[162] Essai sur les Noms, &c., I, 240.
[163] Brydson’s Summary View of Heraldry, pp. 98-9.
[164] Menestrier.
[165] Study of Heraldry, p. 70.
[166] Berry, Encycl. Herald.
[167] The ducal coronet antiently denoted command, and the chapeau, dignity; but in their modern application they have no such meaning.
[168] Edward III is the first monarch who introduced a crest (the lion statant-guardant) into his great seal. But this cannot be regarded as the first instance of the use of crests, for they appear nearly half a century earlier upon the seals of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster. That they were in common use in Chaucer’s time is obvious from the poet’s description of the one borne by Sire Thopas, the tower and lily. Vide page 81.
[169] The crest of Exmew is generally blazoned as ‘a dove supporting a text r by a branch of laurel.’ As to the letter, it is certainly an X, not an R; and the bird is quite as much like a sea-gull, or MEW, as a dove. Hence a rebus upon the name was doubtless intended x-MEW! The crest of Bourchier shows the manner in which the crest was affixed to the helmet.
[170] Herald-painters of the present day neglect this rule, and generally paint the mantlings red, doubled or lined with white or ermine.
[171] In the seal of Ela, Countess of Salisbury, who was born in 1196, two lions rampant, or rather crawling, are introduced to fill up the spaces on each side of the lady’s effigies. It is engraved in Sandford’s Geneal. Hist.