Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/236

 160 MARKS OF CADENCY consisted, for at that period they Avere of three or five indif- ferently, according to the fanc}'^ of the artist, or the space that he had to occupy ; and in hke manner, as may be supposed, the number of the fleurs-de-hs, ermine spots, and torteaux, on the respective labels, was not fixed, though in general there were three on each point. These marks of cadency, we may feel assured, were not adopted without there being something significant or suitable in them, which led to their selection, though we may not now be able in every case to discover what it was. Some of them can be satisfactorily explained. Thus the label of France, borne by Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, is with much appa- rent reason thought to have been taken on his marriage with his second wife, who was a French princess; which implies that he had previously used some other difference, though what it was does not appear. However this may have been, there can surely be no doubt that the bordure of France borne by John of Eltham, had reference to his mother, Queen Isabel of France ; or that the differences borne by the two sons of Edmund of Langley, were derived from the arms of their mother, Isabel, one of the co-heirs of Castile and Leon ; or that the label of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, which had on each point the ancient, or, at least, traditional coat of Clare, anterior to the well-known chevronels, viz., arfjent, a canton gules, is to be attributed, as well as the designation of his dukedom, to his alliance with an heiress of tliat family, and the large possessions that he so acquired ; and in like manner the ermine label of John of Ghent, who was Earl of Richmond before he was Duke of Lancaster, was taken from the arms of the former Earls of Richmond.^ In the preceding enumeration of the sons of Edward III. ■'• Mr. Willement, in his Heraldic Notices vation in support of it. Lionel, Duke of of Canterbury Cathedral, pp. 41, 58, and Clarence, we have seen, bore his label .'»0, has attributed a coat very similar to argent so charged, and I would suggest for that of John of Ghent, differing only in in([uiry, whether Thomas, Duke of Cla- the fleurs-de-lis in France being reduced rence, did not add that charge when ad- to three, to his grandson Thomas, Duke vanced to the dukedom in 1411, which (»f Clarence, second son of Henry IV. So was ten years before his death. In two of correct an observer was not likely to over- the instances mentioned by Mr. Wille- look a chai'ge on the label ; and Brooke, ment, if they were meant for his arms, uncorrected by Vincent, assigns him the tlioy may have been those that he pre- saine. Yet Sandford, on the authority of viously bore ; while in the third instance, his stall plate as a Knight of the Garter, wiiich is over the tomb of himself and his states that the points of the label ermine wife who survived him, the cantons may were each cliargi^d with a canton gules ; have been expressed in colour only, and and York had pi'oviously given his label have become uo longer visible, in this manner, though without any obser-