his death such occasions would have been important, the cup and the act of drinking providing a mark of remembrance at a time of heightened emotional and spiritual response, especially for those who had witnessed the original gift-giving. As a result the donor would have been counted among the hospital’s honoured benefactors.⁶⁴ Although examples from textual sources of the use of such esteemed items are limited, there are certain indicators. For example, among the convent’s possessions at Durham Cathedral Priory was a great mazer called the St Beedes Bowl that was probably used as a communal drinking vessel at festivals linked to the Venerable Bede.⁶⁵ Similarly, at Canterbury Cathedral on the feast days of St Thomas the prior and monks may have drunk together from the St Thomas Cup in the refectory.⁶⁶

A further consideration regarding the mazer’s potential to become a treasured object, that is at the top of a hierarchy of mazer bowls at the hospital, is linked to the slightly later addition of the silver-gilt stand. These stands or feet became even more extreme during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but in this example it still makes the piece very distinctive. Its new shape, more chalice-like than bowl, might have given any communal use extra poignancy, especially if it was used at confraternal celebrations, on obit days or in association with a later chantry that was established at the hospital chapel.⁶⁷ This is not to suggest that the brothers and sisters would have envisaged themselves in heretical terms regarding the mass, but rather that communally they came together as a confraternity, as the disciples at the Last Supper had done, to pass the cup from hand to hand. Such ideas seem to have been current with regard to the bread. Gervase Rosser has highlighted the link between the distribution of ‘holy bread’ among the congregation at the church door at the end of the parish mass and the sharing of bread at fraternal feasts, which too followed the patronal mass and was often accompanied by quasi-liturgical rites involving great candles, prayers and occasionally hymns.⁶⁸ Nor may the idea of the gift of bodily and spiritual nourishment have been confined to those belonging to the hospital because the donor may have wished to indicate his recognition of the institution’s own charitable works: the gift of hospitality to those who passed its gate. Consequently in the mid fourteenth century the mazer was probably valued by both the donor and recipient, their relationship demonstrated through Guy’s story – as a pilgrim he was sustained at the city gate by the alms he received and as a hermit, an outsider, he could offer shelter and spiritual nourishment to passers-by. Moreover, as the cup was passed from person to person, the physicality of the process – receiving, drinking, giving and witnessing – may have meant that those present were more aware of the cup’s worth to St Nicholas’ for it belonged to them as they belonged to each other and the hospital community.⁶⁹

Such ideas are conceivable for the mid and perhaps late fourteenth century, that is within living memory of the donation assuming it did indeed take place then, the mazer providing an object that was ‘good to remember with’.⁷⁰ Yet longer term this presumably became increasingly problematic for social memory relies on narrative, on images, the story open to embellishment within certain parameters that are acceptable to the community.⁷¹ Nonetheless, even though why the mazer mattered to St Nicholas’ hospital changed over time, the proposition discussed here about its early history seems valid in Ginzburg’s terms. Thus the mazer as gift and its potential to act as a means of maintaining a commemorative relationship between the Beauchamp family and the hospital community offers insights regarding patronage, as well as expressions of later medieval piety.

The Christine Pikefish mazer

The second mazer considered here belongs to the corporation of Sandwich and is housed in the town’s museum in the guild hall (Fig. 3). Unlike the Guy mazer it is no longer part of a collection, although in 1494 it may have been one of three listed in an inventory of the goods of St John’s hospital there.⁷² It is of a similar size to the Warwick mazer but plainer and is a slightly different shape, being deeper. There is no decoration on the rim but it does have an engraved central silver roundel. Around the edge of the medallion are the words ‘Cristine Pikefysch pro anima’ and in the middle there is a figure of a woman carrying a staff and what looks like an vial or flask on a stand. She is wearing a simple gown and head covering (Fig. 4). The staff may suggest that she is a pilgrim, a hypothesis perhaps substantiated by the bottle-shaped vessel or possibly a flask, which may be intended to show that she has returned from visiting Becket’s shrine. Even though ampullae containing St Thomas’s blood were the favoured relic of Canterbury pilgrims, it is possible that the vessel was of the type used to hold consecrated or sacramental oils, and St Thomas of Canterbury was said to have received such a vessel from the Virgin Mary.⁷³ Even though this must remain speculation, it is feasible that the woman shown here is meant to be Christine, and that she wishes to be seen as a pilgrim who is linked to one of the most important international cults in western Christendom. As well as seemingly indicating her connection with Becket’s cult, the vessel shows her as an instrument of healing: she has a token from his shrine which has the potential to provide miraculous cures.⁷⁴ Although this might be pushing the symbolism too far, the image may show that she, like Everyman, has completed her physical (and spiritual) pilgrimage, and with her good deeds (her vessel) is now ready for death and the resurrection of the soul.⁷⁵ In addition, the gift of a mazer might be seen as especially appropriate in terms of a hospital because even though its use might have been reserved to those living at St John’s, symbolically all could partake thereby providing drink to the thirsty, one of the seven corporal works of mercy.⁷⁶

