The Curiosities of Heraldry

by Mark Antony Lower

Of Charles I it has been truly said, that he was not more arbitrary in his government than several of his predecessors had been. His mistake was, that he did not march with the times, but wished, amid the increased enlightenment of the 17th century, to exercise the monarchical prerogatives of the middle ages. Most of the acts which led to his downfall were not greater violations of the fundamental principles of the constitution than had been committed by earlier monarchs; but the time was now come when they could no longer be tolerated by a free and generous nation. In relation to heraldic usages Charles only copied the acts of former sovereigns; yet they added not a little to his unpopularity. One of his commissions directed to the provincial kings of arms, authorized them to visit all churches, mansions, public halls, and other places, to inspect any arms, cognizances, or crests, set up therein; and, if found faulty in regard of proof, to pull down and deface the same. It further empowered them to reprove, control, and make infamous, by proclamation at courts of assize, all persons who had without sufficient warrant assumed the title of esquire or gentleman; to forbid the use of velvet palls at the funerals of persons of insufficient rank; and to prevent any painter, glazier, engraver, or mason, from representing any armorial ensigns, except under their sanction and direction. All delinquents were to be cited into the earl-marshal’s Court of Chivalry, an institution almost as arbitrary and unconstitutional as the court of Star-Chamber itself. Nothing perhaps, as Noble observes, injured the Heralds’ College more than this shameful tribunal, which proceeded to fine and imprisonment for mere words spoken against the gentility of the plaintiff. “Had it only decided upon what usually ends in duels it would have been a most praiseworthy institution.” But it went further, and its severity became deservedly odious to the nation. Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) deprecated its insolence and said, “the youngest man remembered the beginning of it, and he hoped the oldest might see the end of it.”—“A citizen of good quality,” said he, “a merchant, was by that court ruined in his estate and his body imprisoned, for calling a swan a goose!”

It is needless to say that the Court of Chivalry was swept away along with other grievances of a like nature in the revolution which succeeded. It was revived, however, at the restoration of Charles II, and continued, though rather feebly, to execute its functions until the year 1732. Some of its proceedings, as recited by Dallaway, are very curious. I give an abstract of a case or two.

29th May, 1598. The earl-marshal, assisted by several peers and knights, held a court of chivalry to decide on a quarrel between Anthony Felton, Esq., and Edmund Withepool, Esq. It appears that a dispute had occurred between these two gentlemen at the town of Ipswich, when Withepool so far forgot himself as to bastinado the other, for which the latter summoned him into this court. The decree of the earl-marshal was that Withepool should confess to his prosecutor “that he knew him to be a gentleman unfitt to be stroken,” and promise that he would hereafter maintain Mr. Felton’s reputation against all slanderous persons. The delinquent submitted to this judgment, and the proceedings were at an end. Pity it is that a similar court of honour, voluntarily supported, should not now exist for the purpose of settling those quarrels among the aristocracy, which are generally adjudicated by the stupid, illegal, and wicked ordeal of the bullet.[268] Let it form part of every gentleman’s code of honour to bow to the decision of a tribunal so constituted, and duelling—that purest relic of mediæval barbarism, which has descended to our time—would be numbered among the absurdities of the past.

1638. Fowke contra Barnfield. Walter Fowke of Ganston, co. Stafford, prosecuted Richard Barnfield of Wolverhampton for a libel, for that he had said ‘that complainant was never a soldier or captain before the Isle of Rhe voyage, when he was made a captain, and afterwards ran away; and that he dared the said W. F. to go to a fencing-school to fight it out with him, &c.’ The decree of the court was, that Barnfield should make submission, find security for his good behaviour towards Fowke, and pay a fine of £10 to the king, £10 to the complainant, and 20 marks costs; and, in default, be committed to prison.

The assumption of the arms of a family, by persons bearing the same name, though unauthorized by family connexion, brought many causes into this court.

West, Lord Delawarr, against West. A man who had been a famous wrestler, and bore the sobriquet of ‘Jack in the West,’ acquiring a fortune by keeping a public-house, assumed the regular surname of West, and the arms of Lord Delawarr’s family. In support of this double assumption he got some venal member[269] of the College of Arms to furnish him with a pedigree, deducing his descent, through three or four generations, from the fourth son of one of the Lords Delawarr. His son, who had been bred in the Inns of Court, and was resident in Hampshire, presuming, upon the strength of his pedigree, to take precedence of some of his neighbours, they instigated Lord Delawarr to prosecute him in the Court of Honour. At the hearing, the defendant produced his patent from the heralds; but, unfortunately for his pretensions, an antient gentleman of the house of West, who had been long abroad and was believed to be dead, and whom our innkeeper’s son had claimed as his father’s father, returned at this juncture to England, and ‘dashed the whole business.’[270] The would-be West was fined £500, and commanded ‘never more to write himself gentleman.’

On the breaking out of the civil wars the heralds espoused opposing interests. The three kings of arms, with a few of their subordinates, adhered to their brother monarch: the others sided with the Parliament.

When, in 1642, Charles was compelled to take up his residence at Oxford, several of the officers of arms were in attendance upon him; and it affords very high testimony of their respectability and learning that some of them were admitted to the first distinctions the university could bestow. The afterwards famous Dugdale (then Rouge-Croix) and Edmund Walker, Chester, were created masters of arts, and Sir William le Neve, Clarenceux, was admitted to the dignity of LL.D. In 1643 and 1644, George Owen, York, John Philipot, Somerset, Sir John Borrough, Garter, and his successor, Sir Henry St. George, were also honoured with the last-mentioned degree.

It is singular that an institution so immediately connected with royalty as was the College of Arms, should have been permitted to exist during the Commonwealth; and still more so that while the republicans carried their hatred to the very name of king so far as to alter the designation of the King’s Bench, and to strike the word kingdom out of their vocabulary, that the principal functionaries of the College should have been allowed to retain their antient titles of kings of arms. The royal arms, of course, disappeared from the herald’s tabard, though it does not very clearly appear what was substituted; probably the state arms, namely, two shields conjoined in fesse; dexter, the cross of St. George, and, sinister, the Irish harp.[271]

Oliver Cromwell was, as Noble justly remarks, “a splendid prince, keeping a most stately and magnificent court.” Hence the heralds could by no means be dispensed with. They attended at his proclamation, and on all subsequent state occasions. The Protector’s funeral was a pageant of more than regal magnificence, and cost the extravagant sum of £28,000.[272] But, notwithstanding the patronage of Cromwell, the College was far from prosperous at this period, for the visitations were discontinued, and the nobility and antient gentry, awaiting in moody silence the issue of the system of government then in operation, paid little attention to heraldric honours, which were disregarded by the nation at large, or, if recognized at all, only to be associated (as they have too often since been[273]) with the idea of an insolent and overbearing aristocracy.