This monumental cup is the only example of the form made by Nathaniel Hurd, and is closely related to the four known cups made by his father Jacob Hurd in the 1740s. The finial and scroll handles on Nathaniel's cup appear to be made from his father's molds, with slight modifications to accommodate the rococo taste of the 1750s. The engraved cartouche is also in the Boston rococo style, unlike the more baroque engraving on Jacob Hurd's four cups. The three cups by Jacob Hurd most similar to the present cup are the Rowe Cup at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the "Comet Bomb" Cup exhibited in Marks of Achievement (exhibition cat. no. 57), and the Tyng Cup at Yale, which was described by Buhler & Hood as "surely the apogee of the Queen Anne style in American silver; indeed, it is one of the most imposing pieces in the whole range of this art. It is an appropriate symbol of the civic pride of the Boston merchants at this time" (American Silver in the Yale University Art Gallery, 1970, fig. 157, pp. 133-135). Indeed, both the Tyng Cup and the "Comet Bomb" Cup were presented by the merchants of Boston in gratitude for the capture of French privateers in 1744. While little is known about John Madocks, the original owner of the present cup, it seems probable that the cup was presented to him for a similar civic act while he was in Boston. Madocks may have been in the British Royal Navy, as was Richard Spry, commander of the "Comet Bomb" and recipient of the Hurd cup known by the same name. Such a history would explain the present cup's subsequent life in England, where presumably it had been from the time of Madocks's marriage in London in 1758 until its discovery in Wales in 1890 (see Homer Eaton Keyes, "The Editor's Attic," Antiques, September 1932, pp.86-88). Because the repoussé and chased decoration on the present cup is typical of English silver of the 1760s, George Gebelein of Boston suggested in 1932 that the spiral flutes and gadrooning may have been chased in London shortly after the 1758 marriage. Gebelein's statement that the fluting on the cover obliterated Nathaniel Hurd's maker's mark, however, seems to be incorrect, as there is no trace of such a mark on this cup, and it was the usual practice for Jacob Hurd to mark the bezel of the cover if the cover was marked at all. This error was reiterated by Hollis French in 1939 in Jacob Hurd and his Sons. The fourth related cup by Jacob Hurd, the smallest in the group and with different leaf-clad handles, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Frances Safford, Colonial Silver in the American Wing, MMA Bulletin Summer 1983, fig. 45, p. 37.