The box is chased on lid and base with the coat of arms of Cracherode of Toppesfield, Essex, granted in 1572. It is probable that it was made for Anthony Cracherode (c. 1674–1752), a British government lawyer and parliamentarian who was appointed Treasury solicitor in 1715 and who sat in the House of Commons from 1728 until 1734. Remembered for what would now be called extreme conservative views, he was renowned for voting with the government on every occasion. On his retirement he bought an estate at Cholderton in Wiltshire. According to a memorial plaque in the parish church of St Nicholas, Cracherode chose to retire from public life and devoted ‘the remainder of his days in Religious attention to the only and most important business that of a future and happy immortality’. It is recorded in his will that he left ‘… unto my God Son Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode (now a Student of Christ Church College in Oxford) my Gold Snuffbox …’, very probably the present example. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode (1730–1799) was a collector of books and Old Master prints; he was a major benefactor of the British Museum, of which he was elected a trustee in 1784. It is rare to find fully marked London gold boxes at this date and it is somewhat frustrating that so little is known about Joseph Perkins. According to Grimwade, Joseph was the son of James Perkins ‘late of the parish of Allhallows Barking London broker’. He was apprenticed in 1708 to Richard Gines, probably a goldsmith/banker, of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, of which he was free in 1716. Joseph entered his mark as a smallworker from Ball Alley, Lombard Street, on 6 July 1720, the year this box was made. A second mark was registered in 1735 from Great Dean Court, St Martin’s Le Grand. He was still alive in 1749 but does not appear to have left a will.

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