on four leaf-capped scroll bracket feet, the upcurved border chased with a band of quilting, the ground engraved with a broad band of scrolling acanthus tied to Grecian palmattes on a matted ground, the center engraved with a coat-of-arms and the motto SOLA NOBILITAT VIRTUS below a Marquess's coronet, the underside applied with four contemporary carrying handles

John James Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn (1756-1818)

Sotheby's, London, 25 October 1962, lot 126

Sotheby's, London, 9 April 1964, lot 127

Christie's, London, 22 May 1991, lot 38

Stanley C. Dixon, English Decorated Trays, 1964, ill. p.13

Very minor surface scratches commensurate with age, very light wear to gilding at highlights of gadrooned rim; one small casting flaw at the middle of one of the border wires; good clear hallmarks on the underside; overall condition excellent.
"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 Hamilton for John James Hamilton, Marquess of Abercorn (Fig. 1), who was born in July 1756, the posthumous son and heir of Captain John Hamilton R.N. (1714-1755) by his wife Harriet (née Craggs), widow of Richard Eliot of Port Eliot, Cornwall. John James was educated at Harrow before going up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was a contemporary of William Pitt the younger (1759-1806) to whom he was related by marriage through the Eliot family. After leaving university, Hamilton was MP for East Looe in 1783/84 and for St. Germans between 1784 and 1789. It was at this period that he became a particular ally of his friend Pitt during the latter's first tenure as Prime Minister.

On 9 October 1789 Hamilton succeeded his uncle James as the 9th Earl of Abercorn, a title bestowed on an ancestor by James I in 1606. In 1790 he was further elevated as the Marquess of Abercorn. His surviving political correspondence from this time shows that he was immersed in local Irish politic🍸s and electioneering as well as the problem of Catholic Relief and Catholic Emancipation. Following the enactment of the Militia Act in 1793, Abercorn became honorary commander of the Tyrone Militia with which he continued to be associated until his resignation in 1800.

Although Abercorn, the only nobleman of his day to hold titles in England, Ireland and Scotland, resided when in London at the family mansion, 22 (now 25) Grosvenor Square, his principal residence was at Bentley Priory (Fig. 2), Stanmore, north west London, originally built in 1766. He purchased this property in 1788 and immediately employed Sir John Soane to oversee extensive improvements 'in which convenience is united with magnificence in a manner rarely to be met with' (Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, 1810, vol. II, p. 375). Soane's scheme included a picture gallery, a grand Portland stone staircase, a dining room measuring 40 by 30 feet, and a saloon and music room each measuring 50 by 30 feet. The Marquess's lavish expenditure also included improvements to the gardens and park. Visitors to Bentley were from Abercorn's wide circle of political, literary and theatrical friends and acquaintances, including Pitt, Wellington, Canning, Liverpool and Sidmouth; the poets Wordsworth, Moore and Thomas Campbell; and the actors Sarah Siddons and John Kemble. Sir William and Lady Emma Hamilton were also welcome guests, as was Sir Walter Scott who in 1807 wrote his epic poem Marmion there.

Later recalling the Marquess of Abercorn in a review of James Boaden's Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Scott wrote that he (Kemble) 'was a frequent and favourite guest at Bentley Priory, which was then the resort of the most distinguished part of the fashionable world. Its noble owner, the late Marquis of Abercorn, has been so long with the dead, that to do justice to his character, much misrepresented in some points during his life, can be ascribed to no motive which interest or adulation could suggest. He was a man highly gifted by nature, and whose talents had been improved by sedulous attention to an excellent education. If he had remained a Commoner, it was the opinion of Mr Pitt, that he must have been one of the most distinguished speakers in the Lower House. The House of Lords does not admit to the same display either of oratory or of capacity for public business; but when the Marquis of Abercorn did speak there, the talents which he showed warranted the prophecy of so skilled an augur as Pitt. Those who saw him at a distance accused him of pride and haughtiness. That he had a sufficient feeling of the dignity of his situation, and maintained it with perhaps an unusual degree of state and expense, may readily be granted. But that expense, however large, was fully supported by an ample fortune wisely administered, and in the management of which the interests of the tenant were always considered as well as those of the landlord. He racked no rents to maintain the expenses of his establishment, nor did he diminish his charities, which were in many cases princely, for the sake of the outward state, the maintenance of which he thought not unjustly, a duty incumbent on his situation. Above all, the stateliness of which the late Marquis of Abercorn was accused, drew no barrier between the Marquis of Abercorn and those who shared his hospitality.' (Article XI, 'Life of Kemble. – Kelly's Reminiscences,' from the Quarterly Review, April 1826, The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VI, Paris, 1838)

Away from London and its enviᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚrons, Lord Abercorn spent much time at his Irish sea꧙t, Baronscourt, co. Tyrone.

