Dr. Joan Evans wrote in 1953 in her book The History of Jewellery: ‘While it may exceptionally be possible to name the patron who ordered a Renaissance jewel, it is nearly always impossible to determine its nationality, except on purely stylistic grounds.’ It is precisely into these difficult waters I wish to venture, in order to clarify, in the light of the evidence of several newly discovered jewels, what kind of historiated jewellery the English goldsmith was creating for his rich patrons in the second and third quarters of the sixteenth century. The field in this paper is restricted to gold work executed in relief and covered with enamels, translucent and opaque—a technique commonly called ‘encrusted enamelling’. This restriction is due partly to the accident of survival and partly to the fact that the sculptural affinities, together with the iconographic and stylistic aspects of this group, offer a firmer basis for the determining of a national style. England in the first two decades of the sixteenth century was just beginning to see and feel the effects of the Italian Renaissance style in the Arts, and this is reflected in the minor applied art of the English goldsmith in the following years.