The word is of uncertain etymology. Junius derives it from ‘bode,’ or ‘bade,’ a messenger, and supposes it to be a contractio per crasin from ‘badage,’ the credential of a messenger. Skinner and Minsheu, again, deduce it from ‘bagghe,’ Dutch, a jewel, or from ‘bague,’ French, a ring. But Johnson, with more reason, considers it a derivative of the Latin ‘bajulo,’ to carry.
“But on his breast a bloody cross he bore,
The dear resemblance of his dying lord;
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore.”
Spenser.
In heraldry, badges are a kind of subsidiary arms used to commemorate family alliances, or some territorial rights or pretensions.[179] Sometimes, also, and perhaps more generally, they serve as trophies of some remarkable exploit achieved by an ancestor of the bearer. In the feudal ages most baronial families had their peculiar badges, and their dependents were recognized by having them embroidered upon their sleeves or breasts. They were generally placed upon a ground tinctured of the livery colours of the family.[180] Something analogous to this fashion is retained in the crest which adorns the buttons of our domestic servants, and still more so in the badges by which the firemen and watermen of London are distinguished. Badges were also employed in various other ways, as, for example, on the furniture of houses, on robes of state, on the caparisons of horses, on seals, and in the details of gothic edifices. An instance of the various applications of the badge of one noble family has been familiar to me from childhood—the Buckle, the badge assumed by Sir John de Pelham in commemoration of his having been principally concerned in the capture of John, king of France, at the battle of Poictiers.[181] This trophy occurs, as an appendage to the family arms, into which it is also introduced as a quartering; on the ecclesiastical buildings of which the family were founders, or to which they were benefactors;[182] on the architectural ornaments of their mansions at Laughton, Halland, &c.; on antient seals; as the sign of an inn near their estate at Bishopstone, &c.; and among the humbler uses to which the BUCKLE has been applied may be mentioned the decoration of the cast-iron chimney-backs in the farmhouses on the estate, the embellishment of milestones, and even the marking of sheep. Throughout the whole of that part of eastern Sussex over which the Pelham influence extends there is no ‘household word’ more familiar than the Pelham Buckle.[183]
The following are the badges of a few other antient families:
The Lords Hungerford used a golden garb, which seems to have been taken from the arms of the Peverells, whose co-heiress married William Lord Hungerford, temp. Henry V. They were ‘Azure, three garbs or.’
Edward Lord Hastings, who married the grand-daughter and heiress of the peer just named, bore on his standard the garb with a sickle—another badge of the Hungerfords—united by a golden cord.
John de Willoughby de Eresby, temp. Edward III, used two buckles, which he probably borrowed from the arms of his wife, the heiress of Roceline: ‘Gules, crusily and three buckles argent.’
One of the Nevilles, Lords Bergavenny, bore two badges: first, two staples interlaced, one gold, the other silver; and second, a fret gold: these occur on a tomb at Mereworth, co. Kent.[184]
The badge of the Lords Dacre was an escallop united to a ragged staff, as in the margin.