Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/164

118 of an earlier century; and on the unifier division there is likewise, as I apprehend, a particular which will establish the date of the year I have mentioned.

A dragon volant is not indeed any novel object; you find it often sculptured from the times of the Saxons to the present days. It was not only the device on the royal standard of Wessex, but a bishop had conducted armies under it. On a Saxon arch in Ditton church in Bucks, under the inscription is a winged-dragon with a fish's tail, opening its mouth at an angel. St. George is frequently displayed on horseback trampling on a dragon, and the figure of Martin, abbot of Peterborough, who died in 1158, treads on a double dragon, who bites the pillars of the flowered arch of the canopy of his tombstone ; and you have observed that a dragon is sometimes pierced by the crosier of a bishop in his pontificals.

In later days, however, this animal was again elevated from a posture so humiliated and subdued. By the command of Henry the IIId, a dragon, in the manner of a standard of red samet, embroidered and otherwise richly adorned, was placed in Westminster abbey. And in the family picture of Henry the Vth, which was the altar piece of his chapel at Shene, there was a red dragon flying in the air. One of the banners which Henry the VIIth set up in Bosworth Field had painted on it a red dragon, in allusion to his descent from Cadwallader. When he arrived in London he offered it in St. Paul's cathedral as a trophy of his victory, and in commemoration of the fame he instituted the office of Dragon Pursuivant. King Henry the VIIIth bore his arms at first supported on the dexter side by a red dragon, and in the middle of his