Abercorn was married three times, first on 20 June 1779 to Catharine (died 19 September 1791), first daughter of Sir Joseph Copley, 1st Bt., by whom he had five children; and second on♔ 4 March 1792 to his first cousin, Lady Cecil Hamilton (who may have been his mistress during the lifetime of his first wife), by whom he had a daughter. Following the couple's divorce by Act of Parliament in 1799 (on account of her adultery with Captain Joseph Copley, the brother of her former hus🍰band's first wife), Abercorne married on 3 April 1800 Lady Anne Jane Hatton, widow of Henry Hatton of Great Clonard, co. Wexford, and daughter of the 2nd Earl of Arran.

James Young, the 18th Century London manufacturing silversmith who eventually became proprietor of a business described as 'of consequence and respectability,' was the son of Richard Young, Citizen and Carter (Carman) of London, and his wife, Elizabeth. He was baptised at St. Stephen, Coleman Street, on 29 June 1735. Arthur Grimwade (London Goldsmiths, p. 712) gives an outline of h൩is career, from the beginning of his apprenticeship to John Muns of Gold Street, Gutter Lane, on 4 October 1749, to the entry of his first mark as a smallworker on 21 July 1760, and through his various♓ changes of address and brief partnership with Orlando Jackson in 1774 at Aldersgate Street, to the record of his eventual removal to 70 Little Britain in 1788.

Young was made free of the Company of Carmen by patrimony in June 1759 (London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CHD/FR/02/850). The registers at Goldsmiths' Hall record his removal to Clerkenwell on 22 January 1ಞ766 shortly after his two sons, James and Thomas, were baptised at St. James's, Clerkenwell, respectively on 5 April 1764 and 25 November 1765.

Young's partnership with Jackson, a chaser and native of Scotland, produced one of the most interesting groups of silver of 1774/75: the actor David Garrick's fluted tea and coffee service (Sotheby's, London, 19 October 1961, lot 95, and Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 20 March 1970, lot 201; now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London). Grimwade's estimation of Young's output – 'of elegant neo-Classical design and fine finish, particularly his epergnes' – is based upon the relatively small number of objects to have been identified bearing his mark, either alone or with Jackson. The most spectacular of these are the two 'marine' centrepieces of 1780 and 1786 (based on the original Paul Crespin example in the Royal Collections), the first made for the Duke of Rutland and the second probably for John Fitzgibbon, created Viscount Fitzgibbon and Earl of Clare in 1795 (Kathryn Jones and Christopher Garibaldi, 'Crespin or Sprimont? A question revisited,' Silver Studies, The Journal of The Silver Society, n🐼o. 21, London, 2006, pp. 25-38). Another exceptional example of Young's work is this present tray; fine by any standards of salver and tray making it is also expertly and boldly engraved within a border of excellently rendered rosettes and scrolled foliage in brigh🌠t-cut.

Although the engraver responsible for that decoration is not known, it is tempting to attribute it to the studio of John Thompson (d. 1801) of 44 Gutter Lane, which was a few minutes' walk from Young's workshops at 70 Little Britain. Charles Oman was of the opinion that Thompson had 'worked up a considerable business' by the end of the 18th Century.' He also notes that Thompson's last and best-known apprentice was Walter Jackson (1780?-1834) whose style of engraving, recorded in an album of pulls of crests and coats-of-arms acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1976, is familiar from the heraldry on many trays and salvers produced for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell during the first two decades of the 19th Century (Charles Oman, English Engraved Silver, 1150-1900, London, 197༺8, pp. 113-123). It is also worth comparing the engraving on the tray in this lot with that on a James Young soup tureen and cover 💜of 1790, which may also have been undertaken at Thompson's (Sotheby's, New York, 26 April 2008, lot 282).

James Young retired in 1793. His Little Britain premises, described as 'A VALUABLE LEASHOLD ESTATE, consisting of a spacious dwelling-house, in perfect repair, with numerous fixtures, extensive warehouses and workshops, eligibly situate . . ., with an established Trade, of consequence and respectability,' were announced for auction on 14 May 1793. 'On the same and following day will be sold,' according to the advertisement, 'the neat Household Furniture, valuable implements, utensils, and remaining Stock in Trade of Messrs Young's working goldsmiths, retiring from business. The utensils comprise a very valuable piercing press, a complete set of swages and piercing punches, anvils, dies, stakes, a complete set of casting utensils, and a capital assortment of beautiful modern patterns in lead and brass. The furniture consists of bedsteads, beds, and bedding, carpets, chairs, tables, glasses, kitchen utensils, &c. &c. . . . Mr. Smith [the auctioneer] is authorized to receive proposals for the purchase of the Lease, fixtures and utensils by private contract' (The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, London, Wednesday, 1 May 1793, p. 4d).

James and Thomas Young, described as working goldsmiths of Little Britain, subsequently dissolved their partnership on 21 June 1793 (The London Gazette, London, 22 June 1793, p. 534a). Afterwards James Young went to live at West Hill, Battersea Rise, Surrey, where he died in his 86th year on 9 September 1820 (The Gentleman's Magazine, London, October 1820🥂🐻, p. 376b). As if to emphasis his former connection with the City of London (and Aldersgate Street, where he was in residence between about 1774 and 1788), Young was buried at St. Boldolph, Aldersgate Street, on 15 September 1820.