Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/60

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. XL JAN. ie, 1915.

From a scientific man it is amazing to see the implication that since Drake's time the trees then composing the Forest of Dart- moor have been removed ; while evidence given in the recent Local Government Board inquiry, which resulted in the uni- fication of the Three Towns, corroborated the everyday experience of the householders that in the driest of summers there has been in Burrator an ample supply for Ply- mouth's needs, and a surplus to help her neighbours. Where the new idea came from one would like to know. W. S. B. H.

FRANCE AND ENGLAND QUARTERLY.

(11 S. x. 281, 336, 396, 417, 458, 510.)

I FULLY admit the force of MB. BAYLEY'S criticism of nay suggestion that Henry II., had quartering been common in his time, would have placed the gold lilies in a blue field in the first quarter of his shield as his paternal arms. What I meant, and what I ought to have said, was that he would have so placed the arms of his father, Geoffrey of Anjou, whatever they may have been. As I did not, and do not, know for certain what arms were borne by Geoffrey of Anjou, I took the liberty of treating the lily coat as the typical Angevin arms, while I certainly agree that it was not used by Counts of Anjou until late in the thirteenth century. To the subject of Geoffrey's arms I will return later, though I do not think that it has much bearing upon my main argument, which is that Edward III.'s assumption, in the first and fourth quarters of his shield, of the lily coat well recog- nized in his day as the arms of Anjou was heraldically correct apart from any question of claim by him to sovereignty over France. As descendant in the male line of Geoffrey of Anjou he was clearly entitled to Geoffrey's coat, if it had become hereditary, as the principal bearing in his quartered shield, and one does not well see what coat other than the lily one he could have taken to show his Angevin descent. For, as other correspondents have truly said, hereditary coats of arms had not come into regular use as early as Geoffrey's time, and it would have been difficult for Edward to fix upon any twelfth -century Plantagenet arms which had acquired an hereditary character. He therefore, as I suggest, chose,

to symbolize his descent from. Geoffrey of Anjou, the arms which every one in the fourteenth century would recognize as the Angevin arms.

Then it is said that the change made by Henry IV. of England, following the example of Charles V. of France, from semee of lilies to three lilies, indicates that England under- stood the lilies in the Royal coat to mean France, not Anjou ; and I allow that Anjou did not make the change, but continued the coat of semee of lilies, as we see it without the label gules mentioned by MB. GAL- BBEATH, or the bordure gules referred to by MB. UDAL on shields and on the surcoats of figures of donors of the House of Anjou, Louis II., and perhaps Louis III., and others, in the very beautiful fifteenth -century north window of the north transept at Le Mans Cathedral. To this objection I would answer that when, early in the fifteenth cen- tury, the claim, first raised by Edward III., to the French crown was being actively prosecuted by England, it is not improbable that the English change from semee to three lilies was made in support of that claim, the reason for the original assumption by Eng- land of the lily coat having been forgotten or purposely slurred over. Another, and perhaps more probable, explanation may be that both France and England made the change independently one of the other in accordance with a custom which had long been growing, viz., to reduce the representa- tion of an indefinite number of charges to three. A well-known example is that of Clare, originally chevronee, and subse- quently three chevrons.

None of my kindly critics have yet ex- plained why, if claim to sovereignty over France was the main reason for Edward III.'s assumption of the lily coat, it was placed in that part of the shield appropriated to the paternal arms the first quarter. MB. UDAL indeed surmises that the explanation may be found in the relatively greater importance of France to England. Giving due weight to this argument, it hardly seems a sufficient- reason for ousting a paternal coat from its proper place in favour of arms of assumption.

Perhaps it may be worth consideration, though I admit that I am shifting my ground, whether the taking by Edward III. of the lily coat allowing, for argument's sake, that it was the arms of France, not Anjou, that he intended to assume may not have been in respect of his maternal descent, and, as such, independent of, though con- temporaneous with, his claim to the French crown. If that was indeed the case, it