G. N.
HERALDIC ANOMALY.
I beg to call the attention of the heraldic readers of "N. & Q." to a singular custom of displaying their coats of arms, peculiar to the Knights of St. John, of the venerable Language of England.
It is well known that the members of this valiant brotherhood, throughout Europe, bear their paternal shield alone, surmounted, as the badge of their profession, with the particular device of the order, that is, On a chief, gules, a cross argent. The English knights, with their paternal coat, bore also, party-per-pale, that of their mothers, with the chief of the order over both, a strange heraldic anomaly!
I have somewhere read, but where, for lack of a "note," I cannot recollect, that in making their proofs of nobility previous to their admission into the order, unlike the other Languages, the cavalier of England gave in only the names of their father and mother, but at the same time it was requisite that these two names should be able to prove a nobility of two hundred years each.
Perhaps the custom of bearing the paternal shield impaled with the maternal sprung from these proofs.
In the British Museum, Harl. MSS. 1386., may be seen three examples of this custom, in a paper entitled, A Note of certain Knights of Rhodes, "in prioratû Sancti Johannis Jerusalem."
1. Sir Thomas Docwra, Grand Prior of England, A.D. 1504, a knight not more renowned as a valiant man-at-arms, "preux et hardi," than as a skilful diplomatist; and who, on the death of Fabricio Caretto, A.D. 1520-1, was thought worthy to be put in competition for the Grand Mastership with the celebrated Villiers de L'Isle Adam, and, as Vertot tells us, only lost that dignity by a very trifling majority. His paternal coat—Sable, a cheveron engrailed argent, between three plates, on each a pale, gules—is impaled with that of his mother, Alice, daughter of Thomas Green, of Gressingham, in Yorkshire; Argent, a bugle-horn sable, stringed gules, between three griffins' heads, erased, of the second; over all, the chief of the order.
2. Sir Lancelot Docwra, near kinsman to Sir Thomas, and son of Robert Docwra, of Docwra-Hall, in Cumberland. His arms are impaled with—Or, a cross flory sable—the coat armour of his mother, Jane, daughter of Sir John Lamplugh, of Lamplugh, in the same county; one "of a race," as Denton says, "of valorous gentlemen, successively for their worthiness knighted in the field, all, or most part of them." The chief of the order also surmounts his shield.