Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/161

 112 Devon Notes and Queries. et de Somss. cum pertinentiis suis quae fuit Ricardi Reyoell patris sui," etc., vide Har]. MS. 4,031 fo. 236.) These lands of Pitney and Somerton were thus restored on conditions of military service. In Dr. Colby's edition of the 1620 Visitation of Devon, published by the Harleian Society, is a copy of this deed, where ** Peteneya" is printed ** Petevin," and this error was copied by Vivian. William Renel or Reynell, the father of the Sheriff, lived on into John's reign, for in Pole's list of Crown tenants in Devon, temp. John (J>. 42) occurs William Revell, but with no address. Perhaps on vacating Exeter Castle he had retired to Revelstoke, which is included among the large possessions of his son. In a list of Reynell estates quoted by Prince, Nassey can be identified with Noss in the parish of Revelstoke. The well known arms of Reynell of Devon, arg, masonry, a chief indented sa., or as Parker found it on an old seal, sa, an embattled wall arg., and the motto, have always been considered in the family to relate to the defence of the castles of Exeter and Launceston by Sir Richard Reynell. If it be true that they were adopted in early days in memory of that event, then the original arms of the Sheri£f and castellan would be quite different. This is so. Risdon gives the old arms in his Note Book, p. 202 : ** Barones et milites in comitatu Cornubie tempore regni Ricardi et Regis Johannis : Ricardus Rivell, Vicecomes Cornubie : ermine a chevron gules, a bordure engrailed sa,^* The same arms without the addition of the bordure are by Berry and Papworth attributed to Rynell as well as Rivell. The bordure, as in the arms of so many other families, seems to have been the mark of difference for a younger son. A member of the Reynell family, writing Polwhele, (Cornwall, II, p. 89), com- plains that Sir Hugh Renel, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, A**- 1257, who occurs on the Reynell pedigree, is described in Vertot's history of that order as Hugh Revel, whereas in a Latin letter of the man himself, in the British Museum,* he calls himself " Prater Hugo Renel." Pol- whele's correspondent adds that in the accounts of the French noblesse the residence of the Marquis de Renel is given as the Chateau Reynell. Rbynell Upham.
 * See Visit, Devon, 1620, Harl. Soc., edited by Dr. Colby.