Who was Richard White, Queen's Cupmaker?

Contributed by Peter Tipton, 1999

If William Geale was not a silversmith, what about Richard White? Henry Curtis was a local historian of Pirbright in the 1920s. He published a book on the White family, and a typescript history of

Pirbright now in the library of the Society of Genealogists. Curtis found the entry of Richard White's burial in the

Pirbright registers:

Curtis claims Richard White was born in Yateley but he gives no evidence. However Richard White's will proved 26 Sep 1581 mentions that he had lands in Yateley. Curtis then looked at the Crondal Customary and found that Richard inherited the Yateley land from his father, also Richard. He had also found the will of Robert White (d.1487) who had been Mayor of the Staple of Calais. Robert died living in Farnham but he left money to the church in Yateley. It is easy to jump to the conclusion that the two Yateley Richard's in the Crondal Customery were descended from Robert, Mayor of Calais. However the elder Richard need not have been living in Yateley, and could have been living anywhere just as his son lived away from Yateley, in Pirbright. This means Richard the cupmaker could have been born anywhere.

On the Yateley Society's database are the Elizabethan tax records called the Lay Subsidy. The tax assessments list every man of any financial standing. The earliest return is for 1571, just after the date of the Crondal Customary, and the next is 1586, after Richard White's death. There are no Whites listed in either. Even though

Richard the cupmaker of Pirbright had inherited land in Yateley, he may never have lived here.

But did he make the Crystal Cup? Richard White, like William Geale, could have been a potter rather than a silversmith.

Borderware kiln sites have been discovered in Pirbright. In his will Richard left half the tools in his shop to his servant John Sussex. Richard therefore was a craftsman with a workshop. If Richard White of Pirbright was a silversmith, not a potter, and made the Crystal Cup, is there some route by which it could have got into the hands of Mrs Sarah Ball, neé Solme 100 years later?

No-one has even ventured a guess at that.

Conclusion: we still have no evidence as to whether Richard White was a potter or a silversmith, or neither. He had a land holding in Yateley, but unless there is some obscure family relationship between Richard White and the Solme or Ball families it seems unlikely that he made the Yateley Crystal Cup

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