Knightley. A lance.[158]
There was a kind of Rebus much in vogue in the fourteenth and following centuries, which, although not regulated by the laws of blazon, possessed somewhat of the heraldric character. Many persons, even those of antient family, who bore regular coats of arms, adopted various figures for the purpose of expressing their names pictorially; for instance, one John Eagleshead gave as his seal an eagle’s head, surrounded by the motto,
“HOC AQUILÆ CAPUT EST, SIGNUMQUE FIGURA JOHANNIS.”
The Abbot of Ramsay bore, in the same way, a ram in the sea, with an appropriate legend. One Harebottle expressed his name by a hare upon a bottle; while Islip, abbot of Westminster, represented his by a man slipping out of a tree, and supposed to exclaim, “I slip!” These “painted poesies,” as Camden styles them, occur chiefly in painted glass windows, in decorated Gothic architecture, and in the title-pages of early printed books.[159]
One of the most singular rebuses I have seen occurs in a window in the chapel at Lullingstone, co. Kent, the seat of Sir P. H. Dyke, Bart. It is that of Sir John Peché. In this instance the arms of the personage are surrounded by a wreath, composed of two branches of a peach tree bearing fruit, every peach being marked with an Old English e; Peach-é. It is curious that this device proves the true pronunciation of the name, which was formerly supposed to be Peche.
The common rebus, although it did not come into general use until after the introduction of regular heraldry, may boast of a much higher antiquity, for such devices occur as the representatives of names of no less eminence than those of Cicero and Cæsar; not to mention those of celebrated sculptors and mint-masters, who, in the palmiest days of Rome, frequently marked the productions of their genius with a rebus. Taking into consideration the great antiquity of these “name-devices,” and their early introduction into the armorial shield, I cannot see any good reason for the strong prejudices which have existed against them in modern times. To me, indeed, they appear not only ‘allowable’ but ‘commendable’ armory; for arms, like names, are signs of personality, and therefore those which ‘speak to the eye’ most intelligibly are preferable to those charges which have in themselves no meaning.[160]
There can be no doubt but that, from the mutations our language has experienced within the last six centuries, many of the allusions contained in coats of arms are greatly obscured, while others are totally lost. The arms of the family of Eschales, now written Scales, exhibit eschalops (escallops), and those of Sykes, fountains—a syke, in the northern dialects, signifying a spring, or rather that kind of well, which was formerly sunk within the precincts of a camp.
In order to show how numerous allusive arms are in English armory, I will here give a list of those occurring in the Baronetage as it stood in 1836,[161] omitting, for the sake of brevity, the details of the blazon.
Bacon. (Crest.) A boar.