The depiction of Christine is engraved which may mean it is a unique article, unlike the Guy of Warwick mazer where the Guy medallion came from a mould. The singularity of the piece seems important and may suggest that in terms of ‘mattering’, this mazer mattered a great deal to Christine, and she may have commissioned it specially. Alternatively, it is feasible that her husband was responsible for its creation or even conceivably her children, if she had any. Very little is now known about Christine and her husband William Pikefish; neither appear in the Sandwich town records, nor in any of the local testamentary materials but they are both listed in the St John’s hospital register at Sandwich. William became a hospital brother in 1408, his wife joining the community a decade later, yet within a year of her entering he was dead.⁷⁷ She remained there as a sister for a further five years, dying in 1424. William may have been one of the more senior members of the hospital community because he served as master in 1413, whereas his wife, as a woman, could not hold an official post at St John’s. Their relationship with the hospital is fairly typical, husbands often entering first, and like many brothers and sisters there is nothing to suggest that they were not of the ‘middling sort’, although not necessarily from Sandwich itself. According to the hospital records, William paid 40s. when he became a brother, however nothing is recorded against Christine’s name. Although not unknown it is unusual, and even where the entry gift was work on the hospital rather than cash, it was still noted in the register.⁷⁸ The absence of anything against her name is suggestive and it is feasible that she gave the mazer to St John’s in 1418. Under such circumstances it might have been considered unnecessary to list it because its presence at St John’s was sufficient, it mattered to the hospital authorities as it did to Christine and William. To the Pikefish couple this symbolically rich object might have been envisaged as her ‘passport’ through purgatory, the link illustrated through the inscription, the depiction of her and the act of giving itself. Alternately, the act of drinking itself was believed in some cases to provide spiritual benefits. Like the early sixteenth-century Saffron Walden mazer, the Archbishop Scrope mazer from York (Fig. 5), which is a contemporary piece to Christine Pikefish’s, explicitly offered an indulgence (of forty days) to all who drank in remembrance of the ‘martyred’ archbishop.⁷⁹

To try to understand how it might have been used at St John’s and thus why and how it probably mattered to the community there, it is worth considering the regulations of another Sandwich hospital. Among the ordinances for St Bartholomew’s hospital was one which stated that every Sunday the brothers and sisters should each pay a farthing towards the common ale pot and that they should drink together, the evening ending with the saying of prayers for the souls of the hospital’s benefactors.⁸⁰ Notwithstanding there is nothing in the St John’s archive to prove the community did the same, it does seem a strong possibility because the regulations at both these civic hospitals stress the importance of commonality in the daily life of these institutions, and fraternal rites on Sundays may have been thought especially appropriate. To drink from the mazer given to them by someone who might have been well-known even before she became a sister had the potential to make her an esteemed member of the community. Consequently, it may have led to first her husband and then Christine joining the list of benefactors prayed for weekly by their fellows, the couple in death, as in life, continuing to be part of the fraternity of St John’s.⁸¹ Furthermore, the idea of creating memorials before death was envisaged as perfectly acceptable, for example the commissioning of a funeral monument, the object acting as a reminder of impending death and thus producing a sense of humility.⁸² Thus for Christine, and perhaps her husband too, the mazer may be envisaged as a mnemonic token of her negotiated relationship with St John’s hospital.

