No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
“Heraldry in this reign [Edward III] received the highest polish: in future times it was more gorgeously attired; but with its simplicity it lost its greatest merit.“ Change or progress which the world hails as warmly as it yearns for the permanent and the familiar has disordered and corrupted all hierarchies of men. Mediaeval society may be given an intellectual formulation which is a marvel of order. The peasant toils, the noble fights and the clerk prays. But the clashing reality hastily reveals how uncomprehensive the division is. Where is the merchant or the fortunate adventurer? If the nobleman must be endowed with lands and wealth as a mark of his station and to afford him the leisure for war, what is the status of the merchant who has profitably held the wolf of avarice by the tail? If wealth is a mark of position, does the possession of an adequate supply of silver marks, involving power as it does, also bring with it position? Over the centuries it always has, although society has often urbanely pretended that high degree went only to wealth grown old or has saved itself from vulgarity by insisting that gentility went only with land (which was purchasable).
1 Rev. Noble, Mark, A History of the College of Arms (London, 1805), p. 20.Google Scholar
2 SirElyot, Thomas, The Governour (London, 1907), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
3 See the admirable article by Tawney, R. H., “The Rise of the Gentry,” The Economic History Review, XI (1941), pp. 1–39.Google ScholarHarrison, William reported that merchants “often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the other.” “The Description of England,” in Holinshed's Chronicles (London, 1807), I, 274.Google Scholar
4 Barren, Oswald, “Heraldry” in Shakespeare's England, ed. Onions, C. T. (Oxford, 1926), II, 82.Google ScholarIn the Calendar of Stale Papers, Domestic, 1547–1580, ed. Lemon, Robert (London, 1856), p. 291Google Scholar there is a brief mention of the Earl Marshal's regulations for the College of Arms under May 7, 1568. More detail is given in Noble, , op. cit, p. 158.Google Scholar
5 Harrison, William, op. cit, I, 273.Google Scholar
6 Wagner, Anthony Richard, Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages (London, 1939). p. 95, note 2.Google Scholar
7 Several cases involving the heralds, brought in Chancery and the King's Bench, are mentioned in A Collection of Curious Discourses, ed. Hearne, Thomas (London, 1771), II, 258–261.Google Scholar Ralph Brooke, York Herald and Robert Treswell, Somerset Herald, sought in Chancery to overthrow the Earl Marshal's Court. Ibid., II, 261. Thus, the constitutional struggle between the common law courts and the prerogative courts extended even to the heralds.
8 There are a number of papers on the functions and privileges of heralds in A Collection of Curious Discourses. Useful and witty articles are Barron, op. cit. and Barnard, F. P. “Heraldry” in Mediaeval England, ed. Davis, (Oxford, 1924), especially pp. 226–227.Google Scholar
9 A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, 139–145.Google Scholar
10 Wagner, , op. cit., pp. 59–60.Google Scholar
11 Noble, , op. cit., p. 49.Google Scholar
12 For a list of the visitations see the preface of SirEllis, Henry to The Visitation of the County of Huntingdon, ed.SirEllis, Henry, Camden Society, XLIII (1849), pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar The visitations have been published mainly by the Harleian Society.
13 Lee, Sidney, A Life of William Shakespeare (new ed., New York, 1916), pp. 281–285.Google Scholar
14 One of his rolls is still known as the Roll, Camden. Wagner, Anthony R., Historic Heraldry of Britain (New York, 1939), p. 26.Google Scholar
15 Camden's, will in A Collection of Curious Discourses, ed. Hearne, Thomas (London, 1771), II, 391.Google Scholar
16 Camden's, account is critical of the haste and inadequacies of the ceremony Microfilm in the University of Chicago Library, Smith MS. 17, p. 60.Google Scholar
17 The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, Norman Egbert, “Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society,” Memoirs XII (Philadelphia, 1939), I, 138.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., I, 251–252. The mark was 13s 4d. One thousand marks was about 666 least 6.
