Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/47

 12 s. i. JAN. is, i9i6.] N OTES AND QUERIES.

41

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1916.

CON TENTS.- No. 3.

NOTES : An Old Serving-Knife and the " Sire de Dan- court," 41 Tavolara: Moresnet : Goust (Llivia?): Alleged Small Republics, 42 " Binnacle ": "Tabernacle": "Bar- nacles," 44-General John Guise : the Rev. Samuel Guise, 45 Hampstead Sand Barony of Wharton, 46 " Cen- sure ": its Right and Wrong Use " Lampposts" and " Fountpens " Clockmakers An Old Street Name-Plate -Pialeh Pasha at Chios, 47.

QUERIES : Warren Hastings on the Persian Gulf British Herb : Herb Tobtcco The Bury, Chesham, Bucks Lord Milner's Pedigree LeitnerW. M. Fellows Rich, fitz- Gerald, 48 Frodsham The Two Ryhopes, co. Durham- William Penu's School Stewart Family Memory at the Moment of Death Death Warrants Portsmouth : South- wick Sixteenth-Century Dutch Print Fryer Pigott of Harlow Biographical Information Wanted, 49 Author Wanted Wyvill Heraldry " Billycock " Peculiar Court of Snaith Papal Insignia Baptism in 1644, 50.

REPLIES : History of Commerce, 50 Edgar Allan Poe J. B. Braithwaite, 51 Cromwell's Alleged League with the Devil Baker's Chop-House, 52 Rats et Crapauds "Fat, fair, and forty" H. T. Wake-' The Ladies of Castellmarch ' " Popii.jay." " Papagei," 53 Robert Child, M.P., the Banker Dahdo, the Oyster- Eater The Moray Minstrels J. G. Le Maistre Francis Meres and John Florio, 54 -"Spinet "Walker Family, Stratford-le- Bow, 55 Author of French Song Sir John Schorne Gunfire and Rain, 56 Falconer : St. Dunstan-in-the-West Haycock Family Duchesses who have married Com- moners Mother Huffcap, 57 " All is fair in love and war" Ivy Bridge St. Swithin and Eggs Alcester Biographical Information Wanted British Army : Mas- cots, 58 'Passionate Pilgrim 'Tallest One-Piece Flag- staffSong Wanted, 59.

WOTKS ON BOOKS: 'An American Garland' 'A Goliard's Song Book of the Eleventh Century.'

OBITUARY : Harry Hems.

AN OLD SERVING-KNIFE AND THE "SIRE DE DANCOURT."

Nos. 138-140 in the Wallace Collection (section of European armour and arms) are three carving- or serving- knives with long, "Wide blades, such as the ecuyer tranchant wields in the famous miniature of John, Duke of Berry, at dinner, in the ' Tres riches Heures ' (Chantilly Library). Their handles are beautiful examples of the delicate art <Ji the enameller in translucent colours. Against a diaper or trellis of floral design, covering either side of the handle, are de- picted two or more coats of arms : 1 38 has tfour " great shields " of Burgundy with the collar of the. Fleece and the motto "Aultre n'aray," adopted by Duke Philip III. upon his marriage with Isabella of Portugal in 1430. There is nothing armorially re- markable here, and the terminal dates are obviously that year and the death of Philip in 1467.

ButNos. 139 and 140 are heraldic rariora worthy to rank with the arms upon that

other serving- knife at the British Museum, published by Mr. O. M. Dalton (Archcelogia, Ix. pt. ii.), which has the dimidiated coats of (a) Burgundy modern (France ancient, a bordure gobony argent and gules but the bordure gobony engrailed), and (b) of Bavaria- Holland (Bavaria per fesse with Holland- Hainault), exemplifying the marriage, in 1385, of John the Fearless, Count of Nevers, with Margaret, eldest daughter of Albert, Count of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainault. The peculiar bordure and the absence of Burgundy ancient from (a) show that the knife was made before the death of Philip II., the Audacious, in 1404 (27, iv. ), when Nevers succeeded to the coat quarterly of Burgundy ancient and modern, to which he added the Flemish lion, in pretence.

Upon Wallace Collection No. 139, Azure, three keys, 2 and 1, and a label of three points or, we have a variety of the Rolin arms deserving of record among the brisures of a family which rose from the bourgeoisie in the late fourteenth century, and ere the mid-sixteenth had produced a Chancellor of Burgundy, three Grand-Bailies of Autun, ambassadors and chamberlains to Bur- gundy and Louis XL, an hereditary Grand- Huntsman of Hainault, two Archbishops of Autun, one of whom was a cardinal, &c. The label or is not known to have been borne by the Chancellor (1380-1461), the death of whose brother, in 1429, made him head of his house ; nor is it among such ar- morials as were given by Jules dArbaumont in his account of the family in the Revue Nobiliaire (N.S., i.) of 1865 ; nor has it transpired elsewhere (' Societe de Sphragistique de Paris,' iii. 261; De Raadt, ' Sceaux armories des Pays-Bas,' &c., iii. 264 ; Fon- tenay, ' Armorial de la Ville d Autun ').

The knife No. 140 has the insignia Ermine a barbel in pale gules dimidiating Or three (i.e., one and a half) moors' heads (2 and l)ppr. bound about the temples azure. A prominent feature of this exquisitely enamelled achievement is the cloth encircling each of the heads, its ample length falling to the base of the neck. The arms, ob- viously a true dimidiation of separate coats, are identified (and the identification goes back, no doubt, to the days when the knife figured in the collections of M. Louis Carrand and Count de Nieuwerkerke) as those of " Sire deDancourt, Grand Master of Artillery to Philippe le Bon," the date assigned being "about 1440."

Who was this " Sire de Dancourt," whom, by the by neither Monstrelet nor Commines