The system of heraldic visitations, when the pedigrees of the local gentry were tested, and the arms they bore approved or cancelled, originated in the reign of Henry VIII. The monasteries, with their tombs and tablets and brasses, and their excellent libraries, had been the great repositories of the provincial genealogies, more especially of the abbeys' founders and benefactors. These records were collected and used by the heralds, who thus as it were preserved and carried on the monastic genealogical traditions. These visitations were of great use to noble families in proving their pedigrees, and preventing disputes about property. The visitations continued till 1686 (James II.), but a few returns, says Mr. Noble, were made as late as 1704. Why they ceased in the reign of William of Orange is not known; perhaps the respect for feudal rank decreased as the new dynasty grew more powerful. The result of the cessation of these heraldic assizes, however, is that American gentlemen, whose Puritan ancestors left England during the persecutions of Charles II., are now unable to trace their descent, and the heraldic gap can never be filled up.
Three instances only of the degradation of knights are recorded in three centuries' records of the Court of Honour. The first was that of Sir Andrew Barclay, in 1322; of Sir Ralph Grey, in 1464; and of Sir Francis Michell, in 1621, the last knight being convicted of heinous offences and misdemeanours. On this last occasion the Knights' Marshals' men cut off the offender's sword, took off his spurs and flung them away, and broke his sword over his head, at the same time proclaiming him "an infamous arrant knave."
The Earl Marshal's office—sometimes called the Court of Honour—took cognizance of words supposed to reflect upon the nobility. Sir Richard Grenville was fined heavily for having said that the Duke of Suffolk was a base lord; and Sir George Markham in the enormous sum of £10,000, for saying, when he had horsewhipped the huntsman of Lord Darcy, that he would do the same to his master if he tried to justify his insolence. In 1622 the legality of the court was tried in the Star Chamber by a contumacious herald, who claimed arrears of fees, and to King James's delight the legality of the court was fully established. In 1646 (Charles I.) Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord Chancellor Clarendon) proposed doing away with the court, vexatious causes multiplying, and very arbitrary authority being exercised. He particularly cited a case of great oppression, in which a rich citizen had been ruined in his estate and imprisoned, for merely calling an heraldic swan a goose. After the Restoration, says Mr. Planché, in Knight's "London," the Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl Marshal, hoping to re-establish the court, employed Dr. Plott, the learned but credulous historian of Staffordshire, to collect the materials for a history of the court, which, however, was never completed. The court, which had outlived its age, fell into desuetude, and the last cause heard concerning the right of bearing arms (Blount versus Blunt) was tried in the year 1720 (George I.). In the old arbitrary times the Earl Marshal's men have been known to stop the carriage of a parvenu, and by force deface his illegally assumed arms.
Heralds' fees in the Middle Ages were very high. At the coronation of Richard II. they received £100, and 100 marks at that of the queen. On royal birthdays and on great festivals they also required largess. The natural result of this was that, in the reign of Henry V., William Burgess, Garter King of Arms, was able to entertain the Emperor Sigismund in sumptuous state at his house at Kentish Town.
The escutcheons on the south wall of the college—one bearing the legs of Man, and the other the eagle's claw of the House of Stanley—are not ancient, and were merely put up to heraldically mark the site of old Derby House.
In the Rev. Mark Noble's elaborate "History of the College of Arms" we find some curious stories of worthy and unworthy heralds. Among the evil spirits was Sir William Dethick, Garter King at Arms, who provoked Elizabeth by drawing out treasonable emblazonments for the Duke of Norfolk, and James I. by hinting doubts, as it is supposed, against the right of the Stuarts to the crown. He was at length displaced. He seems to have been an arrogant, stormy, proud man, who used at public ceremonials to buffet the heralds and pursuivants who blundered or offended him. He was buried at St. Paul's, in 1612, near the grave of Edward III.'s herald, Sir Pain Roet, Guienne King at Arms, and Chaucer's father-in-law. Another black sheep was Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who was accused of granting arms to any one for a large fee, and of stealing forty or fifty heraldic books from the college library. There was also Ralph Brooke, York Herald in the same reign, a malicious and ignorant man, who attempted to confute some of Camden's genealogies in the "Britannia." He broke open and stole some muniments from the office, and finally, for two felonies, was burnt in the hand at Newgate.
To such rascals we must oppose men of talent and scholarship like the great Camden. This grave and learned antiquary was the son of a painter in the Old Bailey, and, as second master of Westminster School, became known to the wisest and most learned men of London, Ben Jonson honouring him as a father, and Burleigh, Bacon, and Lord Broke regarding him as a friend. His "Britannia" is invaluable, and his "Annals of Elizabeth" are full of the heroic and soaring spirit of that great age. Camden's house, at Chislehurst, was that in which the Emperor Napoleon has recently died.
Sir William Le Neve (Charles I.), Clarencieux, was another most learned herald. He is said to have read the king's proclamation at Edgehill with great marks of fear. His estate was sequestered by the Parliament, and he afterwards went mad from loyal and private grief and vexation. In Charles II.'s reign we find the famous antiquary, Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald for several years. He was the son of a Lichfield saddler, and was brought up as a chorister-boy. That impostor, Lilly, calls him the "greatest virtuoso and curioso" that was ever known or read of in England; for he excelled in music, botany, chemistry, heraldry, astrology, and antiquities. His "History of the Order of the Garter" formed no doubt part of his studies at the College of Arms.
In the same reign as Ashmole, that great and laborious antiquary, Sir William Dugdale, was Garter King of Arms. In early life he became acquainted with Spelman, an antiquary as profound as himself, and with the same mediæval power of work. He fought for King Charles in the Civil Wars. His great work was the "Monasticon Anglicanum," three volumes folio, which disgusted the Puritans and delighted the Catholics. His "History of Warwickshire" was considered a model of county histories. His "Baronage of England" contained many errors. In his visitations he was very severe in defacing fictitious arms.
Francis Sandford, first Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, and then Lancaster Herald (Charles II., James II.), published an excellent "Genealogical History of England," and curious accounts of the funeral of General Monk and the coronation of James II. He was so attached to James that he resigned his office at the Revolution, and died, true to the last, old, poor and neglected, somewhere in Bloomsbury, in 1693.