pounds, and for a modern equivalent (1939) the figure should be multiplied by at
19 Noble, , op. cit., p. 159.Google Scholar
20 Calendar of Stale Papers, Domestic, 1547–1580, ed. Lemon, Robert (London, 1856), p. 329.Google Scholar
21 Dallaway, James, Inquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England, quoted in Nason, Arthur H., Heralds and Heraldry in Jonson's Plays (New York, 1907), p. 72.Google Scholar
22 Barron, , op. cit., p. 75,Google Scholar and Noble, , op. cit., pp. 191–192.Google Scholar
23 Noble, , op. cit., p. 192.Google Scholar
24 Twisden, John R. and Ward, C. H. Dudley, The Family of Tmysden and Twisden (London, 1939), p. 138.Google Scholar
25 Barron, , op. cit., p. 81.Google Scholar
26 Noble, , op. cit., p. 192.Google Scholar
27 Tawney's, R. H. paraphrase of SirSmith, Thomas in “The Rise of the Gentry,” The Economic History Review, XI (1941), p. 4.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., p. 21.
29 Every Man Out of His Humour, Act III, Scene iv., in Jonson, Ben, ed. Herford & Simpson (Oxford, 1927), III, 503–505.Google Scholar
30 Noble, , op. cit., p. 161.Google Scholar
31 The Cities Advocate (London, 1629),Google ScholarPubMed “The Epistle Dedicatorie.” The work is usually attributed to Bolton.
32 University of Chicago microfilm of Smith, MS. 17, p. 58.Google Scholar
33 A manuscript account in Camden's hand. University of Chicago microfilm. Smith, MS. 17, pp. 57–59.Google Scholar See also Smith, , Vita cl. Camdeni et epistolae (London, 1691), pp. xxxiv–xxxvii.Google Scholar
34 Noble, , op. cit., p. 198.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., p. 164; Barron, , op. cit., pp. 81–82.Google Scholar
36 Noble, , op. cit., p. 162.Google Scholar
37 Ibid., Appendix, xii–xiii.
38 Ibid., pp. 160, 176–177.
39 Ibid., p. 200.
40 These letters are in The Visitation of the County of Huntingdon, ed. SirEllis, Henry, pp. vii–x.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., pp. x–xi.
42 A Collection of Curious Discourses, II, 391.Google Scholar
43 Brooke, A Discoverie of Certaine Errours …, sigs. A2v–A3v.
44 Brooke, , A Catalogue and Succession of the Kings, Princes … since the Norman Conquest to this present yeare, 1619 (London, 1619), no pag.Google Scholar
45 Camden, , Britannia (London, 1600), “Ad lectorem,” p. 2.Google Scholar Edward Gibbon made fun of his ancestor, Gibbon, John, Pursuivant, Bluemantle, who enthusiastically, absurdly, but never languidly attempted to write on heraldry in Latin, “to define in the Roman idiom, the terms and attributes of a Gothic institution.” The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, ed. Murray, John (London, 1896), Memoir F, p. 9.Google Scholar
46 Noble, , op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar
47 Camden, , Britannia (1600), “Ad lectorem,” p. 5.Google Scholar
48 Barron, , op. cit., II, 76–77.Google Scholar
49 The Petres exchanged their gaudy new arms for a graver and older appearing one. Ibid., p. 77.
50 Bolton, Edmund, The Elements of Armories (London, 1610), sig. A3v.Google Scholar
51 Ibid., pp. 6, 7–8, 13, 17, 21, 46 (sic, should be 43). Edward Gibbon was unwarrantedly amused by the similar speculations of his ancestor. Gibbon, , op. cit. Memoir F, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar Camden's slight historical writings about armories agree with Bolton. Camden, Remains concerning Britain (London, 1637), “Impresses,” pp. 341–359, “Armories,” pp. 205–229.
52 The Staple of News, Act. IV, scene iv, lines 150–159, in Ben Jonson, ed. Herford, C. H. and P. and Simpson, E. (Oxford, 1938), V, 361.Google Scholar
53 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598–1601, ed. Green, M. A. E. (London, 1869), p. 547.Google Scholar
54 Noble, , op. cit., pp. 37, 222–224.Google Scholar