The Curiosities of Heraldry Part 30

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Yorke's 'Union of Honour.'

[2] The general ignorance of Heraldry even among the well-educated may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that not many months since the Commissioners of a.s.sessed Taxes decided that a person who sealed his letters with a Thistle surrounded by the words '=Dinna Forget=,' was liable to the charge for armorial bearings, albeit the device contained neither shield, helmet, wreath, nor any other _necessary_ element of heraldric insignia!

[3] Woodham's 'Application of Heraldry to the Ill.u.s.tration of various University and Collegiate Antiquities;' Nos. 4 and 5 of the publications of the Cambridge Antiq. Soc.--an interesting essay, which would be none the worse if divested of a few remarks on "church principles,"

"conventicles," "Cobbett," and the "Morning Chronicle,"--subjects as irrelevant as the whims of old Morgan, or any other heraldric writer of the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

[4] Woodham.

[5] Grimaldi. Orig. Gen. p. 82.

[6] Vide p. 254.

[7] Some curious specimens (for example) of this kind of history occur in the writings of John Rous of Warwick, temp. Edw. IV. His _History of England_ is compiled indiscriminately _from the Bible_ and from monastic writers. Moses, he tells us, does not mention all the cities founded before the deluge, but Barnard de Breydenback, dean of Mayence, does! With the same taste he acquaints us, that, though the book of Genesis says nothing of the matter, Giraldus Cambrensis writes, that Caphera or Cesera, Noah's niece, being apprehensive of the deluge, set out for Ireland, where, with three men and fifty women, she arrived safe with one ship, the rest perishing in the general destruction! Vide Walpole's Historic Doubts.

[8] Morgan. Adam's Shield, p. 99.

[9] Morgan. Adam's Shield, p. 100.

[10] "G.o.d himselfe set a marke upon Cain. But you perhaps will say, that was Stigma, and not Digma, a brand, not an ornament." Bolton's Armories.

[11] 'Three _rests_ gules.' A difference of opinion exists as to what this charge represents. Some blazon it a _horseman's rest_, and a.s.sert that it was the _rest_ in which the tilting-spear was fixed. Others contend that it was a wind instrument called the Clarion or Claricorde; while "Leigh and Boswell will have them to be _sufflues_, instruments which transmit the wind from the bellows to the organ." Lastly, Minsheu advises those who blazon them _rests_, to call them brackets or _organ-rests_; and this is evidently the sense implied by Morgan.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[12] The correctness of these extracts, historically and etymologically considered, needs no comment.

[13] Numb. ii. 2. "Every man shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of his father's house."

[14] Gen. xlix.

[15] He couched as a lion....

[16] Zebulon shall be for an haven of ships....

[17] Issachar is a strong a.s.s couching down between two burdens....

[18] Dan shall be a serpent by the way....

[19] He shall yield royal dainties....

[20] Naphtali is a hind let loose ... &c. &c. &c.

[21] Sprinkled with drops of water.

[22] Morgan gives the preamble of the Letters Patent of King David _for the warrant of a pedigree_. It commences with "Omnibus, &c. David, Dei gratia Rex Juda et Israel, universis et singulis," &c.!!

[23] Leigh's Accedens of Armory.

[24] Boke of St. Alb. It will be seen in this extract that the origin of arms is referred to other times than those mentioned in the former quotations. Several similar discrepancies occur in the work, proving it to have been a compilation from different and conflicting authorities.

[25] Miscellaneous Collection.

[26] See vignette at the head of this chapter.

[27] Those who wish for other examples of this fict.i.tious heraldry may find in Ferne's 'Blazon of Gentrie,' the arms of Osyris king of Egypt, Hercules king of Lybia, Macedonus, Anubis, Minerva, Semiramis, Tomyris, Delborah (Judge of Israell), Jahel the Kenite, and Judith. These six last mentioned, together with the Empress Maud, Elizabeth of Arragon, and Joan of Naples, const.i.tute the "nine worthies amongst women." Ferne, 220 et seq., where their arms are engraved.

Upon the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England, a controversy arose between the heralds of the two nations respecting the priority of right to the first quarter in the British achievement. The Scottish officers maintained that as Scotland was the older sovereignty, its tressured lion should take precedence of the three lions-pa.s.sant, or, as they called them, the _leopards_, of England. This was an indignity which the English heralds could not brook, and they employed Sir William Segar to investigate the antiquity of our national ensigns. Segar's treatise on this subject, dedicated to his majesty, contains some fine examples of fict.i.tious heraldry. He begins with the imaginary story of Brutus, king of Britain, a thousand years before the Christian era, and his division of the island between his three sons. To Locheren, the eldest, he gave that portion afterwards called England, with arms 'Or, a Lion pa.s.sant-guardant, gules.' To his second son, Toalknack, he a.s.signed Albania, or Scotland, with 'Or, a Lion rampant, gules,' which, says he, with the addition of the double tressure, continue the arms of Scotland.

And to his youngest son he gave Cambria, with 'Argent, three Lions pa.s.sant-guardant, gules,' which the princes of Wales used for a long time.

Vide Nisbet's Essay on Arm. p. 162.

Bolton (Elements of Armories, 1610, p. 14,) gives the arms of Caspar and Balthasar, two of the three kings who, guided by the 'Star in the East,'

came to worship our Saviour at Bethlehem. He admits, indeed, that there is no 'canonicall proofe' of them, yet appears to think that a painting "in the mother church of Canterburie, upon a wal, on the left hand, as you enter the north ile of the first quire," is pretty respectable authority!

It was a favourite crotchet with this writer, that heraldry did not owe its origin to any particular period or nation, but that it sprang from the light of nature.

[28] Story of Thebes, p. 2.

[29] Romulus.

[30] Vide Donaldson on the Connexion between Heraldry and Gothic Architecture, &c. &c. &c.

The far-renowned shield of Achilles was covered with so great a number of figures _pictorially disposed_, that it resembled modern heraldry still less than those above alluded to.

[31] Essay on Armories, p. 4.

[32] From a contemporary picture at Castle-Ashby, engraved in Pennant's Journey from Chester to London.

[33] It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that all early nations had their national emblems, for the ox of the Egyptians, the owl of the Athenians, the eagle of the Romans, and the white horse of the Saxons (retained in the arms of Saxony and of Kent), must occur to the recollection of every one.

[34] Vide the next chapter, where a _rationale_ of these figures is attempted.

[35] Dallaway, p. 9.

[36] _Blazon_ is closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon BLAWAN, to blow. There are some however who deduce it from the German, _bla.s.se_, a mark.--_Vide Montagu's Guide_, p. 14.

[37] Planche Hist. Brit. Costume.

[38] Those who contend for the earlier origin of heraldry adduce a certain shield occurring in the Bayeux tapestry, and resembling a modern coat charged with a cross coupee between five roundles; but whatever may be said of the cross, the roundles are probably only the studs or rivets of the shield. Again, as there are several shields in which the ornaments are exactly alike, the arms of a family cannot be intended. They also bring forward the encaustic tiles taken up from the floor of a monastery at Caen by Mr. Henniker, and now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, which they presume to have been laid down at the time of the foundation of the abbey in 1064. The arms upon these, supposed to have been those of benefactors, have been proved to belong to a date considerably posterior.

Among them are the arms of England, three lions pa.s.sant, an ensign which had no existence till the reign of Richard I, upwards of a century later than the foundation of the monastery of Caen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Caen Tile.)]

[39] Dallaway.