Mary: A Tudor Rose impaling a Pomegranate—also impaling a Sheaf of Arrows, ensigned with a Crown, and surrounded with rays: a Pomegranate.
Elizabeth: A Tudor Rose with the motto, “Rosa sine Spinâ” (a Rose without a Thorn): a Crowned Falcon and Sceptre. She used as her own motto—“Semper Eadem” (Always the same).
James I.: A Thistle: a Thistle and Rose dimidiated and crowned, [No. 308], with the motto—“Beati Pacifici” (Blessed are the peacemakers).
Charles I., Charles II., James II.: The same Badge as James I., without his motto.
Anne: A Rose-Branch and a Thistle growing from one branch.
From this time distinctive personal Badges ceased to be borne by English Sovereigns. But various badges have become stereotyped and now form a constituent part of the Royal Arms, and will be found recited later in [Chapter XVIII.]
The Ostrich Feather Badge. The popular tradition, that the famous Badge of the Ostrich Feathers was won from the blind King of Bohemia at Cressi by the Black Prince, and by him afterwards borne as an heraldic trophy, is not supported by any contemporary authority. The earliest writer by whom the tradition itself is recorded is Camden (A.D. 1614), and his statement is confirmed by no known historical evidence of a date earlier than his own work. As Sir N. Harris Nicholas has shown in a most able paper in the Archæologia (vol. xxxi. pp. 350-384), the first time the Feathers are mentioned in any record is in a document, the date of which must have been after 1369, and which contains lists of plate belonging to the King himself, and also to Queen Phillipa. It is particularly to be observed, that all the pieces of plate specified in this roll as the personal property of the Queen, if marked with any device at all, are marked with her own initial, or with some heraldic insignia that have a direct reference to herself. One of these pieces of plate is described as “a large dish for the alms of the Queen, of silver gilt, and enamelled at the bottom with a black escutcheon with Ostrich Feathers—eym in fund vno scuch nigro cum pennis de ostrich.” And these “Ostrich Feathers,” thus blazoned on a sable field upon the silver alms-dish of Queen Philippa, Sir N. H. Nicholas believed to have been borne by the Queen as a daughter of the House of Hainault; and he suggested that these same “Ostrich Feathers” might possibly have been assumed by the Counts of the Province of Hainault from the Comté of Ostrevant, which formed the appanage of their eldest sons.
| No. 395.— At Peterborough Cathedral. | No. 394.— At Worcester Cathedral. | No. 396.— At Peterborough Cathedral. |
At the first, either a single Feather was borne, the quill generally transfixing an escroll, as in No. 394, from the monument of Prince Arthur Tudor, in Worcester Cathedral; or, two Feathers were placed side by side, as they also appear upon the same monument. In Seals, or when marshalled with a Shield of Arms, two Feathers are seen to have been placed after the manner of Supporters, one on each side of the composition: in such examples the tips of the Feathers droop severally to the dexter and sinister: in all the early examples also the Feathers droop in the same manner, or they incline slightly towards the spectator. Three Feathers were first grouped together by Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII., as in Nos. 395 and 396, from Peterborough Cathedral; or with an escroll, as in No. 397, from a miserere in the fine and interesting church at Ludlow. The plume of three Feathers appears to have been encircled with a coronet, for the first time, by Prince Edward, afterwards Edward VI., but who never was Prince of Wales: No. 398, carved very boldly over the entrance gateway to the Deanery at Peterborough, is a good early example. In No. 399 I give a representation of another early plume of three Ostrich Feathers, as they are carved, with an escroll in place of a coronet, upon the Chantry of Abbot Ramryge in the Abbey Church at St. Albans: and again, in No. 400, from the head of a window near the east end of the choir, on the south side, in Exeter Cathedral, the three Feathers are charged upon a Shield per pale azure and gules, and this Shield is on a roundle.
| No. 397.— In Ludlow Church. | No. 398.— The Deanery, Peterborough. |