Description
the bell shaped bowl with engraved portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart within a simple cartouche, engraved above in banner ‘AUDENTIOR IBO’ the panel flanked by engraved rose and thistle, raised on broken twist stem with swollen knop, set into a turned wooden foot
Dimensions
10cm high
Footnote
Notes:
A handful of deliberately broken Jacobite glasses are recorded. Some preserved with the addition of a simple wooden foot such as this and, indeed, one exists with a silver foot added by Jacobite silversmith Patrick Murray of Stirling.
Tradition tells that it was not uncommon to break the stem of such important glasses after receiving a toast to the health and prosperity of the King over the Water. By breaking the stem, it meant no lesser toast could be celebrated from the glass.
The act of giving such toasts within close quarters of friends and Jacobite supporters was considered a safe but public way to show support, giving or receiving such a toast a safer way to support than on the battlefield and engrained in the culture of the period. In less open company it is said that Jacobites in company of Hanoverian supporters when giving or receiving the toast to ‘The King’ would pass their glass over the punch bowl to signify their Jacobite support for King James or Prince Charles ‘over the water’ in France.
Family tradition from Fingask dictated that this glass was last used by Prince Charles Edward Stuart to toast the uprising and was ceremonially broken by Threipland, in a defiant show of support and so that no lesser man could drink from it. The glass was then kept within the family as a relic of the close relationship with Prince Charles and the family.
Provenance:
Threipland family collection
By direct descent
Fingask Castle, 26th – 28th April 1993, Christies, Lot 1322
Exhibition:
Royal House of Stuart, The New Gallery, London 1889, item 528