[OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.]
he means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs.
In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew a signum, well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen Elizabeth, a jury at Seaford, in Sussex, convicted John Comber "for markyng of three ducks of Edwd Warwickes and two ducks of Symon Brighte with his own marke, and cutting owt theire markes." Cows and oxen were marked on the near horn. When cattle in bodies of many hundreds ranged over extensive commons, as was formerly the case, the use of marks for identification was more indispensable than at present. Our swans retain their marks to the present day. In Ditmarsh and Denmark the owner's mark was cut in stone over the principal door of the house; it designated not only his land and cattle, but his stall in the church, and his grave when he was no more. At Witney, Oxon, a woolstapler's mark may be seen so incised on a house, with the date 1564; and numerous merchants' marks are at Norwich and Yarmouth. At Holstein, within the memory of man, the beams of the cottages of the bond-servants were incised with the marks of their masters. A pastor, writing from Angeln, says, "The hides had their marks, which served instead of the names of their owners." In the island of Föhr, a little to the north of Ditmarsh, the mark, cut on a wooden ticket, is always sold with the house; and it is cut in stone over the door; and the same custom is still in use in Schleswig and Holstein. In the Tyrolese Alps, at the present day, the cattle that are driven out to pasturage are marked on the horn with the mark of their owner's land. Marks for cattle are also used in Switzerland, in the Bavarian Alps, and in some parts of Austria.
These house-marks are connected with merchants' and tradesmen's marks, and also with stonemasons' marks, all of which formed a lower kind of heraldry for those not entitled to the bearings of the noble; for, on old houses at Erfurt, double shields, with the marks of the families of husband and wife, are found.
Many of the marks found on old pictures are true house-marks, and not alphabetical monograms. A painting by Wouvermans or Lingelback, in the writer's possession, bears the mark known as the crane's foot. Michelsen considers armorial bearings to have been originally little more than decorated marks, and to have been engrafted, as it were, upon the system: indeed, he asserts that the arms of Pope Hadrian VI., a Netherlander, were framed from house-marks. Some knightly families in Schleswig still retain their house-marks on their coat-of-arms: for instance, the Von Gogerns bear the kettle-hanger, or pot-hook; the Von Sesserns, in 1548, bore the same, which occurred on their family tomb, anno 1309. The earliest marks were supposed to represent the most indispensable agricultural implements, as a spade, a plough, a scythe, a sickle, a dung-hook, the tyres of a barrow; also, anchors, stars, &c. There was, also, often a supposed connexion between the figurative name of a house and its owner's mark, which was a representation of the object, more or less exact. Michelsen considers that the names and signs of inns are but remnants of the once universal and necessary custom of giving figurative names to houses, which the modern numbers have superseded.
Prof. Michelsen shows that the cultellum, which was given by the Franks, Goths, and Germans, in the ninth and tenth centuries, on the transfer of land, with the signum cut on a piece of wood, was originally intended for notching the mark on the wood, in the same manner as the inkstand and pen were lifted up with the chart, as symbols of a transfer of land. Among the archives of Nôtre Dame, at Paris, is preserved a pointed pocket-knife of the eleventh century, on the ivory handle of which is engraved the record of a gift of land; and at the same place is preserved a piece of wood, of the ninth century, six inches long and one inch square, attached to a diploma, as was then the custom. A similar knife, with an ivory handle, is still preserved, attached to a charter of Trinity College, Cambridge.
The surrender of copyholds by the rod or glove, and occasionally by a straw, or rush (whence the word "stipulation," from stipula, straw), is well known in England; and in the manor of Paris Garden, Surrey, an ebony rod is preserved with a silver head, on which are engraved the royal arms, with E. R. and a crown, and an inscription purporting that it is kept for the surrender of copyholds of the manor. The inscribed sticks, mentioned in Ezekiel xxxv. 16, appear to relate to this ancient mode of conveyancing.