September 18. 1850.
THE COLLAR OF ESSES.
I shall look with interest to the documents announced by Dr. ROCK (Vol. ii., p. 280.), which in his mind connect the Collar of Esses with the "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" of the Salisbury liturgy: but hitherto I have found nothing in any of the devices of livery collars that partakes of religious allusion. I am well aware that many of the collars of knighthood of modern Europe, headed by the proud order of the Saint Esprit, display sacred emblems and devices. But the livery collars were perfectly distinct from collars of knighthood. The latter, indeed, did not exist until a subsequent age: and this was one of the most monstrous of the popular errors which I had to combat in my papers in the Gentleman's Magazine. A Frenchman named Favyn, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, published
a folio book on Orders of Knighthood, and, giving to many of them an antiquity of several centuries,—often either fabulous or greatly exaggerated,—provided them all with imaginary collars, of which he exhibits engravings. M. Favyn's book was republished in English, and his collars have been handed down from that time to this, in all our heraldic picture-books. This is one important warning which it is necessary to give any one who undertakes to investigate this question. From my own experience of the difficulty with which the mind is gradually disengaged from preconceived and prevailing notions on such points, which it has originally adopted as admitting of no question, I know it is necessary to provide that others should not view my arguments through a different medium to myself. And I cannot state too distinctly, even if I incur more than one repetition, that the Collar of Esses was not a badge of knighthood nor a badge of personal merit; but it was a collar of livery; and the idea typified by livery was feudal dependence, or what we now call party. The earliest livery collar I have traced is the French order of cosses de geneste, or broomcods: and the term "order", I beg to explain, is in its primary sense exactly equivalent to "livery:" it was used in France in that sense before it came to be applied to orders of knighthood. Whether there was any other collar of livery in France, or in other countries of Europe, I have not hitherto ascertained; but I think it highly probable that there was. In England we have some slight glimpses of various collars, on which it would be too long here to enter; and it is enough to say, that there were only two of the king's livery, the Collar of Esses and the Collar of Roses and Suns. The former was the collar of our Lancastrian kings, the latter of those of the house of York. The Collar of Roses and Suns had appendages of the heraldic design which was then called "the king's beast," which with Edward IV. was the white lion of March, and with Richard III. the white boar. When Henry VII. resumed the Lancastrian Collar of Esses, he added to it the portcullis of Beaufort. In the former Lancastrian regions it had no pendant, except a plain or jewelled ring, usually of the trefoil form. All the pendant badges which I have enumerated belong to secular heraldry, as do the roses and suns which form the Yorkist collar. The letter S is an emblem of a somewhat different kind; and, as it proves, more difficult to bring to a satisfactory solution than the symbols of heraldic blazon. As an initial it will bear many interpretations—it may be said, an indefinite number, for every new Œdipus has some fresh conjecture to propose. And this brings me to render the account required by Dr. Rock of the reasons which led me to conclude that the letter S originated with the office of Seneschallus or Steward. I must still refer to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1842, or to the republication of my essays which I have already promised, for fuller details of the evidence I have collected; but its leading results, as affecting the origin of this device, may be stated as follows:—It is ascertained that the Collar of Esses was given by Henry, Earl of Derby, afterwards King Henry IV., during the life-time of his father, John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster. It also appears that the Duke of Lancaster himself gave a collar, which was worn in compliment to him by his nephew King Richard II. In a window of old St. Paul's, near the duke's monument, his arms were in painted glass, accompanied with the Collar of Esses; which is presumptive proof that his collar was the same as that of his son, the Earl of Derby. If, then, the Collar of Esses was first given by this mighty duke, what would be his meaning in the device? My conjecture is, that it was the initial of the title of that high office which, united to his vast estates, was a main source of his weight and influence in the country,—the office of Steward of England. This, I admit, is a derivation less captivating in idea than another that has been suggested, viz. that S was the initial of Souveraine which is known to have been a motto subsequently used by Henry IV., and which might be supposed to foreshadow the ambition with which the House of Lancaster affected the crown. But the objection to this is, that the device is traced back earlier than the Lancastrian usurpation can be supposed to have been in contemplation. It might still be the initial of Souveraine, if John of Ghent adopted it in allusion to his kingdom of Castille: but, because he is supposed to have used it, and his son the Earl of Derby certainly used it, after the sovereignty of Castille had been finally relinquished, but also before either he or his son can be supposed to have aimed at the sovereignty of their own country, therefore it is that, in the absence of any positive authority, I adhere at present to the opinion that the letter S was the initial of Seneschallus or Steward.
JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS.
P.S.—Allow me to put a Query to the antiquaries of Scotland. Can any of them help me to the authority from which Nich. Upton derived his livery collar of the King of Scotland "de gormettis fremalibus equorum?"—J.G.N.
Collar of SS (Vol. ii., pp. 89. 194. 248. 280.).—I am surprised that any doubt should have arisen about this term, which has evidently no spiritual or literary derivation from the initial letters of Sovereign, Sanctus, Seneschallus, or any similar word. It is (as MR. ELLACOMBE hints, p. 248.) purely descriptive of the mechanical mode of forming the chain, not by round or closed links, but by hooks alternately deflected into the shape of esses; thus,
. Whether chains so made (being more susceptible of ornament than other forms of links) may not have been in special use for particular