Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/368

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NOTES AND QUERIES. pi s. in. MAY 13, MIL

Henry's father, John of Gaunt. In The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1842, p. 479, he gives an engraving, from a drawing in the British Museum, of a window to John's memory in Old St. Paul's. Here are seen two shields, one surrounded by the Garter, the other by a collar with five Esses. In the inscription John was described, among other titles, as Rex Castilice, which, in right of his second wife, he claimed to be from 1372 to 1389 ; and also as Magnus Seneschattus Anglie. John died in 1399, but Nichols thought the window was put up some years later. He held the SS to stand for Senes- chattus. This is favoured by A. Hartshorne.

(4) The Dean's " conjecture " is a com- bination of (2) and (3). He suggests (p. 34) that " these inscrutable letters had a two- fold significance craftily devised for a very critical time."

" As the Duke of York, John's younger brother, had devised a jewel of a cryptic character (a falcon in a fetter-lock), something similarly enigmatical, apparently committing no one to anything, and capable of a variety of interpre- tations, was at once produced. . . .Yes, he [John] was no doubt Seigneur and Seneschallus and what not, and therefore none could demur to the indication of them ; but his immediate con- federates and confidants looked upon him as their Soveraine, and patiently abided the time when it would come to pass." P. 48.

When the time came, when " the aspiring blood of Lancaster " attained, in the person of Henry, the throne for which John had so long schemed, the cryptic S revealed its true significance, as is shown in the repeated Soverayne on Henry's tomb.

That S, meant as a claim to the English throne, could not openly be so- explained under Richard II., is obvious ; but (1) John had long used the title of King of Castile and Leon ; (2) he was "summoned by writ to a Parliament held at Westminster by the name of John, King of Castile and Duke of Lan- caster " (p. 42). Further, on 22 April, 1386, Richard himself put a crown of gold on his uncle's head (' Diet. Nat. Biog,' xxix. 425). Perhaps, then, we may slightly modify Dr. Purey-Cust's conjecture, and say that the S might be " variously interpreted " (under Richard) as Seigneur, Seneschallus, or even Soverayne in the Castilian sense by courtesy, even after 1389 while all the time John had a loftier sense in mind.

" Of the many tombs scattered broad- cast throughout the country " indicating " how wide the acceptance of the collar had been " (p. 55), the oldest, it is believed, are those of Sir John Swinford, who died 1371 ; Sir Thomas Burton, of the date 1382 ; and of

Sir John Marmion (at West Tanfield, Yorks), who died in 1 387. Photographs of Marmion's stately monument are given both by Mr. McCall and by the Dean. These instances, and the John of Gaunt window, abundantly prove that the collar cannot have been devised, or first distributed, by Henry, who was not born till 1366. To explain the- collar, then, by Henry's fancy for the forget-me-not (fteur de Soveigne} in 1391 and the following years, is an anachronism. His use of the flower, or of its name, is sufficiently explained by a record quoted by Anstis (' Register,' i. ll7) :

" We find that Richard II. himself had a gow^? made in his fourteenth year (1390) whereon this motto [i.e., Soveigne vous de moy] was embroidered, to be used at the famous tilt in Smithfield."

From this Willement (' R. H.,' p. 42) infers t "It is probable that the flower might have been only united by Henry to his otvn badge (SS) in compliment to a device or motto affected by the monarch."

This complimentary adoption of badges may be illustrated from the fact that in 1389 Richard "took the collar from his uncle's neck and put it on his own " (p. 18). Taxed with this by Arundel in 1394, the King said he had done it "en signe de bon amour etd'entier cceur " (Gent. Mag., March, 1842). Mrs. Bury Palliser ('Devices,' p. 364) tells us that in 1390 " Henry, then Earl of Derby, ordered the sleeves of his coat to be em- broidered with (white) harts of the King's bearing." His use, then, of Richard's Soveigne badge or motto would be a like token of amity, real or feigned.

John Gower in his ' Chronica ' speaks of Henry in 1387 as qui gerit S ; but the only flower he mentions in connexion with him is the rose :

Ut rosa flos florum, melior fuit ille bonorum.

The " flores domini " mentioned by Kyngeston, apart from the forget-me-nots, are conjectured by Miss T. Smith to be " Lancaster roses." In the National Portrait Gallery Henry IV. bears a red rose.

The Lady Margaret, it will be remembered, was daughter of the first Duke and Duchess of Somerset, whose effigies (placed there by herself) are to be seen, wearing the collar, in Wimborne Minster. She was the grand- daughter of the first Earl of Somerset, and great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt. Her grandfather, the Earl, was the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford, who afterwards became his third wife (1395). In 1396-7 the Beauforts, as they were called from a castle of John's in Artois, were legitimated, ennobled, and enriched by Richard II., to