Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/148

 io6 THE ANCESTOR will fail to observe that the sinister half of this shield shows colour upon colour. 5. A roundel of like size. Argent a chevron erminees be- tween three birds sahle^ impaling gules a chevron between three swans argent. This is in some respects the most interesting piece of the Lytes Cary glass, though by no means the most ornamental. The actual shield is smaller than the others and different in form. The chevrons are unusually broad. Further- more, the swans have been rendered by scraping away the ruby glass flashed on to white, whereas in all the glass executed for John Lyte the swans are on separate pieces of glass surrounded by lead. It may be added that the back is much corroded by exposure to the weather. Altogether the facts seem to indicate that this shield dates from the fifteenth century, and that, for the sake of uniformity, it was enlarged in the sixteenth century, by the addition of white glass on two sides. The families of Wyke of Bin don, Owen, Wells, and Bayley are credited with arms somewhat similar to those on the dexter half of this shield. On the other hand, a shield exactly corresponding with this seems to have been painted on the south wall of the chapel at Lytes Cary by order of Thomas Lyte in 1631, with the inscription beneath : ' Luce, Lady Morgan.' According to the pedigree, a certain Sir Philip Morgan married a daughter of John Lyte soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, but her name is given as Agnes. It is quite possible that the roundels numbered above 3, 4 and 5 were formerly surrounded with conventional foliage, for there exist various fragments of borders exactly similar to those which surround numbers i and 2. The rectangular panels measure about 13 by 12 inches. The shields in them are on party-coloured grounds of ruby, blue, green, or purple. Ruby glass is used for the fields of the Lyte arms, but in the sinister halves of some of the shields gules is rendered by a tawny colour applied. The jewelled borders are mainly in gold stain on white glass. Careful examination shows that six of the panels, numbers 6 to 11, constitute one series, and five others, numbers 12 to 16, an- other series. The former have boys* heads in the upper cor- ners, and heads of men in armour in the lower corners ; the latter have no heads in the borders. Then again, the white chevrons are shaded in the former series, as in the roundel num- bered 4 above, but diapered in the latter, as in the roundels