For some scholars the concept of the ‘social life of things’ offers the potential for an exploration of the social and cultural meaning of objects in the past beyond their initial creation and use.⁸³ Even though others have questioned this notion, especially with respect to ‘everyday objects’, it still may be informative to explore what may have happened to these mazers in the longer term with respect to the maintenance of relationships using ideas about social memory and material culture.⁸⁴ In particular such an approach needs to consider whether the mazers continued to matter and how this might change over time, both with respect to individual and social memory. The three points in the history of these objects explored are: the later aftermath of the mazers’ arrival at the hospital; the mid sixteenth century, and the time when they were physically removed from their respective hospital and placed in museums.

Taking certain ideas from Alan Radley: ‘memory is fabricated by people for people, through the shaping or exchange of objects [but] there can be no guarantee, of course, that the recipients of such gifts will always, if ever, remember the donor in quite the way that it was hoped or intended’.⁸⁵ And that the reception, understanding and hence remembering might be ‘a mix of intentional and fortuitous circumstances’, it becomes noticeable that, as he says, this may also be seen as a dialogue where the donor seeks to construct a particular image of himself, his chosen objects offering repositories of knowledge and mimetic aids (as in theatres of memory) for the recipient who might then remould or reshape this mental collaboration based on his own perceptions and remembering.⁸⁶ Where this applies to social memory, as Fentress and Wickham highlight, words are the primary way of conveying these ‘memories’ but in certain instances rituals serve the same purpose – the meaning being acted out.⁸⁷ Moreover, for these ideas about past events to be meaningful to an entire group they have to be conventionalized and simplified and, furthermore, how true they are in factual terms is not the issue. Instead it is important to realise that an image held in memory is a concept, which means that even though it is normally assumed that memories are real, that they derive from a real event, with regard to social memory the images may refer to circumstances that took place so long ago that they were not witnessed by the group. Consequently through the processes of evolution and change, the group has no way of knowing whether its rituals really do refer to something real.⁸⁸

For those who had not witnessed the arrival of the mazers at St Nicholas’ and St John’s, but who partook in the communal drinking rituals, their remembrance of John or Thomas de Beauchamp and Christine Pikefish, and the events surrounding these people’s relationship with the two hospitals was constructed from their activities as a hospital community: the drinking itself and the stories that were presumably told and retold about the donors. The roundels in the two mazers might have influenced how and what was told but the narratives were otherwise out of the donors’ control. Yet the explicit concern for her soul on the part of Christine Pikefish may have meant that this aspect of her desired relationship with the fellowship at St John’s remained intact; but whether the Beauchamp family achieved something comparable is, perhaps, less likely.

However by the mid sixteenth century, the relationship between the donors and their recipients seemingly had altered. Even though St Nicholas’ and St John’s continued to accommodate local people, both hospitals having survived the Dissolution, the shift away from communal living towards a system of individual almshouses had marked implications.⁸⁹ Whether this meant the end of communal rituals such as drinking together is unclear but doctrinal changes would have had an effect on their meanings, and possibly also the festivities themselves. Unfortunately the records at neither hospital mention such activities, yet at St Nicholas’ the placing in the 1540s inventory of the item ‘four mazers’ between two chalices and a damask cope, followed by a long list of other vestments, may imply that the mazers were kept in the chapel.⁹⁰ Notwithstanding this may always have been the case, it could indicate that they were no longer seen as objects to be used communally, becoming instead heirlooms for display. Whether something similar happened at St John’s is even less certain, nonetheless how the community constructed its memory of the donors may similarly have changed. The 1490s inventory lists the mazers as being in the jewel chest which was in the jewel chamber over the hall, the chest additionally containing certain ecclesiastical items.⁹¹ Yet a couple of great pans were also in the jewel chamber, which may indicate that there was less demarcation between the spiritual and the worldly than at St Nicholas’ hospital fifty years later. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that there was still a relationship between the parties at both institutions: Guy of Warwick and Christine Pikefish may have continued to have meaning for the respective hospital communities with respect to notions of continuity, propriety and tradition.

