Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/295

 THE ANCESTOR 235 helmet which adorns the escutcheon of the Prince of Wales there float from days of yore three feathers, and below them runs the device " Ich Dien." * Here we have the vigorous sketch of a crest which might compare with, and lend colour to, the traditional * augmented * crest which the Mathews won at Towton. We are not skilled in modern official heraldry and will not hazard an opinion as to what may or may not float from our native Prince's helmet, but if the 'days of yore * were the days of the Black Prince, imperial omni- science must have suffered in the reporting. The famous feathers, the * plumes dostruce,* were borne by the Black Prince as a badge upon his ' shield of peace.' As a badge they have remained with his successors, and badges are not borne floating from helmets, with or without devices running below them. Mrs. Bagot's charming book entitled Links with the Past, which has doubtless delighted many of our readers with its pictures of a vanishing society, contains a passage in which are two errors which we may venture to correct. We read that : Bagot's Park is four miles from Blithfield. The Bagots held the land un- disturbed at the coming of William the Conqueror and the family has held them ever since. The residence of the family was at Bagot's Bromley before they migrated to Blithfield, which latter estate came to them by the marriage, in Henry II/s reign, of the then head of the house with the heiress of the Blithfields. The great feature of Bagot's Park are the oaks and a herd of wild goats. The * Beggar's ' oak mentioned in Domesday Book is still a mighty tree ; the girth of its trunk so large that a carriage and four horses are almost concealed from view when drawn up behind it. We have met in other places with the curious belief that this or that oak is ' mentioned in Domesday Book.' It may therefore be well to state that there is not in the whole of Domesday a single instance of any particular tree being men- tioned. As to the Bagots holding ' the land undisturbed at the coming of William,' it is odd that a family possessing a name so purely Norman should desire, as the words seem to imply, to claim that they possessed their lands under the Eng- lish kings. The received and persistent story is that they are entered as holders of (Bagot's) Bromley in Domesday Book ; but Mr. Eyton has shown that what ' Bagod ' held, as an under tenent, was not Bromley, but Bramshall, the ' Branselle ' of the great record.