Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/106

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NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s. v. APRIL, 1919.

bouquet of honeysuckle which he bears in his mouth, the whole being very sug- gestive of the Elizabethan " stagge exalt- ing to the divine." Moreover, Sir John Suckling (born 1569, died 1627), who was knighted in 1617, was at that time a person greatly in favour at Court, where King James I. made him Comptroller of his Household, Secretary of State, and a Privy Councillor ; and he had married the sister of Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex (Lord Treasurer), by whom he was father of the poet. The latter (b. 1608, d. 1641, and also knighted) is said by his biographers to have " derived his wit and vivacity from his mother"; but, however that may be, the older knight had certainly some claim to literary aspirations, and he has left some not insignificant verses prefixed to ' Coryat's Crudities,' published in 1611 :

Incipit Johannes Sutclin. Whether I thee should either praise or pitty ....

He was also, no doubt, the author of the English inscription to his wife upon the sumptuous tomb which he placed above her remains in St. Andrew's Church in 1613, in which she is addressed as Mirror of time, bright starre of pietie,

Barest of witts cannot give thee thy due, Thou \vert so good, so chaste, so wise, so true.

The various devices and emblems upon this monument, to say nothing of the sentences in Latin, Spanish, and Norman French, are quite out of the common, and give rise to speculation as to whether the taste that conceived them was an inheritance from his father, Robert Suck- ling, who (possibly) originated the idea of the dangerous delays of the motto, or the latter was an addition of Sir John's in 1617. One needs, in fact, to be an accomplished herald to understand the reason of this docket, and also of a fourth :

"E.D.N. 56, folio 86. Sir John Suckling, Cap- tane of a troop of horse, 1640."

In all probability this related to the poet's raising and equipping a troop of horse for King Charles I. at his sole expense an effort of patriotism which cost him his fortune.

The arms and crest are also tricked in this fourth docket, and show that the "current" stag had come down from his upward leap by that time, although he still carries an abnormally large posy for his
 * ' offering " of " redolent eglantine.".

SAMUEL FISKE.

There is an instructive illustrated article- on this subject, by Llewellynn Jewitt r F.S.A., in The Reliquary for July, 1882, and lengthy references to it will be found in A. T. Turner's ' Hardwycke Annals,' J. W. Hardwicke- Jones's ' Hardwicke of Hard- wicke and Burcott ' and ' Notes ' on the ame work, and ' Hardwicke of co. Stafford ' (two vols. and two appendixes) ; but all are very vague as to the origin of the eglantine roses on the Hardwicke crest. Neither do we derive much light from the Rev. F. Brodhurst's richly illustrated ' Notes OIL Hardwick Hall,' or his * Elizabeth Hard- wycke, Countess of Shrewsbury,' which first appeared in the Derbyshire Archaeo- logical Society's journal in 1908 ; nor from Leighton Pryce's * Hardwicke of Patting- ham and Worfield ' in The Reliquary for April, 1885, nor from ' Hardwicke of Derby- shire,' by a " Scion of the House " (2nd ed. and appendix). A slight illumination,, however, is thrown on the subject by pp. 48 B, 49, and 49 B of the Hardwicke MS. no. 37447 in the Additional MSS. Depart- ment of the British Museum Library.

We gather from these writers that the stag courant was the crest borne by Sir William de Hardwycke when in 1431 he espoused Elizabeth, Lady Wingfield, elder twin daughter of Sir Robert Goushill and his wife Lady Elizabeth FitzAlan, Duchess of Norfolk ; but it does not appear certain that at that time the stag's neck was adorned with roses. Sir William's son Roger took an active and prominent part, with the latter 's cousin Lord Stanley, in the organization of the revolt against Richard III., which resulted in the battle of Bosworth in 1485, when Roger's kinsman John de Hardwycke, lord of Lindley near Bosworth, led the Earl of Richmond to- victory, as described in William Burton's ' History of Leicestershire ' in 1622, and on pp. 65, 67, and 73 of 'The Battle of Bos- worth Field,' by W. Button, F.A.S.S., in 1788. The Wars of the Roses were thus happily brought to an end, and it is possible that the " Stagges of Hardwycke," as the lords of Hardwycke were called on account of their crest, being proud of the share taken by their house, and profoundly relieved by the event, then adopted the chaplet of roses, the idea being that the hart's neck offered the sweet smell of eglantine as incense to Divinity in gratitude for the victory which united the white and red roses ; for it should be borne in mind that the " Stagges " were Yorkists, as also* were their cousins the Duke of Norfolk