But what happened when the mazers were physically removed and placed in the respective museums? The Pikefish mazer must have left St John’s when the hospital closed in the mid nineteenth century and it seems likely that before its display in the town’s museum it was stored somewhere in the guildhall. In 1968 the Warwick mazer was taken away from St Nicholas’ with the other fourteenth-century mazers for safekeeping, and loaned to the V&A for display where it seems to have stayed for over a decade before coming back to Canterbury to be exhibited in the city’s heritage museum in another medieval hospital. Even though in both cases they are with other objects from their respective hospitals, there is really nothing for the viewer to use to connect them meaningfully to the communities at St John’s or St Nicholas’, or even more particularly to Christine Pikefish or specific members of the Beauchamp family. This is especially true for the Guy of Warwick mazer and most people seem to pass it by without a second glance. Yet perhaps its survival is enough because it retains the potential to invoke ideas about a relationship between this noble family and St Nicholas’ hospital even if today that relies heavily on speculation by an outsider, not the social memory of the institution’s own community.

To conclude, why some objects matter and to whom, seem valid questions for the historian and archaeologist, because they offer ways to think about objects and subjects in the medieval past. Even though much of the subsequent analysis has to rely on the materiality of the objects themselves and ideas drawn from other academic disciplines, the results appear to provide insights regarding matters of patronage, commemoration and the pursuit of salvation, especially during the later medieval period. Yet it remains to consider whether, as Geary reminds his audience [we as modern scholars] ‘intent on creating our own versions of the past and hoping that our creation will be so successful in selecting, suppressing, and manipulating our data that the evidence of our subjective intervention, like that of our [late medieval predecessors], will [in the end] vanish before the eyes of our audience, present and future’.⁹² Nevertheless, such creativity seems a valid approach because it is rooted in the specific: the materiality of two mazers located in space and time, and by thinking about use, meaning and memory the assessment can be extended to investigate the cultural implications of gifts and giving in the past.

acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sebastian Barfield for making available his thesis on the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick. She has also benefitted from the ideas of participants at several conferences, including the British Archaeological Association conference in Canterbury (2010) and the Gender and Family conference at Birmingham in 2012.

endnotes

¹ Among these are: Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London, 1975); Muir, E. and Ruggiero, G. (eds), Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore and London, 1991); Giles, K., An Archaeology of Social Identity: Guildhalls in York 1350-1640 (Oxford, 2000); Marks, R., Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004); Hoskins, J., Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Story of Peoples’ Lives (London, 1998); Hamling, T. and Richardson, C. (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Farnham, 2010).

² Mauss, M., The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. Hall, forward M. Douglas (1915, republished New York and London, 1990); Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge, 1986); Davis, N.Z., The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2000).

3 Swanson, R.N., Church and Society in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), 209-28.

⁴ For an assessment of such processes in terms of Kent, see, Sweetinburgh, S., ‘Supporting the Canterbury hospitals: benefaction and the language of charity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxxii (2002), 237-58; eadem, The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift-giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin, 2004).

⁵ Davis, J., Exchange (Buckingham, 1992); Bourdieu, P., Outline of a theory of practice (Cambridge, 1997).

⁶ Remenysnder, A.G., Remembering Kings Past: Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, 1995); Geary, P.J., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994).

⁷ Sweetinburgh, S., ‘Anglo-Saxon saints and a Norman archbishop: ‘imaginative memory’ and institutional identity at St Gregory’s Priory, Canterbury’, in Burton, J. and Stöber, K. (eds), The Regular Canons in the Medieval British Isles (Turnhout, 2011), 19-40.

⁸ Miller, D., Material Cultures: Why some Things Matter (London, 1998).

⁹ However it is not as fine as the Bute mazer, displayed at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, which is said to have been commissioned by Robert the Bruce to commemorate his victory at the battle of Bannockburn; < http://www.nms.ac.uk/highlights/objects_in_focus/bute_mazer.aspx > accessed on 4/7/2014.

¹⁰ Chinnery, V., Oak Furniture: The British Tradition. A History of Early Furniture in the British Isles and New England (Woodbridge, 1979), 162.

