Two matching George II silver seal salvers, one Edward Vincent, the other maker's mark IL, mullet above (Grimwade no. 3650), attributed to John Liger, London, respectively 1728 and 1735

each with moulded Bath borders above three bifurcated scroll supports, the centres superbly engraved with the obverse and revers imprints of two seals surmounted by the royal arms and supporters and with the arms of Eyre and cherub supporters below, all framed by scrolling foliage on horizontally linear grounds, the undersides with scratch weights, respectively: '42=6-0' and '42-4-0'

Sir Robert Eyre (1666-1735);
by descent to John St. Leger Eyre Matcham Esq. (1890-1975), sold
Sotheby's London, 10 June 1965, lot 172;
Donald S. Morrison Collection, sold 
Sotheby's New York, 6 June 1980, lot 48;
Christie's New York, 30 October 1990, lot 347;
The Collection of Diethelm Höner, Sotheby's New York, 18 October 2001, lot 115;
Private Collection.

Salisbury, Wiltshire: Bath and West of England Society, June 1866
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Art Museum, English Silver, 1966, no. 34
Brooklyn, New York: on loan, 1966-1980, loan nos. L66.18.6-7

Sotheby's, The Ivory Hammer, 1964-65, London, 1965, p. 210
Charles Oman, English Engraved Silver, 1150-1900, London, 1978, pp. 81 and 82, pls. 94 and 95
Vanessa Brett, The Sotheby's Directory of Silver, London, 1986, p. 184, fig. 762 and detail

1728: normal light wear and scratches commensurate with age, marks excellent, general condition excellent. 1735: a few minor normal scratches commensurate with age, engraving very crisp, general condition excellent, marks clear.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The arms are those of Eyre quartering Lucy and impaling Rudge, for Sir Robert Eyre, Kt. (1666-1735)

The 1728 salver is engraved with a representation of the Seal of the Court of Common Pleas of George I:
Obverse: The King enthroned, flanked by figures of Britannia and Justice
Reverse: The royal arms above a banner with Latin inscription, 'For the Court of Common Pleas'

The 1735 salver is engraved with a representation of the Seal of the Prince of Wales (the future George II):
Obverse: The Prince enthroned, flanked by eagles and lions
Reverse: The Prince in classical attire on horseback

Sir Robert Eyre was the eldest son of Sir Samuel Eyre of Newhouse, Redlynch, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, a Justice of the King's Bench in 1694, by Martha, third daughter and co-heir of Francis Lucy, fifth son of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlicote, Warwickshire. He was M.P. for Salisbury from 1698 to 1710 and was knighted in the latter year. Upon the accession of George I he was appointed Chancellor to the Prince of Wales. Sir Robert became Lord Chief Baron in 1723 and Lord Chief Justice to the Common Pleas in 1725. He was an intimate friend of the Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole and others. In 1729, he was charged with having corruptly assisted Thomas Bambridge, the warden of Newgate Prison, but was acquitted by a committee of the House of Commons. He married in 1694 Elisabeth, daughter of Edward Rudge of Warley Place, Essex and Abbey Manor, Evesham.

Seal Salvers

The seals attached by ribbon to many historical documents are impressions in wax, each cast from a unique matrix or die made in two parts. Both sides of these matrices, the most important of which were of silver, are engraved with the design in reverse. In England, these official matrices were produced at The Mint, the Chief Engraver of which between 1705 and 1741, then in the Tower of London, was John Croker (formerly Johann Crocker, 1670-1741). He was a master jeweller from Dresden who worked in Germany and the Netherlands before settling in England in 1691 under William III. When the post of Chief Engraver became vacant, Croker successfully petitioned Lord Godolphin, Lord High Treasurer of England (a friend of Sir Robert Eyre) for the position.

The tradition that the Keeper of a Seal should retain the matrices as a perquisite when they became obsolete, such an when a sovereign died, dates back to the 15th century. Because each matrix needed to be erased or broken, the custom arose of fashioning the metal into a piece of plate engraved with a representation of the seal. During the 16th century cups were often created from the silver but by the early 18th century salvers were preferred, particularly as their flat surface allowed for an elaborate engraved depiction of the cancelled seal. Only about a dozen seal salvers are known from the 18th century or before, including:

