Fig. 141. Armed Knights carrying pennons, temp. Edward I, from an illumination in Arundel MS. 83 f. 132.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was not unusual to set up on gables, pinnacles, and other high places figures of animals holding banners as vanes or ornaments. Heraldic beasts as finials began to be used even in the thirteenth century, and an example so early as 1237 is noted on the Pipe Roll of 22 Henry III, when a charge occurs 'for making and setting up a certain lion of stone upon the gable of the King's hall'[14] within the castle of Windsor. Examples of the fourteenth century are hard to find, but in the fifteenth century and first half of the sixteenth they are common enough. In most of these later examples the creatures sit up and support shields with arms or badges; some, like the fine groups at Mapperton in Dorset, once held vanes as well.
Early vanes from their tendency to decay are rare. In 1352-3 14s. were spent 'upon a vane of copper painted with the king's arms, bought to be put upon the top of the hall of the king's college'[15] in Windsor castle; and a delightful example, also of copper, pierced with the arms of Sir William Etchingham, its builder (ob. 1389), still surmounts the steeple of Etchingham church in Sussex (fig. [142]). A simple specimen of an iron vane may yet be seen on Cowdray House in the same county. The octagonal steeple of Fotheringay church, Northants, built at the cost of Richard duke of York c. 1435, is surmounted by a fine representation in copper of his badge, the falcon within a fetterlock.
Fig. 142. Armorial vane on Etchingham church, Sussex.
The employment of a creature to hold up a banner of arms was already no novelty in the fifteenth century, and examples have been noted above of those on the tomb of Lewis lord Bourchier (ob. 1431) and on the seal of Margaret lady Hungerford (c. 1460); to which may be added the banner-bearing lion on the seal (c. 1442) of Henry Percy, eldest son of Henry second earl of Northumberland. The conversion therefore of the sitting beast into a vane-holder came about quite naturally. A good instance of the end of the fifteenth century forms a charming finial to the well-known kitchen at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire, but the griffin which sits aloft there has, alas, no longer a vane to hold (fig. [143]).
Fig. 143. Vane formerly upon the finial of the kitchen roof at Stanton Harcourt, Oxon.