The Curiosities of Heraldry Part 32

[84] Spenser uses this word:

"How the red roses flush up in her cheeks, And the pure snow with goodly _vermeil_ stain."

[85] Roll of Karlaverok, p. 26.

[86] In the 'Secretes of Master Alexis of Piedmont' are many recipes for making this article.

[87] There is an extraordinary difference of opinion respecting the Mediaeval Latin, _Sinopis_. Ducange, with the authorities quoted above, make its colour green; but the _sinoper_, or ruddle of commerce, is of a dark red or purplish hue. In one of the Cottonian MSS. Nero, c. vi, fol.

156, is the following account of it: "Sinopim, colorem videlicet illum cujus tres sunt species, videlicet _rubea_, _subrubea_, et inter has media, invenerunt primitus, ut scribit Ysidorus viri regionis Ponticae in urbe eorum quam solent ipsi Sinopem vocitare."

[88] Page 205.

[89] It is a prevailing error that the bend sinister is a mark of dishonour, as betokening illegitimacy; this seems to have arisen from its having been confounded with the baton, which bearing differs from it both in being much narrower, and in being cut off from the borders of the escocheon.

[90] Among the sovereign states whose armorial ensigns are formed of such stripes are Cyprus, Hungary, Saxony, Austrasia, Burgundy, Arragon, and Germany under the descendants of Louis the Debonaire. The private families who bear armories so formed are innumerable.--_Brydson_, p. 66.

[91] These, as Mr. Planche (Hist. Brit. Costume, p. 151,) observes, are mostly heraldric terms. Ounding, or _undeing_, signifies a waved pattern or edge.

[92] Blaauw's Barons' War.

[93] Mylneris, miller's; yrne, iron; mylnys, mills; mylne-ston, mill-stone.

[94] Furetiere, quoted by Dall.

[95] Accid. fol. 121.

[96] By a statute of temp. Edw. II. (apud Winton) every person not having a greater annual revenue in land than 100 pence, was compelled to have in his possession a bow and arrows, with other arms both offensive and defensive; but all such as had no possessions (in land), but could afford to purchase arms, were commanded to have a bow with sharp arrows if they resided without the royal forests, and a bow with round-headed arrows if their habitation was within the forests. The words of the statute are, "Ark et setes hors de foreste, et en foreste ark et _piles_." The word pile is supposed to be derived from the Latin 'pila,' a ball; and Strutt supposes this kind of missile to have been used to _prevent_ the owners from killing the king's deer. In the following reign archery, as a pastime of the common people, began to be neglected, which occasioned the king to send a letter of complaint to the sheriffs of London, desiring them to see that the leisure time upon holidays was spent in the use of the bow. In the thirty-ninth year of this reign, 1365, the penalty incurred by offenders was imprisonment at the king's pleasure. The words of the letter are, "arcubus et sagittis, vel _pilettis_ aut boltis," with bow and arrows, or piles or bolts. _Vide Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. Edit.

Hone_, pp. 54, 55.

[97] Nisbet.

[98] Vide p. 47, Arms of Echingham, &c.

[99] '_Gules_, a tri-corporated lyon issuant out of the three corners of the field, and meeting under one head in fesse, _or_,' was the coat-armour of Edmund Crouchback, second son of Henry III. This is the earliest specimen of _differencing_ I have met with.

[100] This is the usual notion of the old armorists, but Bossewell gives a different statement: "The pellicane feruently loueth her [young] byrdes.

Yet when thei ben haughtie, and beginne to waxe hote, they smite her in the face and wounde her, and she smiteth them againe and sleaeth (kills) them. And after three daies she mourneth for them, and then striking herself in the side till the bloude runne out, she sparpleth it upon theire bodyes, and by vertue thereof they quicken againe."--Armorie of Honour, fol. 69. On the bra.s.s of Wm. Prestwick, dean of Hastings, in Warbleton church, co. Suss.e.x, there is a representation of a pelican feeding her young with her blood, and the motto on a scroll above,

'=Sic Epus dilerit nos=,'--'Thus hath Christ loved us.'

[101] The Heraldry of Fish, by Thomas Moule, Esq. London, 1842.

[102] Vide cut at the head of this chapter.

[103] Loadstone.

[104] Op. Maj. edit. Jebb. 232.

[105] Halliwell's Sir John Maundevile, p. 319.

[106] Succinct Account of Religions and Sects, sect. 4, No. 42.

[107] Some of the Greek coins of Sicily bear an impress of three legs conjoined, exactly similar to this fanciful charge, except that they are naked, and have at the point of conjunction a Mercury's head.

[108] Dallaway.

[109] The flower of the 'sword-gra.s.s, a kind of sedge.' _Dict._

[110] A work on the Fleur-de-Lis, in 2 vols. 8vo (!), was published in France in 1837.

[111] The following jest on the _fleur-de-lis_ may amuse some readers. Sir William Wise "having lente to the King (Henry VIII) his signet to seale a letter, who having powdred eremites engrayl'd in the seale, [qy.

ermine?--Several families of Wise bear this fur:] 'Why, how now, Wise,'

quoth the King, 'What? hast thou _lice_ here?' 'And if it like your Majestie,' quoth Sir William, 'a _louse_ is a rich coate, for, by giving the louse, I part armes with the French King, in that he giveth the _floure de lice_.' Whereat the king heartily laugh'd, to heare how pretily so byting a taunt (namely, proceeding from a Prince,) was so sodaynely turned to so pleasaunte a conceyte." (Stanihurst's Hist. of Ireland in Holinshed's Chron.) Nares thinks that Shakspeare, who is known to have been a reader of Holinshed, took his conceit of the '_white lowses_,'

which 'do become an old coat well,' in the Merry Wives of Windsor, from this anecdote. (Heraldic Anom. vol. i, p. 204.)

[112] Essay on Armories, p. 10.

[113] Chevaux-de-frise (in fortification), large joists of wood stuck full of wooden spikes, armed with iron, to stop breaches, or to secure the pa.s.ses of a camp.--_Bailey's Dict._

[114] Heywood's Epigrams and Prov. 1566. No. 13.

[115] _Wende_, thought; _mulne_, mill.

[116] Modern naturalists place it in the cla.s.s cryptogamia, and give it the name of _Tremella nostoc_.

[117] In reading this list it will be seen that it contains several monsters not of the 'Gothick' but of the Cla.s.sical era, as the chimera, harpy, and sagittary; but it is a curious and characteristic fact that the purely cla.s.sical monsters were never great favourites in heraldry.

[118] Nisbet on Armories, edit. 1718; pp. 12-13.

[119] Workes of Armorie, folio 66.

[120] Cocatryse, basilicus, _cocodrillus_! Prompt. Parv. Camd. Soc.

[121] Hence sometimes called the basilisk, from the Greek [Greek: basiliskos].

[122] Mallet (Northern Antiquities, ch. ix) says, "The thick misshapen walls winding round a rude fortress, on the summit of a rock, were often called by a name signifying SERPENT or DRAGON. Women of distinction were commonly placed in such castles for security. Thence the romancers invented so many fables, concerning princesses of great beauty guarded by dragons and afterwards delivered by young heroes, who could not achieve their rescue till they had overcome those terrible guards."

[123] Anon, Parag.

[124] Brydson's Summary View.

[125] Probably, also, by frightening their horses, to throw their ranks into confusion.

[126] By an oversight in the drawing some small vestiges of wings have been omitted.

[127] Barons' War, p. 168.

[128] 'Sir Degore.' Warton's Hist. Poet., p. 180, ibid.