might blazon as a bordure or an orle. But in fact this seal is anterior to the assumption of coat-armour.
In the seal of Earl Hugh, in the reign of Henry the Third, the arms of Vere, quarterly, and a mullet in the first quarter, appear both on the earl's shield and on the housings of his horse.
The seal of John the thirteenth earl is a splendid specimen of the seals of Henry the Seventh's time. The shield bears the arms of Howard quartered with Vere, his mother having been the heiress of sir John Howard, the elder half-brother of the sir Robert Howard who married the heiress of Mowbray, and was progenitor of the dukes of Norfolk. His supporters are antelopes, and the crest a boar. This animal was from the earliest period of heraldry one of the cognizances of the family. The seal of Baldwin de Vere, son of Robert the crusader (presently mentioned), has a boar's head for its device. The boar alluded through the Latin verres to the surname of Vere. The French chroniclers whose narrations have been quoted in the earlier part of this memoir, proceeded from Verres to Aper, and Aubrey de Vere is disguised in the history of Lambert of Ardres under the designation of Albertus Aper. Weever in his Funerall Monuments has preserved the following inscription which was placed upon the tomb of the first earl in Earl's Colne priory:
"Hic jacet Albericus de Vere, filius Alberici de Vere, Comes de Guisney et primus Comes Oxonie, Magnus Camerarius Anglie; qui, propter summam audaciam et effrænatam pravitatem, Grymme Aubrey vocabatur. Obiit 26° die Decembris, Anno Xp'i 1194, Ricardi I. sexto."
And Leland thus varies the same story: "This Albrey, for the greatness of his stature, and sterne looke, was named Albry the Grymme[1]."
This name of "Grymme Aubrey," as Mr. Stapleton has remarked, is simply a translation back into English of the Albericus Aper of the French historians—âper being viewed as synonymous with asper. So readily was a romantic and credulous age misled by the enigmas of its immediate predecessors.
I will now close this paper with a brief allusion to the family of Vere of Drayton in Northamptonshire, whose coat-
- ↑ Itinerary, vol. vi. p. 38.