1. A circular salver, maker’s mark BB (? Benjamin Bathurst of London), circa 1695. Engraved by Simon Gribelin with the Exchequer Seal of William & Mary, made for Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax (1661-1715). (Burrell Collection, Glasgow)
2. A circular salver, unmarked, circa 1702. Engraved by Simon Gribelin with the Exchequer Seal of William III, made for Henry Boyle, 1st Baron Carleton (1669-1725). (Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire)
3. A circular salver, William Lukin of London, circa 1717. Engraved by Simon Gribelin with the Exchequer Seal of Queen Anne, made for Henry Boyle, 1st Baron Carleton (1669-1725). (Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire)
4. A circular salver, William Lukin of London, circa 1717. Engraved by Joseph sympson with the first Exchequer Seal of George I, made for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). (Whereabouts unknown)
5. A circular salver, Thomas Parr, London, 1739. Engraved with the judicial seal of Sir John Willes (1685-1761), Chief Justice of the County Palatine of Chester. The engraving attributed to Charles Gardner. (Grosvenor Museum, Chester)
6. A copy of the Earl of Halifax’s salver (no. 1, above), David Willaume, London, 1726. Engraved possibly by Simon Gribelin. (The Society of the Inner Temple, London)
7. A shaped circular salver, Bath border, John White, London, 1728. Engraved and signed by Charles Gardner with the Great Seal of George I, made for Peter King, 1st Baron King (1669?-1734). (Sotheby’s, London, 8 June 1995, lot 122)
8. A square salver, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1728. Engraved with the second Exchequer Seal of George I; the engraving attributed to William Hogarth, made for Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
9. A shaped circular salver, Bath border, Edward Vincent, London, 1728. Engraved with the Seal of the Court of Common Pleas of George I; the engraving attributed to Charles Gardner, made for Sir Robert Eyre (1666-1735), Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. (Included in the present lot)
10. A shaped circular salver, Bath border, maker’s mark IL, a mullet above (attributed to John Liger), London, 1735. Engraved with the Seal of George, Prince of Wales (afterwards George II), made for Sir Robert Eyre (1666-1735), Chancellor to the Prince of Wales; the engraving attributed to Charles Gardner. (Included in this present lot)
11. A shaped oval salver, 10-foil, Henry Hebert, London, 1738. Engraved with the Great Seal of Queen Caroline, made for Arthur Onslow (1691-1768), the Queen’s Chancellor. (Corporation of Kingston-upon-Thames)
12. A circular salver, Isaac Cookson, Newcastle, 1740. Made from a cup, circa 1730, which had been made from James I’s Seal of the Duchy of Lancaster for Sir Humphrey May (1573-1630). (Corporation of Lancaster)

The makers

As early as the Plate Offences Act of 1739 it was recognised that the ‘. . . person who causes [a piece of silver] to be wrought’ as well as the person who actually made it, was required to register their mark at the London Assay Office. Commenting in 1926 on this, Walter T. Prideaux, then Clerk of the Goldsmiths’ Company, argued that, ‘This surely includes the retail shopkeeper who orders the goods from a maker.’¹

Sir Robert Eyre’s salvers, both of which are engraved by Charles Gardner, look and feel as if they were made in the same workshop. In fact, they almost certainly were, even though one bears the maker’s mark of Edward Vincent, London, 1728 and the other of John Liger, London, 1735. The workmanship and design of both salvers suggest that the actual makers were Huguenots, trained in the French tradition.

So, who were Vincent and Liger, what was their position in the London silver trade and their connection with each other?

Edward Vincent

Unfortunately, Edward Vincent’s origins remain obscure. Among the three late 17th/early 18th century apprentices of that name recorded in the Goldsmiths’ Company registers, Arthur Grimwade favoured Edward, son of William Vincent of Hendon, Middlesex. The author was in no doubt, however, about the silversmith’s surviving work, writing that he must have been ‘of considerable rank producing high-quality hollow-ware, coffee-pots, cups and salvers. His masterpiece is with little doubt the superb oblong salver of 1729 of the Middle Temple of which Lamerie would not have been ashamed.’²

Edward Vincent was apprenticed in 1699 to the goldsmith Robert Cooper (1650?-1720) of the Golden Lion, on the corner of Arundel Street, Strand, who counted among his customers Samuel Pepys (1633-1702) and who in 1717 was Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company.³ It was this same Robert Cooper who was master in 1711 to John White (d. 1764?), another prominent silversmith of Vincent’s generation.⁴

Fellow apprentices aside, there was a later connection between Vincent and White. Their marks are struck on two silver seal salvers of 1728 which have additionally been engraved in the same workshop, that of Charles Gardner.⁵
 
If the nature of Vincent and White’s relationship is uncertain, the same cannot be said for White and the silversmith responsible for the second of Sir Robert Eyre’s salvers in this lot. This was John Liger, son of Isaac Liger.⁶  Their shop  in Hemming’s row was  very close to White’s premises; at the Golden Cup, Arundel Street, Strand⁷ and then, additionally from 1734, at the corner of Green Street (now Irving Street), Leicester Fields.

