Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/48

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. i. JAN. is, me.

mentions, and who may be sought fruit- lessly (whether as Dancourt or d'Ancourt) in the general index to Pere Anselme, in Chevalier's ' Bio- Bibliographic,' in the various repertories of seals edited by Douet d'Arcq, Demay, J. Roman, and A. Coulon, in ' Les chroniqueurs de 1'histoire de France,' of Madame de Witt (nee Guizot), or in Barante's ' Dues de Bourgogne ? Against a silence so remarkable can alone be set Rietstap's ' Armorial general,' which gives " Dancourt (France). D'hermines a deux bars de gu.," and also Bouton's ' Nouveau traite des armoiries ' (1887, p. 457). Here, no doubt, is the coat represented by the dexter half of the arms upon Wallace Collec- tion No. 140 ; but, strange to relate, Rietstap and his coadjutors, who ransacked the numerous French local armorials, were not merely unable to cite a province for the house which gave Burgundy a " grand- maitre d'artillerie," but, apparently, never encountered " Dancourt " before their main alphabet of coats was set in type. It is, in fact, found in the Supplement to Rietstap, second edition, ii., published, like Bouton (op. cit.\ in 1887. Ere we leave "Dan- court " to such further conjecture as it may deserve, Moreri's dictionary (1759 ed. ) may be cited for a " sieur d'Ancourt " in Florent Carton, the comedian-dramatist (d. 1680). The possibility here, if possibility it can be called, in connexion with the fact that Carton de Familleureux (Hainault) bears Argent three moors' heads wreathed gules, is, however, brought to nought by the article in Jal's ' Dictionnaire critique ' (2nd ed., p. 466), which proves that Florent Carton's family had nothing to do with the Belgian house of the name, and that their arms were quite dissimilar.

In contrast to the penury of data concern- ing " Dancourt " are the evidences that the knife was made for Gaucourt of Picardy, with the well-known coat Ermine two barbel addorsed gules. Pere Anselme gives a pedigree in virtue of Raoul VI., Lord of Gaucourt and of Argicourt, " grand- maitre d'hotel de France " in 1453, who died in 1461-2, having married Jeanne de Preuilly, who was dead in 1455. P. Anselme's state- ment (3rd ed., viii. 366-7), " son sceau dans une quittance du 3 Janvier, 1458....est seme d'hermines avec deux poissons adossez,' and the seals of 1481, catalogued by Roman (' Collection des pieces original es du Cabinel des Titres de la Bibliotheque Nationale, i. 5072), are important in view of the impale- ment by dimidiation of the arms under dis- cussion, which are properly those of

dame de Gaucourt by alliance. The grand- master had a son Charles, first of the name,. who succeeded as Lord of Gaucourt, Argi- jourt, Chateaubrun, Na iliac, &c., was Lieu- dying in 1482, was buried in St. Jean en
 * enant- General and Governor of Paris, and,

reve, in which church there appears to remain no vestige of his sepulture (Guil- hermy-Lasteyrie, ' Inscriptions de la France, Ancien diocese de Paris,' 1883; Lebeuf,

Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocese de Paris,' new ed., i., 1863).

His wife, in 1454, was Agnes (alias Colette) de Vaux, daughter of a certain Jean de Vaux by his wife, Anne Le Bouteiller of Senlis, heiress to Saintines (near Senlis). This Vaux is not easily traced among the too numerous families of the name. He bore a variant, apparently, of the arms of Vaux of Hocquincourt (Aigent three moors r heads wreathed of the field), being assigned the following in Andre du Chesne's mono- graph upon Le Bouteiller (Revue nobili- aire, 3 S. iii. 486-7, 1878): d'or a trois tete& de more ceintes de diademes d'argent. Du Chesne, who calls her Jeanne, dates Anne Le Bouteiller's marriage (as does P. Anselme- in his Bouteiller pedigree, vi. 260) as late as 1468, which, however, P. Anselme clearly negatives by his statement that Charles IL de Gaucourt, son and heir of Charles I. and Anne's daughter, Agnes, or Colette, de Vaux, was " enfant d'honneur du roi " in 1472.

If the arms upon Wallace Collection No. 140 exemplify, as appears certain, the marriage (1454-c. 1471) of Charles I. de Gaucourt with Agnes de Vaux, and are such as her own signet might have borne, it would be extraordinary if yet a second alliance were citable duplicating them armorially, the detail of the adornment of the moors' heads perhaps excepted. As it is, Dan- court's connexion with arms notoriously those of a Picard house can but have originated in a mistranscription of the name Gaucourt. A. VAN DE PUT.

TAVOLARA : MORESNET : GOUST

(?LLIVIA): ALLEGED SMALL

REPUBLICS.

EVERY now and then newspapers or their correspondents discover a " republic " which is smaller than San Marino or Andorra, or than the Principality of Monaco.

Very possibly my record of these fancied discoveries, which have been divulged in. the last two decades, is not complete.