Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/367

 ii s. m. MAY is, wii.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

361

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1911.

CONTENTS. No. 72.

NOTES : The Collar of S3, 361 Landor Bibliography, 364 Rev. Philip Hedgeland, 365 'The Churches of York- shire ' Shakespeare Allusions in Burton First Half- penny Newspaper " Wait and see" Raikes Centenary, 366.

QUERIES: Sir John Arnndel of Clerkenwell Mrs. Browning's Portrait Gladstone on the Upas Tree "That man is thought a dangerous Knave" 'Britons, Strike Home !'' Ralph Roister Doister 'Shakespeare : Tallis & Co.'s Edition William Evatfc, Clerk of the House of Commons " Welcome as the flowers in May" 'The Coming Nation,' 367 Peter de Wint Peake and Pyke Families of Southwark " Clerk of the Papers" Lawton and Inman Families -Woolsthorpe, 368 Siege of Derry : Rev. J. Gordon Thomas Thane's MSS. Putney Bowling-GreenDuke of Marlborough's Godmother Bonav <fe Co. Horses and Market Tolls Subsidy Rolls, Lancashire Colleges of Commerce, 369,

BE PLIES: Black Bandsmen in the Army, 370 Madame Vestris Carlyle and Charles I. May- Day : May-Poles, 371 Geffery le Bakester de Loffithe Sir Miles Wharton Authors of Quotations Wanted, 372 Capt. Cook Memorial ' Church Historians of England,' 373 Lamb, Burton, and Francis Spiera Scottish Titles conferred by Oomwell, 374 Junius and the Duke of Bedford Anne Boleyn: Bulley Family, 375 Roger Gollop Dogs and -other Animals on Brasses, 376 Elephant and Castle in Heraldry Richard Rolle Wall Churches Authors of Poems Wanted 'May Fair' 'Belgravia' "Essex" as Christian Name, 377 Hanoverian Regiment Catherine Hyde Gallows Bank Bishop King, 378.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' London : the City 'Reviews and Magazines.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

THE COLLAR OF SS AND THE MOTTO "SOUVENT ME SOUVIENT."

MUCH has been written about this collar ; nd the Dean of York, whose attention was first called to the subject by the magnificent specimen worn by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge in York Minster on Assize Sunday, November, 1887, has lately produced a sump- tuous monograph which seems to embody in an attractive form much of the learned research which lias been expended upon it, and moreover contains an interesting "con- jecture'* of the author's own. The book is dedicated to Lord Alverstone, one of the living official wearers of "the bauble" in question.

The motto has received but little atten- tion ; yet it was that of Margaret Beaufort, the foundress of two great Cambridge col- leges and the ancestress of all our sovereigns from Henry VII. to George V. Christ's College kept its fourth centenary in 1905,

and St. John's will do the like in the present year. In 1905 three papers appeared on the subject in the Christ's College Magazine and in the Johnian Eagle. One of these, from the pen of Prof. Skeat, gave an ex- planation of the motto which is now repro- duced without comment by Dr. Purey- Cust (p. 33) after Mr. H. B. McCall, who fully adopts it (' RichmondsMre Churches,' 1910, p. 190). The words of the motto are equivalent to the Latin Subinde mihi sub- venit (a " Silver Age " use), and mean " it often occurs to me," " I often remember." The more familiar modern construction je me souviens is condemned by Littre, who says it is as barbarous as would be je m'importe for il m'importe, and that it first occurs in the sixteenth century. This is no doubt true of literature, or French literature ; but souvenez is found on a collar of 1407 (see below).

What do the five to twenty (more or less) SS of our collar mean ? Three answers deserve consideration :

(1) John Anstis, Garter King-at-Arms, suggested (1724), as "a very precarious conjecture," that the S was the initial letter of Soveigne ( = subveniat, qi.Cil te souvienne), or, more fully, of Soveigne vous de moi, the old French name for the " for- get-me-not " (' Register of the Garter,' i. 117). Henry IV., when Earl of Derby, is recorded to have worn this flower in silver-gilt upon a Collar of SS in 1397 (ib.). Miss Toulmin Smith in ' Expeditions to Prussia made by Henry, Earl of Derby,' in 1390-93, gave further extracts (1894) from the accounts of Henry's treasurer, Kyngeston, to the same effect. Under the year 1397-8 we read of " Coler fact cum esses et floribus de soveine vous de moi." The solution thus timidly proposed by Anstis has since been adopted by Beltz, E. Foss, and Prof. Skeat.

(2) Willement, heraldic artist to George IV., thought that S stood for Soverayne. This word in fact occurs repeatedly on the cornice of Henry IV.'s tomb at Canterbury, where is also a profusion of Esses, and it is taken by Willement and many others to have been Henry's motto (' Royal Heraldry,' 1829, p. 42). Beltz, on the other hand, thought that Soverayne was a blunder for Soveine. But surely care would be taken to give the monarch's motto correctly on his own tomb.

(3) J. G. Nichols, admitting that Soverayne was Henry's motto, pointed out that the Collar of SS was worn and distributed by