Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/294

 234 THE ANCESTOR which, in its simplest form, seems to say that Roger de Plow- den was at the siege of Acre ; that his arms (being a fess dancetty) were, for some act of gallantry, augmented by two fleurs-de-lys (Dansey's English Crusaders).^ 'Another version of the story,* he writes, ' ascribes such augmentation of Plowden^s Arms to the favour of Philip of France.' His own suggestion was that the lilies of Plowden of Plowden, Walcot of Walcot, and Oakley of Oakley might all be derived from those in the arms of the bishops of Hereford, 'the Suzerains of all three families,' a suggestion in full accord with what we know of the practice of heraldry. Of the origin of this family he wrote : ' The first Plowden whom I can speak of on authentic testimony was William,' who occurs at Plowden on an Assize Roll of October, 1203. The pedi- gree is extremely obscure before the fourteenth century, and dismissing the absurd anachronism of the augmentation, it is to say the least highly unprovable that any arms at all could be traced in the use of the Plowdens to such a date as 1 1 94. In the same number of the same paper was an article on the claim to the earldom of Llandaff in which we read that the Mathew family 'traces its descent from the celebrated and powerful King Cunedda, called " the Illustrious," first native ruler of the Cymry after the retirement of the Romans in a.d. 410,' and that after the battle of Towton, Edward created Sir David Mathew ' Grand Standard Bearer of All England, an office regarded as hereditary in his family, and granted to him and his heirs for ever the use of the word " Towton " as an augmentation over the crest.' As a ticket or scroll with the word ' Towton ' is an un- thinkable topping to the crest of a fifteenth century knight's helmet, we are driven to the conclusion that the augmentation was intended by King Edward for use upon Sir David's book- plate, and even here we seem to detect some flavour of ana- chronism. On the occasion of the late visit of the Prince of Wales to Germany, his Imperial Majesty the German Emperor, in one of those speeches which so charm his island admirers, was pleased to speak of English heraldic matters. His words (as reported in a London daily paper) were these : ' On the