¹¹ The word mazer is thought to originate from the Old High German másá, ‘a spot’, due to their speckled appearance, the old French term being masere; Hope, W.H.StJ., ‘Of the English medieval drinking bowls called mazers’, Archaeologia, 50 (1887), 129; on line at < http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/mazer?q=mazer > accessed on 4/7/2014.

¹² Among those listed in a contemporary inventory belonging to Christ Church Priory are several with jewels, including one with small gems that seems to have been in the prior’s chamber; Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 177 citing British Library [hereafter BL]: MS Cotton, Galba E IV, fols 120v-21. The first known makers of mazers: ‘mazerers’ date from the 14th century and they were also goldsmiths; M. Campbell, ‘Gold, silver and precious stones’, in Blair, J. and Ramsey, N. (eds), English Medieval Industries (London, 2001), 151.

¹³ Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 139.

¹⁴ Campbell, M., ‘Metalwork in England, c.1200-1400’, in Alexander, J. and Binski, P. (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England (London, 1987), 163.

¹⁵ The early-fourteenth-century inventory from Christ Church Priory lists over 180 mazers; Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 176-9. For a discussion of this inventory see; Sweetinburgh, S., ‘Remembering the dead at dinner time’, in Hamling and Richardson, Everyday Objects, 257-66.

¹⁶ Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 142.

¹⁷ Campbell, M., ‘No. 155: The Guy of Warwick mazer’, in Alexander and Binski, Age of Chivalry, 256-7; Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 131.

¹⁸ Campbell notes that the armour is comparable to John of Eltham’s effigy (c.1340) in Westminster Abbey; eadem, ‘Guy mazer’, 257.

¹⁹ Ibid., 247; Griffith, D., ‘The visual history of Guy of Warwick’, in Wiggins, A. and Field, R. (eds), Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor (Woodbridge, 2007), 122. See also, Richmond, V.B., The Legend of Guy of Warwick (New York and London, 1996), 91, 106.

²⁰ The ‘Taymouth Hours’ (BL: MS Yates Thompson 13) is thought to have royal connections, and it has also been suggested that it was illustrated by the same artist who worked on a manuscript for Roger de Waltham (d.c.1336), a canon at St Paul’s, London, now held at Glasgow University library; < http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8148 > accessed 7/7/2014. Also from the fourteenth century, the illustrations in the Smithfield Decretals (BL: MS Royal 10.E.IV) are thought to be later than part of the text, and these have been linked to John Batayle, a canon of St Bartholomew’s at Smithfield, who is mentioned with other canons in a lay subsidy dated 1379; < http://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6549&CollID=16&NStart=100504 > accessed 7/7/2014.

²¹ BL: MS Yates Thompson 13, fol. 14.

²² Carol Fewster has discussed the importance of the coat of arms and the link to the Beauchamps; eadem, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Cambridge, 1987), 109-10.

²³ BL: MS Royal 10.E.IV, fol. 82.

²⁴ According to the medieval bestiary, lions with curly manes are peaceful creatures; Barber, R. (ed. and trans.), Bestiary (Woodbridge, 1999), 23.

²⁵ Griffith, ‘Visual history of Guy’, 115; Hope, ‘Bowls called mazers’, 140-1, reprinted in Woodruff, C. E.., ‘Church plate in Kent. No. IV’, Archaeologia Cantiana, xxviii (1909), 151.

²⁶ Ailes, M., ‘Gui de Warewic in its manuscript context’, in Wiggins and Field, Guy of Warwick, 12.

²⁷ Griffith, ‘Visual history of Guy’, 115; Fewster, Traditionality, 83-5, 109-10. Bishop William Durand of Mende, when talking of divine meanings and mysteries, noted that he (and Mankind) should always strive to comprehend such matters, because, even though this was an impossibility due to Man’s flawed nature, where divine aid was given much could be achieved; idem, The Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. and trans. by Neale, J. and Webb, B. (Louisville, 2007), xix.

²⁸ Rothwell, R., Medieval Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches (Woodbridge, 2008), 31, 42. Although a wall painting rather than a mazer, a Kentish example from the early fourteenth century that exemplifies the use of salient scenes is discussed in; Sweetinburgh, S., ‘‘To move the mind’: scenes from Christ’s life on Faversham’s painted pillar’, in Kelly, S. and Perry, R. (eds), ‘Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life’: Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300-1500 (Turnhout, 2014), 175-88.