John Liger

Isaac Liger, who arrived in England from France before 1700, probably from Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, was married by licence on 16 October 1705 to Marie Chemet at the Église de Piccadilly, the French Protestant chapel in Swallow Street.⁸ Five of their children were baptised between 1706 and 1713 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, including, on 17 February 1711, their son John.

Isaac died on 12 November 1730 and his obituary appeared two days later in The Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal:
‘Yesterday Morning dy’d Mr. Isaac Liger, a very eminent and noted Goldsmith, in Hemmings’s Row near St. Martin’s-Lane, Charing-Cross, a Gentleman of a fair Character, and much lamented by all that knew him. He is succeeded in his Business by his Son, Mr. John Liger.’ By his will, signed on 20 July that year and proved on 30 November, he left to his son John, ‘all my working Tools patterns Scales Weights where so ever the press Counter and Show Glasses in the Shop my Beauroe and Clock.’⁹

A little over a week later, on 9 December, John entered his mark at Goldsmiths’ Hall as a largeworker, giving his address as ‘ye sign of ye Pearl in Hemings Row St. Martins Lane.’¹⁰
Hemming’s Row, demolished in 1886 for the creation of Charing Cross Road, formed the eastern end of Orange Street and the site is now partly covered by the Garrick Theatre. It was a few yards from Green Street at the south east corner of Leicester Fields, where a number of goldsmiths had their premises.¹¹ As previously mentioned, one of these was John White, a former apprentice of Robert Cooper.

On 4 December 1734, both Liger and White made an appearance at the Old Bailey, respectively as prosecutor and witness in the matter of one of the latter’s apprentices, Edward Atkins (actually Adkins)¹² who had been indicted ‘for privately stealing 3 Silver Knee-Buckles, value 10s. 4 Silver Stock-buckles, value 16s. [and several other similar items] the Goods of John Liger in his Shop, October 19.’

Stephen Read,¹³ Liger’s near-sighted apprentice, also appeared; a number of witnesses spoke in Adkins’s favour, including White’s other apprentice, Reuben Bowler (actually Borer)¹⁴ and a Mary Garman who in a spirited defence of her friend told the court that she had appealed to White, saying, ‘Consider this young Youth – Good God!’ She further declared to the Bench, ‘I never was afore a Justice my Lordship in my Life before – My Lordship should consider a young Youth – I never knew no harm of him before.’ In spite of these entreaties, the prisoner was found guilty and condemned to death. In the event, however, he was given a royal reprieve and sent for Transportation instead.¹⁵

On 2 July 1735, John Liger was admitted to the Broderers’ Company (through which his father had gained his freedom of the City of London by redemption on 19 September 1704), upon the oaths of the following, all fellow Citizens of the City of London:
John White, Goldsmith, at the Golden Cup, Green Street¹⁶
Thomas Faulkner, Cutler, at the Crown & Pearl, New Street
Mark Hodgson, Haberdasher
Benjamin Brewood, Goldsmith
Jacob Margas, Boucher [Butcher]
Joseph Sanders, Goldsmith¹⁷

According to Arthur Grimwade no silver bearing John Liger’s mark has been recorded from after 1736/37.¹⁸ In fact, current research into his life after this date suggests that he ran into financial problems. His wife, Ann, died probably in late 1739 by which time Liger was residing in Saumur, France and her will, which she had signed on 7 July 1735, was proved in London on 6 March 1740 by a power of attorney granted by Liger to John White.¹⁹ By this time White himself was in difficulties, having just been declared bankrupt on 24 April. His was a miserable situation and his anguish is well conveyed in his surviving correspondence. Before long White gave up the business of a silversmith and by 1750 had reinvented himself as a perfumer.²⁰

In a similar situation, could John Liger have followed the same course and changed his occupation? The answer may lie behind a notice which appeared in The London Gazette of 19 May 1744 (p. 4):
‘The following Person being a Fugitive for Debt and beyond the Seas on or before the First of January, 1742, and having surrendered himself to the Keeper of the Marshalsea Prison, hereby gives Notice, that he intends to take the Benefit of [the 1743] Act for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors . . . viz. John Liger, late of the Parish of St. Martin in the Fields, in the County of Middlesex, Oilman.’

