Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/176

 onwards church armour was very often made specially for the funeral. In the case of helmets, old skull-pieces were frequently used with added gorget plates, visors, etc. The merchant prince did not pay too much for the emblems of honour. We read in an old manuscript that at the end of the XVIth century the coat of arms cost 26s. 8d., the shield 6s. 8d., the helmet, "with crest and mantells," 20s. The custom long survived; we have a few early XVIIth century achievements in churches, but after 1750, although the helmet, sword, coat of arms, and spurs were carried at a funeral, they were not suspended in the church. Even at Nelson's and Pitt's funerals helmets were provided. The funeral with military honours of to-day still preserves something of the old ceremony.

The hanging of armour and arms in churches was not confined to England; the custom was co-extensive with knighthood itself. We read of Guillaume de Toulouse, early in the XIIIth century, dedicating his helm and shield to St. Julian and hanging them over the shrine at Brives, and of the French king, after the battle of Cassel in 1328, presenting his arms to the neighbouring church. Did not Jeanne d'Arc offer to St. Denis "a whole complete suit of white armoury as for a man of arms and a sword won before Paris"?

The most celebrated achievements of arms in England are those in Canterbury Cathedral and in Westminster Abbey, which Sir Guy Laking has described at great length, but the wanderer on foot who strays from the beaten track may not regret persevering for another mile or so to visit the little village church, where he will see the crested helmet and sword, gauntlets and spurs, banner and coat of arms, hanging over the monument to a Nevill, a Percy, a Greville, a Bolingbroke, a Penn, a Hervey, a Wadham, or a Verney, names recalling the stirring times of the War of the Roses, the tournaments of Henry VIII, the great Elizabethan period, and the Civil War.

Those who are interested in the subject may while away an evening by reading in such accessible books as Strutt's "Manners and Customs" (ed. 1776, vol. iii, p. 161) and Bloxam's "Fragmenta Sepulchralia," the extracts from old manuscripts dealing with the ceremonial and "orderinge" of funerals.

In Hunter's "History of Sheffield" (ed. 1819), on pp. 56, 77, are given long detailed accounts of the heralds' funerals of two of the Earls of Shrewsbury, in 1560 and 1616.

The help of the rectors and vicars of the parishes, of my friends, and of many others, strangers to me, who have written to tell me of churches in which they knew that armour was still preserved, has made it possible for me to compile this imperfect list. I have endeavoured to give the names of all those who first brought to my notice the existence of armour in particular churches, but I alone am responsible for