These are the aristocracy among the wine glasses, goblets, and spirit glasses. They are rare, difficult to find, and costly to buy, but not impossible to come upon by lucky hazard.

THE ROSE GLASSES

The dearest aim of every collector of old wine glasses is to come upon a Jacobite glass. The more sanguine and less strict kind of collector declares himself the owner of a Jacobite example if he possesses a glass engraved with a six-petalled heraldic Stuart rose (one petal for each King or Queen of Stuart blood who actually reigned in England, he says), a large bud (representing the Old Pretender, he explains), a smaller bud (for the Young Pretender), and a bird or (see illustration, page 20) butterfly (crossing the narrow seas, he explains, to bring the Stuarts back).

A stricter, less easily satisfied collector points out that those were “the ordinary rose glasses,” used at all fashionable dinner-tables in the eighteenth century (see illustration, page 59). The reply to that is that the six-petalled rose and one of the buds, at least, are heraldic, not naturally represented; that the heraldic, six-petalled white rose was the Stuart rose; and that, at any rate, the “ordinary rose glasses” were sometimes used by Jacobites, particularly in general assemblies, because of their covert meaning, when it would have been unsafe to use the treasonable Jacobite glasses proper. A slight addition to the rose glass makes it truly Jacobite; thus I own a fine goblet which is made Jacobite by a monk’s-hood flower being added—a reference to General Monk. An “ordinary rose glass”—not so ordinary after all, and difficult to procure now, as well as dear to buy—which has a Stuart emblem engraved under the foot of it is allowed to pass muster by the stricter collector, but what he aims at or boasts of if he possesses one is a “Jacobite glass proper.”

THE “JACOBITE”

Now a “Jacobite glass proper” is engraved with a portrait of the Old Pretender, or of his son “Bonnie Prince Charlie”; or with the rose, two buds, a butterfly or a bird, and also a Jacobite motto or emblem, or both; or with the cypher of the Old Pretender and the words of a loyalist song. Upon a firing glass (the rarest of the Jacobite variety) may be seen the touching emblem of a thunder-smitten tree putting forth new branches, and the motto Revirescit (It becomes green again). Upon a wine glass may be seen the word “Fiat” with a star (perhaps standing for fiat lux, “Let there be light,” or perhaps for “Let it be done”—the second Restoration of the Stuarts). Or the motto may be Redeat (let him return), or, very rare, Redi; or Radiat (perhaps a misspelling of Redeat, or possibly meant for “let him shine”). If an oak-leaf (as well as the other features) appear on the glass, it was probably used in England; if a thistle, probably in Scotland.

There still are a few Jacobite glasses lying unrecognised no doubt; two were found in a London broker’s shop a few years ago, and bought for 5s.; in 1914 a Bristol schoolmaster learned accidentally that two glasses which had stood on a shelf on a sideboard in the family for forty years were Fiat glasses, and a valuer going to a house in Sussex for other purposes, discovered a Prince Charlie portrait glass (worth a hundred guineas now) still passing incognito—there had been “the pair of it,” but that had been “smashed to bits,” the servants said.

The rarest form of Jacobite glasses is the short toasting or firing glass, for strong waters, of “Hogarth” shape. I possess one of these; it has a “Norwich” foot; the thickness of the base of the bowl, and the “tear” in that and the short bulbous stem, seem to date it at about 1725, so that it will be an “Old Pretender” glass. It is very beautifully engraved with the six-petalled rose, the two buds, the word “Fiat,” the rising star and the (Boscobel) oak-leaf. It had been kept in an armoury, belonging to a collector who did not collect old glass.

No wonder people hunt for Jacobite glasses. They were the romantic, loyal, treasonable vessels which were emptied to the toast of “his Majesty over the water,” in clandestine and dangerous gatherings of fair women and conspiring men. Then the great punch-bowl was filled with water, to represent the narrow seas, and the red wine sparkled in the glasses held out above it; as often at loyal Georgian assemblies a Jacobite would be seen to hold his wine glass above a tumbler of water, if called on to drink to “the King”:

Flip these old glasses with the finger-nail, and they ring like a tuning-fork; draw thumb and finger upwards to the edge of the bowl, and you hear a clear faint resonance, sad as the wailings after Culloden, when final defeat had come.

THE “WILLIAMITE”

I bought two fine, perfect, baluster-stemmed Williamite glasses for a guinea once; they show William of Orange on horseback, and are inscribed with “The Glorious Memory of King William, No Surrender, Boyne, 1st. Iuly 1690”; and the initials “T.C” and “S.C”; on some such glasses two of the initials are “S.T.” (see illustration, page 47). The glass is a yellowish-white where it is thick, and if not made at Belfast, may have been made in Cork; but the engraving would be done in Ulster. Some such glasses are rather recent; no doubt the making of Williamite glasses continued longer than the making of Jacobite glasses did, because of the continued existence of Orange Lodges. Some of these glasses are inscribed “The Immortal Memory” only, or “To the glorious memory of King William” only. Williamite firing glasses, of “Hogarth” shape, are also found.

THE “HANOVERIAN”

When the House of Hanover came to the throne of the United Kingdom, loyal drinking glasses were made accordingly. “God save King George” and “Liberty” are the usual inscriptions on them; sometimes the heraldic white horse of Hanover was engraved on the bowl, or the three crosses of the Union Jack inside a garter and the rays of the sun. Hanoverian glasses are rarer than Jacobite or Williamite, but Jacobite glasses are the most valued and costly.