Footnotes

¹ Quoted in J. Paul de Castro, The Law and Practice of Hall-Marking Gold and Silver Wares, London, 1926, p. 40. For further comment, see C. Hartop, The Huguenot Legacy, English Silver 1680-1760 from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection, London, 1996, pp. 50 and 51.
² Arthur Grimwade, London Goldsmiths, 1697-1837, pp. 689 and 690.
³ Ibid, p. 472. Cooper’s son, Gislingham Cooper (1688-1768) was made free of the Goldsmiths’ Company by patrimony in 1716, being sworn by Lawrence Coles, William Westfield, John Bodington, Capt. Joseph Bird, Henry Green and Edward Chowne (London Metropolitan Archives, ELJL/344/100). A goldsmith/banker, he inherited his father’s business and when he died in 1768 was said to have amassed a fortune of ‘upwards of 200,000£.’ (The Annual Register . . . For the Year 1768).
⁴ Ibid, pp. 698 and 699; White gained his freedom on 3 December 1719 and entered his first mark a few days’ later on 10 December.
⁵ Sotheby’s London, 8 June 1995, lot 122. One is engraved for Sir Robert Eyre (included in this lot), the other for Peter King, 1st Baron King.
⁶ Between about 1705 and 1732 (J. Lomax and J. Rothwell, Country House Silver from Dunham Massey, The National Trust, 2006, pp. 32-35). Both father and son supplied silver to George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington (1675-1758).
⁷ A copy of his trade card, engraved in the manner of Charles Gardner and stating that he, White, ‘Maketh & Selleth, all sorts of Gold, & Silver Plate,’ is in the Heal Collection at the British Museum (Heal, 67.426).
⁸ National Archives, RG4/4609, p. 55.
⁹ National Archives, PROB 11/641.
¹⁰ A. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths, 1697-1837, p. 583. ‘Wheras a Silver Scrole, supposed to be broken off a Piece of Work, was offer’d to sale (by a Person suspected) a few Days since, after which no Enquiry has yet been made: Any Person having lost such a Piece of Plate, and describing properly the Marks, may have the said Scrole, upon applying to John Liger, Goldsmith, a the Sign of the Pearl in Hemmings-Row, St. Martin’s-lane, paying the Charge of this Advertisement.’ (The Daily Post, London, Saturday, 20 February 1731). It is presumably from this address that he set out one day in 1733 for the church of St. Mary le Strand to be married to Anne (b. 1717), daughter of Amos Hayton (d. 1737), a local broker.
¹¹ A.J.H. Sale and V. Brett, ’John White: some recent research,’ The Silver Society Journal, no. 8, London, Autumn 1996, p. 469.
¹² Edward, son of Edward Adkins of Ewell, Surrey, victualler, apprenticed to John White, Citizen and Goldsmith, 2 October 1730. (National Archives, IR 1/12, fol. 84) His father died in January 1737 leaving a will that cut young Edward off with a shilling. The remainder of his estate went to his widow, Mary, and daughter, Annise (London Metropolitan Archives, DW/PA/5/1737/1).
¹³ Apprenticed to Liger on 28 October 1731, he was the son of John Read of Croydon, Surrey, gentleman (National Archives, IR 1/13, fol. 8).
¹⁴ Probably Reuben Borer of St. Martin-in-the-Fields who was married of 3 June 1744 at St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf to Esther Cox of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
¹⁵ The Derby Mercury, Derby, Thursday, 26 December 1734, p. 4b.
¹⁶ A. Grimwade, London Goldsmiths, 1697-1837, pp. 582 and 583; the 3rd edition of this publication, p. 757, confuses John White’s address, suggesting, erroneously, that by July 1735 Liger had moved from Hemming’s Row to Green Street.
¹⁷ London Metropolitan Archives, ELSL/565/125.
¹⁸ London Goldsmiths, 1697-1837, p. 583.
¹⁹ National Archives, PROB 11/701.
²⁰ A.J.H. Sale and Vanessa Brett, ’John White: some recent research,’ The Silver Society Journal, no. 8, London, Autumn 1996, pp. 467-470.