Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/520

 in ye chancell window of Effingham by Bungay in the top of the cot window with Mowbraye & Segrave on the side in glass there."

Who the writer was I am unaware. He appends a further sketch to his note, which slightly differs. No helmet or crest is shown, and the central shield has only the arms of Brotherton. The feathers which flank it are both enfiled below the shield by one coronet. Of the smaller shields at the side, the dexter bears the arms of Mowbray and the sinister those of Segrave. Possibly the Mowbrays, as recognised members of the Royal Family, bore the badge by subsequent grant and authorisation and not on the simple basis of inheritance.

An ostrich feather piercing a scroll was certainly the favourite badge of the Black Prince and so appears on several of his seals, and triplicated it occurs on his "shield of peace" (Fig. 478), which, set up under the instructions in his will, still remains on his monument in Canterbury Cathedral. The arms of Sir Roger de Clarendon, the illegitimate son of the Black Prince, were derived from this "shield for peace," which I take it was not really a coat of arms at all, but merely the badge of the Prince depicted upon his livery colour, and which might equally have been displayed upon a roundle. In the form of a shield bearing three feathers the badge occurs on the obverse of the second seal of Henry IV. in 1411. A single ostrich feather with the motto "Ich dien" upon the scroll is to be seen on the seal of Edward, Duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Agincourt in 1415. Henry IV. as Duke of Lancaster placed on either side of his escutcheon an ostrich feather with a garter or belt carrying the motto "Sovereygne" twined around the feather, John of Gaunt used the badge with a chain laid along the quill, and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, used it with a garter and buckle instead of the chain; whilst John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, placed an ostrich feather on each side of his shield, the quills in his case being compony argent and azure, like the bordure round his arms.

There is a note in Harl. MS. 304, folio 12, which, if it be strictly accurate, is of some importance. It is to the effect that the "feather silver with the pen gold is the King's, the ostrich feather pen and all silver is the Prince's (i.e. the Prince of Wales), and the ostrich feather gold the pen ermine is the Duke of Lancaster's." That statement evidently relates to a time when the three were in existence contemporaneously, i.e. before the accession of Henry IV. In the reign of Richard II. there was no Prince of Wales. During the reign of Edward III. from 1376 onwards, Richard, afterwards Richard II., was Prince of Wales, and John of Gaunt was Duke of Lancaster (so cr. 1362). But John of Gaunt used the feather in the form above stated, and to find a Duke of Lancaster before John of Gaunt we must go