Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/369

 us. m. MAY is, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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whom they were thus under the deepest obligations. The explanation above referred to of her motto Souvent me souvient is that it was the loyal respcn&eof the Beauforts to the appeal of their kinsman and king, Henry IV., Soveigne vous de moy. As, how- ever, *it appears that Sovcrayne was Henry's motto, this explanation seems highly pre- carious. It is, however, confidently adopted by Mr. McCall, who writes (p. 196) :

" Remember me was proclaimed by the emblems of the King ; and his collared knights responded by their SS decoration : / often remember."*

Yet, facing p. 196, he gives an excellent photograph of the collar from the West Tanfield effigy of Sir John Marmion, who died in 1387, twelve years before Henry became king. Sir John Swinford (see above) died in 1371, when Henry was only five years of ag^, and while Edward III. was still king. Nor is it clear that the Beauforts used the motto. It is only found in the Lady Margaret's portraits at Christ's College, at St. John's (in the Master's Lodge), at Knows- ley, in the National Portrait Gallery, and perhaps in one or two others. In the east window, 'however, of the little church of L?,ndbeach, near Cambridge, is some ancient glass showing two figures of persons of high rank kneeling and canopied, the male figure on the left, the female on the right. ^The attitude of the latter strikingly resembles the familiar portraits of the Lady Margaret, and underneath this figure, which appears to be perfect, is found, and seems always to have been there, the word Souvient. The lower part of the male figure is imperfect, but it is probable that souvent me once stood beneath it. The window was placed there by the antiquary Robert Masters, Rector of Landbeach 1757-99, who, probably from the attitude of the female figure and from the fragment of the motto, " conceived them to be John Beaufort and Margaret, his wife, first Duke and Duchess of Somerset, parents of Margaret, Countess of Richmond," and that " they come from an oratory erected to the memory of her family " (Rev. Keatinge Clay, 'Landbeach'). A recent rector, the learned Dr. Bryan Walker, supposed that the glass had been brought from Wimborne, where the monuments of the same personages p,re to be seen to this day. One may still ask whether it may not have been her own motto which the Lady Margaret, appro- priately enough, placed under these portraits of her parents. Is there any other trace

motto into the letters SS wherever found.
 * Mr. McCall thus reads the supposed Beaufort

of the use of the motto by the Beauforts ? A window, still in Wimborne Minster, com- memorates the Duke (died 1444) and his wife. The Duke's motto is not given, but several scrolls give the Duchess's mutare vel timere sperno (Hutchins, ' Dorset/ iii. 215).*

In the Wars of the Roses the Beauforts fought on the Lancastrian side. " Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renowned " ('Henry VI.,' Part III., end), fell in 1455, 1467, and 1471. These were the uncle and first cousins of the Lady Margaret. She herself, when the wars were over, writes Mr. A. Bailey, ' English Crown,' p. 54, " apparently acquiesced in the existing settlement of the crown in the reigning family."

Further evidence, might, of course, lend greater probability to the conjecture under discussion. Two facts may be mentioned which seem to show that the Soveigne device, though not Henry IV.'s motto, and appa- rently derived from his dethroned kinsman,, was occasionally used by him and his son long after.

(1) In Devon's ' Issues of the Exchequer," 1837, p. 253, we have the description of a costly collar made for Henry IV. in 1407. It was " of gold worked with the motto Soveignez and the letter S."

(2) Dr. Purey-Cust mentions that the figure of Henry V. on the choir-screen of York Minster has " round the neck the Collar of SS, across the breast a band bearing; the words memento mei " (p. 33). His owni explanation of this is that the words " apply to the boss on the belt beneath, which bears a pelican vulning itself, an emblem of the dangers which the King incurred during the French Wars." Still, this may be a re- miniscence of the old Soveigne motto or device.

In this uncertainty, conjecture seems allowable. May not the motto Souvent me souvient, found at present only on the Lady Margaret's portraits, have been what the Germans call a Leibspruch, and have a personal and religious rather than political significance ? Bishop Fisher in his funeral sermon speaks of " the veray nobleness " of her " holdynge memory." His editor, Dr. Hymers, quotes some lines given in Jeremy Taylor's ' Holy Dying ' :

Whoso him belhoft Inwardly and oft. . . . He would not do one sin All the world to win.

borne. The present (modern) window assigns the- mutare motto to Duke and Duchess alike.
 * Since this was written I have revisited Wini-