Trevelyan of Somersetshire, Bart. ‘Gules, a horse argent armed or, issuant from the sea in base, party per fesse wavy, azure and of the second.’ This family primarily bore a very different coat: their present armorials were assumed “on occasion of one of their ancestors swimming on horseback from the rocks called Seven Stones to the Land’s End in Cornwall, at the time of an inundation, which is said to have overwhelmed a large tract of land, and severed thereby those rocks from the continent of Cornwall.”[232] This story may appear rather improbable, but it should be remembered that some similar disruptions of land from the coast, such as the Goodwin Sands, Selsey Rocks, &c. are authentic matters of history. Whether the most powerful of the equine race, which are, even under far more favourable circumstances, “vain things for safety,” would be able to outbrave the violence of the sea necessary to produce such a phenomenon, I leave to better horsemen than myself to decide.
The arms of Aubrey de Vere, the great ancestor of the earls of Oxford,[233] in the 12th century, were ‘Quarterly, gules and or; in the first quarter a star or mullet of five points or.’ “In the year of our Lord 1098,” saith Leland,[234] “Corborant, Admiral to Soudan of Perce [so our antiquary was pleased to spell Persia,] was fought with at Antioche, and discomfited by the Christians. The night cumming on yn the chace of this bataile, and waxing dark, the Christianes being four miles from Antioche, God, willing the saufté [safety] of the Christianes, shewed a white star or molette of five pointes on the Christen host; which to every mannes sighte did lighte and arrest upon the standard of Albry de Vere, there shyning excessively!” The mullet was subsequently used as a badge by his descendants. “The Erle of Oxford’s men had a starre with streames booth before and behind on their lyverys.”[235]
Thomas Fitz-Gerald, father of John, first earl of Kildare, bore the sobriquet of Nappagh, Simiacus, or the Ape, from the following ludicrous circumstance. When he was an infant of nine months old, his grandfather and father were both killed in the war waged by them against M’Carthy, an opposing chief. He was then being nursed at Tralee, and his attendants, in the first consternation caused by the news of the disaster, ran out of the house, leaving the child alone in his cradle. A large ape or baboon, kept on the premises, with the natural love of mischief inherent in that mimic tribe, taking advantage of the circumstance, took him from his resting-place and clambered with him to the roof of the neighbouring abbey, and thence to the top of the steeple. After having carried his noble charge round the battlements, exhibiting the while various monkey tricks heretofore unknown to nursery-maids, to the no small consternation and amazement of the spectators, he descended with careful foot, ad terram firmam, and replaced the child in the cradle. In consequence of this event the earls of Kildare and other noble branches of this antient line assumed as a crest, ‘An ape proper, girt about the middle and chained or,’ and for supporters, two apes. The addition of the chain is singular.
Stuart, of Hartley-Mauduit, co. Hants. ‘Argent, a lion rampant gules, debruised by a bend raguly [popularly termed a ragged staff] or.’ Sir Alexander Stuart, or Steward, knight, an ancestor of this family, in the presence of Charles VI of France, encountered a lion with a sword, which breaking he seized a part of a tree, and with it killed the animal. This so much pleased the king, that he gave him the above as an augmentation to his paternal arms.[236]
Maclellan Lord Kirkcudbright bore as a crest, ‘A dexter arm erect, the hand grasping a dagger, with a human head on the point thereof, couped proper,’ In the reign of James II, of Scotland, a predatory horde of foreigners, who entered that kingdom from Ireland, committed great ravages in the shire of Galloway; whereupon a royal proclamation was issued ordering their dispersion, and offering, as a reward to the captor or killer of their chieftain, the barony of Bombie. Now it happened that one Maclellan, whose father had been laird of Bombie, (and had been dispossessed of it for some aggressions on a neighbouring nobleman,) was the fortunate person who killed the chieftain; thus singularly regaining his ancestral property. The crest originated in the circumstance of his having presented to the king the marauder’s head fixed upon the point of a sword.
The head is variously blazoned as that of a Saracen, Moor, or Gipsey, and the question might here be started, ‘Who were the lawless band that made the inroad referred to?’ The terms Moor and Saracen were in early times applied indiscriminately to Mahometans of every nation, but it cannot be supposed that these intruders were followers of the False Prophet, for we have no record of any such having found their way into regions so remote. Neither is it probable that they were the wild or uncivilized Irish, whose manners and language would have been recognized in the south-western angle of Scotland, which is only separated from Ireland by a narrow channel that could be crossed in a few hours. The most probable opinion is that they belonged to that singular race, the Gipseys, who first made their appearance in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France, between the years 1409 and 1427. Admitting that a tribe of them found their way soon after from the continent into Ireland, it seems exceedingly likely that a detachment of that tribe should have crossed over to Scotland in the reign of James, between 1438 and 1460. As the Gipseys on their first settlement were black, and could be traced to an oriental source, and as they disavowed Christianity, they were very naturally considered as Saracens, by a rule analogous to that which makes all the inhabitants of Christendom Franks in the eyes of a Turk. I have made this little digression because this instance of a Gipsey’s head is probably unique in British Heraldry, and because the tradition perfectly coincides in point of time with the actual ingress of the Gipseys into this part of Europe.
The crest of the Davenports of Cheshire, a family as numerous, according to the proverb, as ‘dogs’ tails,’ is ‘a man’s head couped below the shoulders in profile, hair brown, a halter about his neck proper.’ According to the tradition of the family, it originated after a battle between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in which one of the Davenports, being of the vanquished party, was spared execution by the commander on the opposite side, on the humiliating condition that he and all his posterity should bear this crest.
When Queen Elizabeth made Sir John Hawkins paymaster of the navy in 1590, she gave him a coat of arms appropriate to his profession, and as a crest, in allusion to his laudable concern in the slave trade, ‘A demi-negro proper, manacled with a rope,’ the very symbol which, more than two hundred years afterwards, was used to stamp infamy on those concerned in it, as well as abhorrence and detestation of the slave trade itself.[237]
It would be a matter of little difficulty to produce a great number of additional instances of armorials allusive to the personal history or office of the original grantee; but let it be mine rather than that of the fatigued reader to cry
‘Ohe, jam satis!’