These signs or signacula were worn not only on a pilgrimage, but also formed a customary decoration for the hat. Some, even in early times, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, though partaking of a religious character, do not seem to have had reference to any particular shrine, and referred simply to incidents in popular religious legends. Others were merely symbols or emblems; yet, like the majority of mediæval trinkets, they nearly all displayed religious motives and were supposed to possess talismanic powers. Louis XI, the cruel and superstitious King of France, commonly wore such signs, particularly those of the celebrated Notre-Dame d'Embrun, stuck round his hat; and on a visit to Henry, King of Castile, he wore, so Philip de Comines informs us, a very old hat with leaden images upon it.
It is very evident that we have here the origin of the hat-ornaments or enseignes of gold and silver, and enriched with precious stones and enamels, which, coming first into use in the fifteenth century, became extremely popular in the sixteenth, and were worn on almost every man's hat, and sometimes on those of women, until the middle of the seventeenth century. Like those obtained at the shrines, they bore at first the figure of a saint—generally a patron saint—or a figure of the Virgin. Of signs such as these, some came to represent the actual badge of the wearer or of some one to whom he was affectionately attached, while others took the form of badges of livery, and were worn in the hats of the retainers of great families. Philip de Comines records that Lord Bourchier, Governor of Calais, 1470, wore a ragged staff of gold upon his bonnet. This was the badge of the Earl of Warwick, and all his attendants had ragged staves likewise. A leaden enseigne of a bear and ragged staff (the House of Warwick), a crowned ostrich feather (Duke of Norfolk), a hound (Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury), and a dolphin (badge of the Dauphin—afterwards Louis XI—and his faction, the Armagnacs), together with others of a similar nature, are in the British Museum ([Pl. XVII, 5-8]). The badges of the Kings of England were employed in the same manner: and among the British Museum collection is a hart lodged—the badge of Richard II, and in the Guildhall a broom-pod (genista) of the Plantagenets, and a crown of fleurs-de-lis—the badge of Henry V.
A considerable number of small shield-shaped bronze and copper pendants, enamelled with coats of arms, and having a ring above for suspension, seem also to have served as badges. There is the possibility that some were worn by the servants of nobility as enseignes upon the hat, or perhaps on the left arm or breast. But the majority appear to have been employed for the decoration of horse-harness.[55]
PLATE XVII
mediæval head-ornaments
Mediæval hat-badges of gold are of extreme rarity. The Franks Bequest in the British Museum contains a choice example. It is a fifteenth-century Flemish jewel of gold, representing a "pelican in her piety" standing upon a scroll, and set with a ruby and a small pointed diamond ([Pl. XVII, 11]). In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a circular gold enseigne of open-work enriched with Gothic foliations. The outer rim is set with seven small rubies. In the centre is an antique onyx cameo representing a lion. It is Spanish work of the second half of the fifteenth century ([Pl. XVII, 10]).
These two jewels are clearly hat-ornaments; but it is often difficult to distinguish between a brooch or nouche intended to be worn upon the dress and a hat-brooch, though the latter can, as a rule, be distinguished by its form or by its subject. The enseigne was sometimes employed like a brooch for fastening a plume decoration, but as a rule served as an independent ornament, and appears on the paintings, sculpture, and tapestry of the fifteenth century attached to the side of the head-gear. It became a jewel of still greater importance in the sixteenth century, and will be further dealt with among the jewellery of the Renaissance.