MARK OF DAVID WILLAUME, LONDON, 1707

JOSEPH CHAPLIN
Born the son of a Suffolk carpenter, Chaplin served an apprenticeship with the cooper Rice Price, whom Chaplin described as 'Rich Price of London, Gen^t' in the epitaph on his own tomb in East Bergholt Church, as he married his master's daughter as his first wife. Anne Price bore him many children. It is thought she died whilst giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1691. Chaplin married as his second wife Mercy (or Marcy) (d.1711), sister and heiress of Henry Parker of East Bergholt. Her inheritance included Old Hall, East Bergholt, which Chaplin rebuilt and where he lived for the remainder of his life. His third wife, Mary, the widow of Joseph Gullifer, was the daughter of a Ipswich Doctor of 'Physick', John Bourchier, see F. Johnson, Suffolk Manorial Families, Exeter, 1900, pp. 100-101.

As a highly successful wine merchant Chaplin supplied aristocratic clients including the William, 5th Earl of Bedford, later 1st Duke (1616-1700) and the Hon. Richard Hill (1655-1727), diplomat and statesman, the Danish envoy to the Court of St. James and most notably the Queen. The reason for the gift of the salvers or tazze it not recorded, however, Chaplin made particular mention of them in his will, in which he bequeathed them to his son-in-law Henry Hankey, together with the contents or 'Household stuff' at East Bergholt, rather than leaving them to one of his many children (Public Record Mss. PROB 11/625/208). They also feature in an inventory of his possessions made after his death, perhaps to settle a dispute, for the will also records the 'Part of my estate is invested for my son Benjamin & his children if he have any, but if he should molest Hankey then the legacies &c. to him are to be void'. In form the tazze can be compared to the Raby tazzes offered her as lot 177 and the tazze made for Henry Gorges, whose cups are lot 182, the tazze, the Rosebery Sale; Sotheby's, London, 11 February 1999, lot 22.