²⁹ Nationally, as well as the change from Edward I to his son that brought internal strife and military disasters, the kingdom was beset by harvest failure, cattle plague and famine. In terms of the family, Earl Guy was embroiled in the dispute between Edward II and his most senior magnates, and his death in 1315 caused severe problems because his sons were minors and thus became wards of the Crown.

³⁰ Mason, E., ‘Legends of the Beauchamp’s ancestors: the use of baronial propaganda in medieval England’, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984), 25-40.

³¹ Isabel’s brother was William Mauduit, earl of Warwick, who had inherited the title from his mother. Having no legitimate issue, she became her brother’s heir thus providing her husband with the title, though he gave it to his eldest son; Barfield, S., ‘The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick, 1268-1369’ (unpublished m.phil. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1997), 4-6; online at < http://users.powernet.co.uk/barfield/cont.htm > accessed on 15/1/2010.

³² Ailes, ‘Gui de Warewic’, 25; Sinclair, A., ‘The Beauchamp earls of Warwick in the later Middle Ages’ (unpubl. ph.d. thesis, University of London, 1986), 20.

³³ Rouse, R.A., ‘An exemplary life: Guy of Warwick as medieval culture-hero’, in Wiggins and Field, Guy of Warwick, 108, citing the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland: Advocates’ MS 19.2.1, 246:7).

³⁴ Ibid., 107-9.

³⁵ Ibid.; Nicolas, Sir N.H., Testamenta Vetusta (London, 1826), 78, 79-80, 103-4, 153-5; online at < http://www.archive.org/stream/testamentavetust01nico/testamentavetust01nico_djvu.text > accessed on 15/1/2010.

³⁶ No details are given about the form or decoration of the four mazers; Cotton, C., The Canterbury Chantries and Hospitals together with some others in the neighbourhood (Maidstone, 1934), 41. Duncombe, J. and Batterly, N., The History and Antiquities of the Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals at or near Canterbury viz. St Nicholas at Harbledown, St John, Northgate and St Thomas of Eastbridge (London, 1785), 180.

³⁷ According to Duncombe and Batterly, the mazer was of great antiquity. It was used on the community’s feast days and was stored in the hospital’s chest; idem, Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals, 180.

³⁸ Fewster considers the mazer had been owned by one of the Beauchamps, but her interest is the status of Guy as a fictional and historical character, not the mazer per se; eadem, Traditionality, 109.

³⁹ Cited in Muir, E., ‘Introduction: observing trifles’, in Muir and Rugg, Lost Peoples, xix.

⁴⁰ Barfield, ‘Beauchamp Earls’, 54.

⁴¹ For example Margaret, a nun at Shouldham and the daughter of Earl Thomas and Katherine his countess, received, in 1369, the cross with a pedestal from her mother’s chapel, and a ring and a cup with a cover from her father; Testamenta Vetusta, 78, 79.

⁴² Barfield, ‘Beauchamp Earls’, 12.

⁴³ BL: MS Harley 602, fol. 84v. Calendar Inquisition Post-Mortem, vol. 10 (26-34 Edward III), 628.

⁴⁴ A memo in the letter collection of Christ Church Priory refers to the terms of Sir John’s last will and testament that relate to the chantry; Sheppard, J.B. (ed.), Literae Cantuariensis: The Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, 3 vols (Rolls Series, 85, 1887-89), II, 484-5.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 485-7.

⁴⁶ Woodman, F., ‘Kinship and architectural patronage in late medieval Canterbury: the Hollands, the Lady Chapel and the empty tomb’, in Bovey, A. (ed.), Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Canterbury (London, 2013), 245, 246-7.

⁴⁷ According to Sheppard, who assigned a date of 1360, a member of the Black Prince’s household with Sir Peter de Lacy (a clerk and the Prince’s receiver-general) were seeking a meeting with the prior regarding the chantry that November; Sheppard, Literae Cantuariensis, II, 388-9. Yet the chantry was part of the requirements for a papal dispensation whereby the Black Prince could marry his cousin Joan, known as the ‘Fair Maid of Kent’. The foundation documents are dated September 1362; Literae Cantuariensis, II, 422-31; CCAL: DCc/ChAnt/F/49.

