Kings. Garter, Clarenceux, Norroy.
Heralds. Windsor, Richmond, York, Lancaster, Carlisle, Montorgueil, Somerset.
Pursuivants in Ordinary. Rouge-Cross, Blue-Mantle, Portcullis, and Rouge-Dragon.
Pursuivants Extraordinary. Calais, Risebank, Guisnes; and Hampnes. These four took their titles from places in France within the English pale.
The armorial bearings devised in this reign had little of the chaste simplicity of those of an earlier date. Those coats which contain a great variety of charges may be generally referred to this period, and they are familiarly styled ‘Henry-the-Eighth coats.’ Such arms have been humorously compared to “garrisons, well stocked with fish, flesh, and fowl.”[266]
Edward VI bestowed upon the heralds many additional immunities and privileges; and Mary, his successor, by charter dated 1554, granted them Derby House for the purpose of depositing their rolls and other records.
Elizabeth inherited from her father the spirit of chivalry, and its concomitant fondness for pageantry. Hence she necessarily patronized the officers of arms. In this reign the quarrels which for some time previously had been hatching between various members of the body touching their individual rights, broke out with great virulence. “Their accusations against each other,” Noble remarks, “would fill a volume.” Broke, or Brokesmouth, York Herald, whose animosities against the great and justly venerated Camden have given to his name a celebrity which it does not deserve, was foremost amongst the litigants.[267]
A new order of gentry had sprung up in the two or three preceding reigns, some of whom had enriched themselves by commercial enterprise, while others had acquired broad lands at the dissolution of the monasteries. These novi homines were very ambitious of heraldric honours, and accordingly made numerous applications for grants of arms. Cooke, Clarenceux, granted upwards of five hundred coats, and the two Dethicks twice that number in this reign. Great pains were taken by the sovereign to preserve inviolate the rights of the college; yet notwithstanding there were some adventurers who, for the sake of lucre, devised arms and forged pedigrees for persons of mean family, to the no small umbrage of the antient gentry, and the pecuniary loss of the corporation. One W. Dawkeyns compiled nearly a hundred of these spurious genealogies for families in Essex, Herts, and Cambridgeshire, an offence for which he was visited with the pillory; but though he stood “earless on high,” he seems to have been “unabashed;” for after an interval of twenty years he was found ‘at his olde trickes againe,’ and again fell under the lash of the earl-marshal. The warrant for his second apprehension is dated Dec. 31st, 1597.
James I advanced the regular salaries of the heralds, and indirectly promoted their interests, further, by a lavish distribution of new titular honours. In this reign occurs an instance of the antient custom of degrading a knight. Sir Frances Michel having been convicted of grievous exactions was sentenced, in 1621, to a ‘degradation of honour.’ Being brought by the sheriff of London to Westminster-Hall, in the presence of the commissioners who then executed the office of earl-marshal and the kings of arms, the sentence of parliament was openly read by Philipot, a pursuivant, when the servants of the marshall hacked off his spurs, broke his sword over his head, and threw away the pieces, and the first commissioner proclaimed with uplifted voice, that he was “no longer knight, but a scoundrel-knave!”
The disputes in the College concerning the duties and prerogatives of its members, and their jealousies respecting preferments continued unabated. Broke (or Brokesmouth), York, and Treswell, Somerset, carried their effrontery so far as to defy the authority of their superiors in office, for which offence, added to contempt of the earl-marshal, they were committed to prison. The house was ‘divided against itself,’ and consequently could not ‘stand,’ at least in the respect and estimation of the public. Francis Thynne, a herald of the period, speaks of the poverty of the College as compared with its antient condition; complains that ‘the heralds are not esteemed,’ and that ‘every one withdraweth his favour from them;’ and prays the superior powers to repair their ‘ruined state.’