II. BADGES
Humphrey bore no less than three badges. From a political song, written probably about 1449, it appears that he was known by the title of ‘the Swan,’ a name taken from the badge he had adopted from his Bohun ancestors. In the course of the poem the phrase ‘the Swanne is goone’ appears, and in a different though contemporary hand the word ‘Gloucetter’ is written above the word ‘Swanne’ (Political Songs, ii. 221. Cf. Excerpta Historica, p. 161)
The second badge was on a shield sable three ostrich feathers argent surrounded by the Garter and supported to the Dexter by the Greyhound, to the Sinister by the Antelope. (Window in Greenwich Church, College of Arms MS., L. 14, 105, B.) These appear in the Greenwich window (Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 228. Cf. Archæologia, xxxi. 368), though from impressions of his seal he seems then only to have used two feathers. (Seal described in Cartulaire, iv. 440, and Seal attached to British Museum, Additional Charters, 6000.)
The third badge has a particular interest. It is found at frequent intervals on the St. Albans tomb, and it appears in a slightly different form in other places. It seems to represent a cup with sprays of some plant issuing from the top. On the tomb the sprays look like daisies or their foliage, whereas in drawings of this same badge that occur in several manuscripts in the College of Arms and elsewhere, they seem to be laurels. They vary, too, as to the number of sprays. On the tomb there are seven or eight in each cup, whilst in the extant drawings, which date mostly from the seventeenth century, they vary from one to three (College of Arms, Garter Types and Badges, and MS., L. 14, f. 105, B.). Gough thought that this badge was the rebus of Wheathampsted, and represented wheat sheaves (Gough, Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii. part III. p. 142). This, however, is disproved by the fact that it was not Wheathampsted who built the Duke’s tomb, and it was unlikely that Abbot Stoke would put his predecessor’s mark on a monument built by himself, and secondly by an entry which we find in more than one place under the drawings of the cup, which reads, ‘Humfrey Duke of Gloucester bare this cup with a Laurell branch, in the respect he bore to Learning’ (College of Arms, Miscellanea Curiosa, i. 105, B. Cf. Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 227).