Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/243

 BORNE BY THE PLANTAGENETS. 105 Peter, King of Castile, or else on being created Duke of York in 1385. An eminent French writer on heraldry (Menestrier), but who was not very well informed as to English affairs, attributed the torteaux to alliances contracted with the house of Courtenay, which appears to be a mistake ; and Nisbet referred them to the ancient Earldom of Cornwall, which seems equally erroneous. Torteaux were a highly honourable bearing in Spain, and it is possible they may have been somehow derived from the Castilian alliance. Further than this I cannot carry the matter at present : perhaps some member of the Institute may be able to con- duct it to a more satisfactory issue, and, by showing when the change of label took place, add one more to these useful data for determining when works of medieval art in this country were executed. In the preceding observations I trust I have shown that Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and Edmund, Duke of York, had previously used other labels than those commonly ascribed to them ; and if so, it follows that any genuine work, in which the later label of either of them occurs, cannot be earlier than when it was assumed, which was hardly before 1362 ; and that, as regards the Duke of Clarence, where his earlier label occurs, the work may safely be assumed to have been executed in or before the year 1362, and not earlier than 1352, in which, or the following year, he appears to have married the heiress of De Burgh. Upon the frieze of the monument, which is opposite to that of Bishop Burghersh, and has been attributed to his brother Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, is also a series of five shields of the quarterly coat of Plantagenet ; but as the labels are now unfortunately all plain, the charges that were upon any of them having been expressed in colours only, which have entirely disappeared, they afford neither evidence nor argument for or against the conclusions at which I have arrived in regard to the shields Nos. 3 and 5 on the Bishop's monument. w. s. AV.