Here we may be allowed to digress, to say a few words on the origin of inn signs, which are generally of an heraldric character. In early times the town residences of the nobility and great ecclesiastics were called Inns; and in front of them the family arms were displayed. In many cases these Inns were afterwards appropriated to the purposes of the modern hotel, affording temporary accommodation to all comers.[225] The armorial decorations were retained, and under the name of signs directed the public to these places of rest and refreshment. On calling to mind the signs by which the inns of any particular town are designated, a very great majority of them will be recognized as regular heraldric charges. In addition to the full armorials of great families, as the Gordon Arms, the Pelham Arms, the Dorset Arms, we find such signs as the Golden Lion, Red Lion, White Lion, Black Lion, White Hart, Blue Boar, Golden Cross, Dragon, Swan, Spread Eagle, Dolphin, Rose and Crown, Catherine-Wheel, Cross-Keys, cum multis aliis, abundant everywhere. These were originally, in most cases, the properly emblazoned armories of families possessing influence in the locality; and frequently the inns themselves were established by old domestics of such families. But owing to the negligence of mine host, or the unskilfulness of the common painter, who from time to time renovated his sign, the latter often lost much of its heraldric character; the shield and its tinctures were dropped, and the charges only remained; while by a still further departure from the original intention, three black lions, or five spread eagles, were reduced to one. A house in the town of Lewes was formerly known as the “Three Pelicans,” the fact of those charges constituting the arms of Pelham having been lost sight of. Another is still called “The Cats,” and few are aware that the arms of the Dorset family are intended.[226] In villages, innumerable instances occur of signs taken from the arms or crests of existing families, and very commonly the sign is changed as some neighbouring domain passes into other hands. There is a kind of patron and client feeling about this—feudality some may be disposed to call it—which a lover of Old England is pleased to contemplate.
VIII. The last species of Historical Arms are those which relate to Memorable Circumstances and Events which have occurred to the Ancestors of the families who bear them.
Stanley, earl of Derby. Crest. ‘On a chapeau gules, turned up ermine, an Eagle with wings expanded or, feeding an Infant in a kind of cradle; at its head a sprig of oak all proper.’ This is the blazon given in “Historical and Allusive Arms;”[227] but Collins[228] blazons the Eagle as ‘preying upon’ the Infant. This crest belonged originally to the family of Lathom or Latham, whose heiress, Isabella, married Sir John Stanley, afterwards Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord of the Isle of Man, and K. G. in the fourteenth century. According to tradition it originated in the following manner: One of the Lathams of Latham, co. Lancaster, having abandoned and exposed an illegitimate son in the nest of an eagle in a wood called Terlestowe Wood, near his castle, afterwards discovered, to his great astonishment, that the ‘king of birds,’ instead of devouring the helpless infant, had conceived a great liking for him, supplying him with food, and thus preserving his life. Upon witnessing this miraculous circumstance the cruel parent relented, and, taking home the infant, made him his heir. A ‘various reading’ of the tale states that Sir Thomas Latham, being destitute of legal issue, and wishing to adopt an illegitimate son, a proceeding to which his wife would not be likely to become a party, resorted to the ruse of having the infant placed in the eyrie of an eagle, and then, taking his lady into the park, coming, as if by accident, to the place, at the moment when the eagle was hovering over the nest. Help—of course accidental—being at hand, the little fellow was rescued from his perilous couch, and presented to the lady, who pressed him to her bosom, and, ignorant of his consanguinity to her lord, joyfully acquiesced in his proposal to make the foundling heir to their estate.
According to Bishop Stanley’s ‘Historicall Poem touching ye Family of Stanley,’ and Vincent’s MS. Collection in the College of Arms, the Lord of Latham was “fowerscore” at the time he adopted this infant,
“Swaddled and clad
In a mantle of redd:”
—a statement which discredits both versions of the story as given above. These authorities further inform us that the foundling received the baptismal name of Oskell, and became father of the Isabella Latham who married Sir John Stanley.
In Seacome’s ‘History of the House of Stanley’ there is an account, derived from another branch of the family, which coincides with the second-mentioned, with the important addition that the adopted child was discarded before the death of Sir Thomas Latham. It is further said, that on the adoption Sir Thomas had assumed for his crest “an Eagle upon wing, turning her head back and looking in a sprightly manner as for something she had lost,” and that on the disowning, the Stanleys (one of whom had married the legal heiress to the estate) “either to distinguish or aggrandize themselves, or in contempt and derision, took upon them the Eagle and Child,” thus manifesting the variation and the reason of it.
It is scarcely necessary to state, that the Sir Oskell of the legend has no existence in the veritable records of history; and Mr. Ormerod, the learned historian of Cheshire, who is connected by marriage with the family of Latham, thinks the whole story may be “more safely referred to ancestral Northmen, with its scene in the pine-forests of Scandinavia.”[229]
The subjoined engraving relates to this legend. It is copied from a cast[230] taken from an oak carving attached to the stall of James Stanley, bishop of Ely, in the collegiate church (now cathedral) of Manchester, of which he was warden. The figures below the trees are a REBUS[231] of masons or stone-cutters, termed, in mediæval Latin, Lathomi; and the castellated gateway they are approaching is that of Latham Hall, the scene of the tradition.
