He is wrong again in his description of the arms of the Chesham family, inasmuch as he calls the crosses flory, whereas they should be patonce. It is not improbable that the different variety of arms are in fact the same, as the persons who copied shields of arms from monument were often not careful to read correctly. Fairbairn, in his book on Crests, a later work, gives the arms as in Burke, and the Crest as in Berry's Hertfordshire Genealogies, where the engraving represents crosses patonce, while the author describes them as crosses flory, but Edmonson, in his work on Heraldry gives the arms and crest of Chase, no place named, as follows:
Arms, Gules, 4 crosses pat. Argent 2 and 2, on a canton Azure a lion passant Or. Crest, a lion rampant, Or, holding between his feet a cross patonce—Gules. In this case the arms are precisely those of Chase, of Chesham, the only difference being in the color of the cross in the crest.
In a visit to Chesham, in 1864, the writer learned with much pleasure that it was the intention of Mr. William Lowndes,[1] the present Lord of the Manor, and a gentleman of much antiquarian feeling, to repair and refit for the use of his tenants in that neighborhood, a small chapel,—large enough perhaps, to give sittings for thirty people,—which stands in the rear of the old house of Hundrich, and is the only building left upon the estate as it existed when in possession of the Chase family, during
- ↑ This gentleman is a descendant of William Lowndes, a Secretary of the Treasury under Queen Anne, and author of the funding system—familiarly known as "Ways and Means" Lowndes in English history—and himself a descendant of the ancient family of Lowndes of Leigh Hall, a branch of which settled in South Carolina, in the early part of the last century, and from whom all of the name in this country trace their descent.
