In D'Blossiers Tovey's fascinating 1738 work which deals with
the archaelogical remnants of English Jewry before the expulsion
of 1290, Anglia Judaica, about the "the history and antiquities
of the Jews in England, collected from all our historians, both
printed and manuscript, as also from the records in the Tower,
and other publick repositories," he reproduces an image of a
vase or an urn of sorts with a Hebrew inscription. Explaining
that it was found in a brook about 40 years earlier (about 1700)
, he asked Jews what it was used for, but they didn't know:
Tovey's own (way off track) guess was that it was meant to store
documents. But my guess is that it was a 'tzedakah box.' צדקה
תציל ממות. What's your interpretation?