Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 9.djvu/176

 12£ NOTICES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. have preceded the coats ; aud this the author considers to have been the fact, without however meaning to contend that in no instance was a name derived from the arms. The various examples of these " armes parlantes " which are noticed by the author are, no doubt, as he gives us to understand, a very small portion of what might be collected. Fresh instances will be continually occurring to the heraldic student as his acquaintance with the history, manners, and language of those times increases. It is remarkable that charges of this kind should be so full of meaning, while none can be satisfactorily attributed to the generality of the ordinaries and subordinaries ; a difference between the two classes of charges which somewhat countenances the author's supposition as to the origin of the latter. When on the subject of birds he takes occasion to suggest (aa indeed Spelman had done in his Aspilogia) that the well-known coat invented for Edward the Confessor, viz., azure, a cross patonce between four, or more commonly five, martlets or, was derived from one of that king's coins, which had on it a cross between four birds ; but which birds, like those in the early example of this coat in Westminster Abbey, have beaks and feet, aud Mr. Planche takes them to have been meant for doves. He is probably right ; for Froissart, when relating the expedition of Richard II. into Ireland, as he heard it from an English esquire, mentions the arms and banner of the Confessor, and calls the birds doves. The passage is not remarkable for accuracy, yet familiar as that chronicler was with martlets, he is not likely to have called them doves without some reason. Like most heraldic writers, the author assumes the mullet to be a spur rowel. If so, it occurs much earlier than any well authenticated instance of a rowelled spur that we can call to mind. ilarks of cadency are next investigated. Here the author seems to have attached more importance to the statements contained in the treatises of De Bado xA.ureo and Upton, and the Book of St. Albans than they deserve, and has been a little perplexed to reconcile them with his facts. The discrepancy is remarkable, and not easily accounted for, unless those writers are to be understood as recommending a practice which never prevailed. We should like to have seen Mr. Planche 's opinion as to the origin of the label. We presume that it must have occupied his attention, and that no satisfactory result was obtained. It is in vain, as he found, to distinguish examples of it by the number of their points or pendants till after the middle of the 14th century. He observes that in none of the fifteen instances in Glover's Roll is any mention made of the number of points ; nor is there, he might have added, in the much larger number of examples that are to be found in the valuable Roll temp. Edward 11., published by Sir H. Nicolas. We are rather surprised the author has not noticed the manner in which the arms of the seven sons of Thomas Earl of Warwick, who died in 1396, were differenced in the windows of St. Mary's Church, Warwick, as six of the modern marks of cadency occurred there, though not applied in the same order in which they are now used. It is evident there was no settled usage on the subject ; nor is it practicable perhaps, however desirable, to distinguish the cases of mere cadets from those in which younger sons by the acquisition of large estates became the founders of new houses : for in some instances the latter were content with such slight variations in the paternal coat as mere cadets also bore. Marks of illegitimacy are then considered, and various examples given to show the absence of any uniform practice. When mentioning the coat first borne by John of Beaufort, son of John of Ghent by Katherine Swinford, Mr. Planche has inadvertently misdescribed it as per pale argent