The Curiosities of Heraldry

by Mark Antony Lower

“Froysart gives an account, that with the king were taken beside his son Philip, the Earl of Tankerville, Sir Jaques of Bourbon, the Earls of Ponthieu and Eue, with divers other noblemen, who being chased to Poictiers, the town shut their gates against them, not suffering any to enter; so that divers were slain, and every Englishman had four, five, or six prisoners; and the press being great to take the King, such as knew him, cry’d, Sir, yield, or you are dead: Whereupon, as the chronicle relates, he yielded himself to Sir Dennis Morbeck, a Knight of Artois, in the English service, and being afterwards forc’d from him, more than ten Knights and Esquires challeng’d the taking of the King. Among these Sir Roger la Warr, and the before-mentioned John de Pelham, were most concerned; and in memory of so signal an action, and the King surrendering his sword to them, Sir Roger la Warr, Lord la Warr, had the crampet, or chape of his sword, for a badge of that honour; and John de Pelham (afterwards knighted) had the buckle of a belt as a mark of the same honour, which was sometimes used by his descendants as a seal-manual, and at others, the said buckles on each side a cage; being an emblem of the captivity of the said King of France, and was therefore borne for a crest, as in those times was customary. The buckles, &c. were likewise used by his descendants, in their great seals, as is evident from several of them appendant to old deeds.”

It is somewhat remarkable that Froissart, Walsingham, Knyghton, and the other early chroniclers, are silent as to the names of the King’s captors; and were the story unsupported by strong indirect evidence, their silence would be almost fatal to its authenticity; but the occurrence of the Buckle upon the stonework of many ecclesiastical buildings founded by Sir John de Pelham himself and his immediate successors,[208] sufficiently corroborates the undisputed family tradition.[209]

The chape or crampet of a sword (the ornament at the end of the scabbard which prevents the point from protruding) is still borne as a badge by the Earl de la Warr, a lineal descendant of the Sir Roger la Warr referred to in the above extract.

The crest of the ancient family of De la Bere is ‘a ducal coronet or, therefrom issuant a plume of five ostrich feathers per pale argent and azure.’ This was conferred upon Sir Richard de la Bere, knight-banneret, by Edward the Black Prince, in reward for his having rescued him from imminent danger on the memorable field of Cressy. The ducal coronet is emblematical of military command, and the feathers are an evident derivation from the Prince’s own badge. There is (or was at the beginning of the present century) in an old house at Cheltenham, the property of his lineal descendants, a painting supposed to be nearly contemporary with the occurrence, which represents the Prince in the act of conferring this mark of honour upon his faithful follower.[210]

The crest of Dudley of Northamptonshire, Bart. was ‘Out of a ducal coronet or, a woman’s bust: her hair dishevelled, bosom bare, a helmet on her head with the stay or throat-latch down proper.’ From a MS. in the possession of this family, written by a monk about the close of the fourteenth century, it appeared that the father of Agnes Hotot (who, in the year 1395, married an ancestor of the Dudleys,) having a quarrel with one Ringsdale concerning the proprietorship of some land, they agreed to meet on the ‘debateable ground,’ and decide their right by combat. Unfortunately for Hotot, on the day appointed he was seriously ill; “but his daughter Agnes, unwilling that he should lose his claim, or suffer in his honour, armed herself cap-a-pie, and, mounting her father’s steed, repaired to the place of decision, where, after a stubborn encounter, she dismounted Ringsdale, and when he was on the ground, she loosened the stay of her helmet, let down her hair about her shoulders, and, disclosing her bosom, discovered to him that he had been conquered by a woman.” This valiant lady became the heiress of her family, and married a Dudley, whence the latter family derived their right to this crest.

Sir Richard Waller was at the battle of Agincourt, where he took prisoner Charles, duke of Orleans, father of Charles XII (afterwards King of France). This personage was brought to England by his captor, who held him in ‘honourable restraint’ at his own mansion, at Groombridge, co. Kent, during the long period of twenty-four years, at the termination of which he paid 400,000 crowns for his ransom. In accordance with the chivalrous spirit of that age, the captor and captive lived together on terms of the strictest friendship. This appears from the fact that the Duke, at his own expense, rebuilt for Sir Richard the family house at Groombridge. He was also a benefactor “to his parish church of Speldhurst, where his arms remain in stonework over the porch.”[211] Previously to this event the family arms had been the punning device of ‘Sable, on a bend voided argent, three walnut leaves or,’ and the crest, ‘A walnut tree fructed proper.’ To one of the lower boughs of this tree was now appended a shield, charged with the arms of France—‘Azure, three fleurs-de-lis or, differenced with a label of three points;’ an augmentation which continues to be borne by the descendants of Sir Richard Waller to this day.

Burton of Salop, and Rivers of Kent, bear[212] white roses, commemorative of the services rendered by their ancestors to the faction distinguished by this badge, while the Lutterells of Somerset, bear, as a crest, the white boar of Richard III, ensigned on the shoulder with the Lancastrian red rose! The white and red roses in the arms of families, as partisans of the two rival houses, would furnish matter for a whole chapter; but I must pass on.

Augmentations have sometimes been made to the arms of English families by foreign monarchs. Thus Sir Henry Guldeforde, knight, having rendered assistance to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in the reduction of Granada, received from them the honour of knighthood, with permission to add to his ancestral arms, ‘On a canton Argent, the arms of Granada, viz. a pomegranate, the shell open, grained gules, stalked and leaved proper.’ John Callard, esq. a retainer of the said Sir Henry, for his valour on the same occasion, acquired the following coat: ‘Gyronny of six pieces, or and sable; on each division or, a Moor’s head couped sable.’ William Browne, esq. called by Holinshed “a young and lusty gentleman,” another follower of Guldeforde, was honoured with an augmentation, viz. ‘On a chief argent, an eagle displayed sable,’—the arms of Sicily, which was then an adjunct to the Spanish crown.

The Duke of Norfolk bears on his ‘bend argent’ ‘an escocheon or, charged with a demi-lion rampant within a double tressure, flory and counter-flory; an arrow pierced through the lion’s mouth all gules.’ This is an augmentation nearly resembling the arms of Scotland, and was granted to the Earl of Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, for his services against the Scots at Flodden Field, in 1513. It will be recollected that when the body of James IV was found after the battle, it was pierced with several arrows, the cause of his death.