⁴⁸ BL: MS Stowe 594, fol. 10.

⁴⁹ Barfield, ‘Beauchamp Earls’, 12.

⁵⁰ Dawes, M.C.B. (ed.), Register of Edward the Black Prince, 4 vols (London, 1931-33), IV, 40, 53, 67, 113, 207.

⁵¹ Woodman, ‘Kinship’, 246. Sheppard, Literae Cantuariensis, II, 487-9.

⁵² Sir Walter Manney, in his will dated 1371, desired an alabaster tomb in the form of a knight with arms on it, just like that of Sir John de Beauchamp at St Paul’s Cathedral; Testamenta Vetusta, 86.

⁵³ Earl Thomas’ father and John’s elder brother seems to have shown a far greater commitment to the family’s religious establishments at Worcester, Bordesley, and most particularly St Mary’s collegiate church at Warwick. His bequests, in 1369, to Bishop Buckingham of Lincoln, which included a relic of the true cross, do not necessarily denote a strong Canterbury link because the bishop’s chantry in the cathedral nave was not established for another thirty years; Testamenta Vetusta, 80. Nonetheless it is interesting that the elder Earl Thomas was seemingly one of those Buckingham intended should be commemorated there by the monks; Woodman, ‘Kinship’, 257.

54 BL: MS Cotton Nero D.VII, fol. 129v. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library: MS Parker 7, fol. 104v. Page, W. (ed.), Victoria County History, Norfolk, II (1906), 413-14.

⁵⁵ Among the donors’ arms displayed on the roof bosses in the great cloister of the cathedral are five that include the Beauchamp arms: Beauchamp in the east walk (30/3); Beauchamp of Bergavenny in the north walk (22/26), (21/39), Beauchamp Newburgh (21/28); Beauchamp of Bergavenny in the west walk (16/35); CCAL: Add MS 24. The Beauchamp arms are also displayed in the nave vaulting; Woodman, ‘Kinship’, 257.

⁵⁶ Even though it is feasible there had been a Liber benefactorum, as there was at St Alban’s Abbey, and the associated spiritual benefits of confraternity for members of the laity at fourteenth-century Canterbury, the evidence for the latter is far stronger for Canterbury in the fifteenth century; Connor, M., ‘Brotherhood and confraternity at Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the fifteenth century: the evidence of John Stone’s Chronicle’, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxxviii (2008), 143-64.

⁵⁷ Testamenta Vetusta, 52, 79, 80.

⁵⁸ Earl Thomas I bequeathed to his namesake and heir a coat of mail ‘sometime belonging to that famous Guy of Warwick’; ibid., 79.

⁵⁹ Rawcliffe, C., Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2006), 256, 263.

⁶⁰ Lambeth Palace Library: MS 241, fol. 2v. Kerr, J., Monastic Hospitality: The Benedictines in England, c.1070-c.1250 (Woodbridge, 2007), 172.

⁶¹ Kopytoff, I., ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge, 1986), 69, 73-74.

⁶² Ailes, ‘Gui de Warewic’, 13, 25.

⁶³ Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library: U39/2/K; Duncombe and Batterly, Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals, 209-10; Kerr, Monastic Hospitality, 135-40.

⁶⁴ From later testamentary evidence it is known that the hospital had a bede roll; Kent History Library Centre [hereafter KHLC]: PRC, 32/7, fol. 70. At its sister hospital, and probably also at St Nicholas’, deceased brothers and sisters were commemorated through communal feasting on bread, cheese and ale; KHLC: PRC, 17/7, fol. 213. James, W. and Mills, D. (eds), The Qualities of Time: Anthropological Approaches (Oxford and New York, 2005), 7-8.

⁶⁵ Fowler, Rev. Canon (ed.), Rites of Durham, The Surtees Society, 107 (1902), 80-81.

⁶⁶ BL: MS Cotton Galba E.IV, fol. 120v.

⁶⁷ Cotton, Canterbury Chantries, 183.

⁶⁸ Rosser, G., ‘Going to the fraternity feast: commensality and social relations in late medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 430-46.

