[456] Ibid. p. 411.
Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last of the Plantagenets, and mother of Lord Montague and Cardinal Pole, was, like her son the peer, beheaded, and at the age of seventy, by their kinsman Henry VIII. This fact is recorded by Collier;[457] but Miss A. Strickland mentions it more at length in these words:—Cromwell produced in the House of Lords, May 10th, by way of evidence against the aged Countess of Salisbury, a vestment (a chasuble no doubt) of white silk that had been found in her wardrobe, embroidered in front with the arms of England, surrounded with a wreath of pansies and marigolds, and on the back the representation of the host with the five wounds of our Lord, and the name of Jesus written in the midst. The peers permitted the unprincipled minister to persuade them that this was a treasonable ensign, and as the Countess had corresponded with her absent son (Cardinal Pole) she was for no other crime attainted of high treason, and condemned to death without the privilege of being heard in her own defence.[458] The arms of England, amid the quarterings of some great families, are even now to be found upon vestments; a beautiful one was exhibited here, A.D. 1862, and described in the Loan Catalogue, p. 266; another fine one is at present at Abergavenny. With regard to the representation of the “Host with the five wounds of our Lord,” &c. this is of very common occurrence in ecclesiastical embroidery; and in this very collection, on the back orphrey to the splendid chasuble, No. [8704], p. 264 of this Catalogue, we find embroidered the crucifixion, and a shield gules, with a chalice or and a host argent at top, done in Flanders full half a century before the “Pilgrimage of Grace” in our northern counties had adopted such a common device upon their banner when the people there arose up against Henry VIII.
[457] Eccles. Hist. t. v. p. 51, ed. Lathbury.
[458] Queens of England, iii. p. 68.
To a Surrey, for winning the day at Flodden Field, King Henry VIII. gave the tressured lion of the royal arms of Scotland to be borne upon the Howard bend as arms of augmentation. In after years, the same Henry VIII. cut off a Surrey’s head because he bore, as his House had borne from the time of one of their forefathers, Thomas de Brotherton, Edward I.’s son, the arms of the Confessor, the use of which had been confirmed to it by Richard II. If, like Scrope, Surrey had bethought himself of vestments, even of the few we have with the royal arms upon them, and assumed by other English noblemen, perhaps those liturgic embroideries might have stood him in some good stead to save his life. Had the poor aged Countess of Salisbury been heard, she might have shamed her kinsman the king not to take her life for using upon her church furniture emblems, then as now, employed upon such appliances throughout all Christendom.
For the genealogist, the lawyer, the herald, the historian, such of these old liturgical garments as, like the Syon cope, bear armorial shields embroidered upon them, will have a peculiar value, and a more than ordinary interest. Those emblazonries not only recall the names of men bound up for ever with this land’s history, but may again serve, as they once before have served, to furnish the lost link in a broken pedigree, or unravel an entangled point before a law tribunal.
Section X.—BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.
By all those for whom, among other allurements drawing them on in their studies of Botany and Zoology, one is the gratification they feel in learning how many of the subjects belonging to these two sections of the natural sciences were known, and how they used to be depicted during the middle ages, this large collection of textiles figured so often with birds, beasts and flowers, will be heartily welcomed.
Our Zoological Society prides itself, and in justice, with treating the Londoners with the first sight of a live giraffe; but here its members themselves may behold, [Nos. 8591-91A], p. 224; [8599], p. 228, the earliest known portrait of that curious quadruped sketched upon Sicilian silks of the fourteenth century.