Students of heraldry are commonly great enthusiasts; so that, in its pursuit, they are apt to depreciate more important subjects. We remember to have heard an amateur herald, who had filled all his windows with arms of his own painting, condemn Mr. Salt’s collection of Egyptian Antiquities in terms of unmistakeable contempt!
Heralds’ College.
The corporation of the College of Arms consists of 13 officers—namely, three Kings of Arms (Garter, Clarenceux, and Norroy), and, we believe, six heralds and four pursuivants. According to a Parliamentary Return, the most onerous of their duties is the preservation and safe custody of the vast mass of records and evidences which relate to the genealogical history, pedigrees, and arms of the nobility and gentry of England, from the earliest period to the present time. These officers have no Government grant, but they are household servants of the Crown, under the Earl Marshal; and their duty as such consists in the ordering and conducting all public funerals, such State ceremonials as coronations, and other ceremonials where the person of the Sovereign is more immediately concerned. For these services they receive salaries, the aggregate amount of which to the 13 officers is 252l. 18s. per annum. In their capacity of household servants they also receive certain fees on the creation of dignities and upon the installation of Knights of the Garter, paid by the persons on whom such honours are conferred. A herald and a pursuivant answer all public inquiries, make such searches as may be required, and give official extracts from records; the fees received for such searches and extracts amounted to 94l. in 1861. From all these sources, therefore, they received 600l. in that year. The officers of arms are the agents through whom applications are made to the Earl Marshal (acting in this behalf on the part of the Crown) for the registration of armorial bearings, or the solicitation of the Royal licence for a change of name, or change of name and arms. For the one case it becomes the duty of the officers of arms to see that no memorial be presented to the Earl Marshal by any individual not occupying a fit station in life for such distinction; and in the other that no petition be, through them, presented to the Crown, the allegations of which have not been, before such presentation, fully established, inasmuch as the Crown accepts and endorses such allegations, and directs the Earl Marshal to make them matter of record. The number of these patents and grants of arms or change of name or arms has been 869 in the period from 1850 to 1862 inclusive. The fees taken upon them are:—For grants on voluntary applications, 66l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; under Royal licences, 66l. 10s. and 48l. 17s. 6d. for exemplifications, 3l. 10s. of which goes to the Home-office; for grants of supporters, 55l.; for grants to wives or spinsters, 53l. and 10l. stamp duty; for grants of quarterings, 42l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; for grants of crests, 42l. 10s. and 10l. stamp duty; and for change of name, 44l. 13s., whereof 10l. 2s. 6d. goes to the Home-office.
The Shamrock.
Mrs. Lankester describes the Wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) as easily recognised by its three delicately-green leaflets with longish stalks, marked with a darkish crescent in the centre, veined, and its lovely white flowers which at first sight resemble the wood-anemone. There are few walks or shady woods where, in the early spring, the bright half-folded green leaves of this pretty little plant may not be found. The tiny white flowers with their delicate purple veins are called, by the Welsh, “fairy bells,” and are believed to ring the merry peals which call the elves to “moonlight dancing and revelry.” Among the Druids its triple leaflets were regarded as a mysterious symbol of a Trinity, the full meaning of which was involved in darkness. So, too, St. Patrick chose this leaf as his symbol to illustrate the doctrine he sought to teach, and converted many by the apt use of an illustration derived from a plant already sacred in the eyes of his hearers. The original shamrock was undoubtedly the Oxalis, though the name became applied to all sorts of trefoiled plants.
It is, however, suspected that any three-leaved plant may be called the shamrock, the wood-sorrel no more undoubtedly than the Dutch clover, all leaves of this kind having been beheld with superstitious veneration, as possessing—
The holy trefoil’s charm.
Irish Titles of Honour.
Titles of honour are still borne by the representatives of some of the old Milesian families in Ireland. Some of these titles have become extinct in course of time, such as the M‘Carty More, the White Knight, the O’Sullivan Bear, the O’Moore, &c., and some have been merged in peerages. The O’Bryens in the titles of Thomond (now extinct) and Inchiquin, the O’Neills in an Earldom (extinct), the O’Callaghan in Lord Lismore, and the descendant and representative of the O’Byrnes in Lord de Tabley. But the following titles are still preserved and generally acknowledged:—
These are the O’Donoghue of the Glens, the O’Conor Don, the Knight of Kerry, the Knight of Glen, the O’Grady, the M‘Gillicuddy of the Reeks; and the M‘Dermot, Prince of Coolvain. The two first of these represent Irish constituencies, and it is believed are the only Irish chieftains who have adhered to the national religion; all the others are Protestants. Indeed, it is a curious circumstance that while we see the O’Neills, the O’Briens, the O’Callaghans, the O’Byrnes, indeed almost all the lineal descendants of the old Irish families, staunch Protestants (some of them even Orangemen; the late Lord O’Neill was Grand Master of the Orangemen); we find, on the other hand, that the leading Roman Catholic nobility and gentry in Ireland are mostly of English and Protestant extraction. Thus the Brownes, Earls of Kenmare, came over originally in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and being Protestants obtained large grants of the O’Donoghue property in Kerry, forfeited by Roderick O’Donoghue, in the reign of Elizabeth, and by Geoffrey O’Donoghue, “dead in rebellion,” in the reign of her successor. The Earls of Kenmare are now, as is well known, at the head of the Irish Roman Catholic peerage, and so of the Dillons, Plunkets, Burkes, Nugents, Prestons, and other Irish Roman Catholic families of importance; they are all, with few exceptions, of English and Protestant descent, while we have seen that the descendants of the native Irish are almost all Protestants.