⁶⁹ Cohen, A.P. (ed.), Belonging: Identity and Social Organisation in British Rural Cultures (Manchester, 1982), 5-16.

⁷⁰ Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 20-1. See also, James and Mills, Time, 21.

⁷¹ Fentress, J. and Wickham, C., Social Memory (Oxford, 1992), 24, 36, 73-74.

⁷² KHLC: Sa/Ch 10J A1, entry dated 15/12/1494.

⁷³ Wilson, C., ‘The medieval monuments’, in Collinson, P., Ramsay, N. and Sparks, M. (eds), A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford, 1995), 498-9.

⁷⁴ Even though the saint’s healing abilities had apparently declined by the early fifteenth century, miracles were still very occasionally recorded; Sweetinburgh, S., ‘Pilgrimage in ‘an Age of Plague’: seeking Canterbury’s ‘hooly blissful martir’ in 1420 and 1470’, in Clark, L. and Rawcliffe, C. (eds), The Fifteenth Century XII: Society in an Age of Plague (Woodbridge, 2013), 67-8.

⁷⁵ Cawley, A.C. (ed.), Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays (London, 1974), 222-34.

⁷⁶ These are shown, for example, in stained glass in All Saints’ church, York, and as a wall painting at Trotton parish church, West Sussex; online at < http://paintedchurch.org/7wksintr.html > accessed on 8/8/2014.

⁷⁷ Their residence at St John’s can be charted using the hospital’s admissions register; KHLC: Sa/Ch 10J.

⁷⁸ For example, in 1464 John Grey first provided for the ‘dawbyng and latthyng’ of a new building on behalf of his wife, and for his own corrody he donated six weeks work on its construction; ibid.

⁷⁹ Swanson, R., ‘Two texts and an image make an object: a devotional sheet from pre-Reformation England’, in Hamling and Richardson, Everyday Objects, 238. For the Scrope mazer, see; online at < http://www.yorkguides.co.uk/york-guide/yorkminster.html > accessed on 6/8/2014.

⁸⁰ KHLC: Sa/LC, fol. 16; Boys, W., Collections for an History of Sandwich in Kent, with notices of the other Cinque Ports and Members and of Richborough (Canterbury, 1892 [1792]), 19.

⁸¹ For similar ideas explored in relation to Christ Church Priory, see; Sweetinburgh, ‘Remembering’, 263-4.

⁸² Archbishop Chichele’s funeral monument in Canterbury Cathedral is a famous Kentish example of this idea; Wilson, ‘Monuments’, 476-7.

⁸³ Appadurai, Social Life of Things, 13-56.

⁸⁴ One of these is Stephen Kelly who explores theoretically his ‘troubling encounter with a meaningless pair of medieval shoes’; idem, ‘In the sight of an old pair of shoes’, in Hamling and Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects, 57-70, esp. 70.

⁸⁵ Radley, A., ‘Artefacts, memory and a sense of the past’, in Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. (eds), Collective Remembering (London, 1990), 55.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 55-7.

⁸⁷ Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, 47.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 48-9.

⁸⁹ Sweetinburgh, S, ‘The poor, hospitals and charity in sixteenth-century Canterbury’, in Lutton, R. and Salter, E. (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c.1400-1640 (Aldershot, 2007), 70-2.

⁹⁰ Cotton, Canterbury Chantries, 41.

⁹¹ KHLC: Sa/Ch 10J A1, entry dated 15/12/1494.

⁹² Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 181.

Fig. 1 Guy of Warwick mazer, Canterbury Heritage Museum: courtesy of the trustees of St Nicholas’ Hospital and Canterbury Museums ©.

Fig. 2 Detail showing silver-gilt medallion, Guy of Warwick mazer: courtesy of the trustees of St Nicholas’ Hospital.

Fig. 3 Christine Pikefish mazer, Sandwich Museum: courtesy of Sandwich Town Council (photograph Dean Bubier).

Fig. 4 Detail showing silver-gilt medallion, Christine Pikefish mazer: courtesy of Sandwich Town Council.

Fig. 5 Archbishop Scrope mazer, York Minster: by kind permission of the Chapter of York.