But now, while I stood conning the coats in the East window, he drew towards me and spoke, stretching forward a hand timidly, almost touching my elbow.
"Sir," said he, and his voice and face bore instant witness together of gentle birth, "I am gladly at your service if anything there perplex you." With that he nodded towards the coats-of-arms.
In a trice I had recovered myself. "Then you, too, have a taste for such trifles?" answered I. "We are well met, Sir."
He shook his head, avoiding my look. You might have called his a noble face, but more than anything else it was patient. "I belong to these parts," said he; "and would ask a stranger to use my small knowledge: but, for myself, all such things may pass with me into oblivion, and I say 'Amen.'"
Said I then, "Maybe you can tell me of that coat in the fourth quarter dexter—the hand grasping a gold fleur-de-lys."
"Willingly," said he. "That is another device of the Mohuns, who in later times changed it for the sable cross engrailed. At the first they bore a man's hand in a sleeve: the flower it grasps came to them in this way: There was a certain Reginald Mohun, Lord of Dunster, who gave himself entirely to good works and founded a great abbey at Newenham, on the Somerset border. That was in Henry the Third's time—I think in twelve hundred and forty-six or, maybe, fifty. Having seen his abbey consecrated, he passed to the Court of Rome, which in those days was held at Lyons, to have his charters confirmed, and he happened there in Lent, when the Pope's custom was, on a day after hearing Laetare Jerusalem, to give a rose or flower of gold to the most honourable man then to be found at his court. They made inquiry that year and found the most honourable to be this Reginald Mohun, of whom the Pope asked what rank he bore in England. Mohun answered, 'a plain Knight bachelor.' 'Fair son,' said the Pope, 'hardly can I give you then this flower, which has never been given to one below a King or a Duke, or, at least, an Earl; therefore we will that you shall be Earl of Este'—which, as you know, is Somerset. Mohun answered, 'Holy Father, I have not wherewithal to maintain that title.' So the Pope gave him two hundred marks a year out of the Peter's pence; and so the Mohuns added golden flowers to their arms."
"I thank you, Sir," said I. "But whose is this other noble coat of azure with the bend or? Did Grosvenor ever wed in these parts? Or Scrope?"
"Neither," said he. "That coat is mine."
"Yours?" I cried, surprised out of good manners. "But this, Sir, is the very coat over which Scrope and Grosvenor contended."
"Any are welcome to it now," he answered. "But it is Carminowe, and I am Carminowe."