486
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 8. in. NOV., 1917.
synchronous with the gift of Holne Church
to St. John's Hospital, the arms of which
religious house, or at least what is suggested
to be the cognizance of their order, A cross
formee, an engrail at each end of its arms,
with the letters S.I. in chief, are to be seen
on the first shield of the pulpit.
The incorrect description of these shields given by Mr. Charles Worthy in ' Ashburtcn and its Neighbourhood ' was pointed out by R. W. C. in ' Notes and Gleanings, Devon .and Cornwall' (vol. iii. p. 177), and from careful examination a good description of each shield was supplied. When MB. KEALY'S query was forwarded to me at Holne, where I was staying, it had already been noted "by me that the painting on the shields was possibly of various dates, and that the somewhat crude work which the following .are considered to represent No. 1, Hospital of St. John ; No. 2, Cross of St. George ; No. 4, England and France quarterly ; No. 7, Philip de Coumbers ; and No. 81 '(obliterated) will not bear comparison with No. 3, Bourchier and Louvaine counter- quartered 1 and 4, quartered with Fitz- warren ; No. 5, Bishop Hugh Oldham ; and No. 6, Abbey of Buckfast.
There seems nothing to gainsay the -possibility that the designs on the shields were altered, and indeed the condition of JNo. 8 (which from its position next the screen was best protected, and for the obliteration of which no cause can be as- signed) even suggests that this shield was rubbed down, and not repainted.
The questions may be asked, To what cause was this temporary rearrangement of the royal arms due, and are not the few mstances found to be attributed to the same date ? May not the precedence given to the lions of England over the older sovereignty of the lilies of France have been due to a wave of national exuberance following the result of the battle of Cressy (1346), the capture of Calais (1347), and generally the early success of Edward III. in establishing the ascendancy of the lions of England over the lilies of France ?
Will some reader please give an account of the occurrence of these arms at Gloucester or anywhere else ? HUGH R. WATKIN. Chelston, Torquay.
MB. A. G. KEALY gives an instance of the yery unusual rendering of the national arms in the fourteenth century by placing the arms of England in the first and fourth quarters, and those of France in the second third, which he takes from a stone
shield in the south porch of Church Bramp-
ton Church, Northants. The date of this
church he puts at about 1350.
If the stone shield is of this date too, as is apparently stiggested, it certainly would appear to be very unusual for this period, for it was but some ten years since Edward III., in 1340, had assumed the arms of France in the English shield (placing them in the first and fourth quarters), thereby asserting his claim to the throne of France.'* But a great deal happened in the French wars during the next quarter of a century : Crecy and Poitiers were fought and won ; and it may be that his courageous grandson Richard II., son of the Black Prince, when he came to the throne in 1377, considered that the arms of the victors of those battles might well be borne in the first quarter. For we find it recorded in Bout ell (' Heraldry, Historical and Popular,' 1864, p. 159) that that sovereign " appears to have quartered England and France as well as France and England, that is, he sometimes placed England, and sometimes France, in the first quarter." And we know that the same sovereign also bore as the royal arms those of the Confessor impaling France and England. May it not be, therefore, that MB. KBALY is mistaken in assigning quite so early a date to the church, or shield, as 1350 ?
In the reign of his successor (Henry IV.), in compliance with, or because of, the change made by the French sovereigns in their arms, the English royal shield was altered to three fleurs-de-lis only, or France modern ; but the French arms still kept their place in the first quarter. And this went on until the last Stuart sovereign, Queen Anne, placed the impaled shield of England and Scotland in the first quarter, and relegated the French arms to the second quarter. This was continued by the ensuing House of Hanover until 1801, when the French coat was removed from our royal arms, and has never since been reinstated. J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
Fifty years ago there was in Worcester Cathedral a shield in stained glass with the blazon mentioned by MB. A. G. KEALY. It is there no longer, though others like it, which I have not seen, may si ill be in their proper places. Long since I sought help from ' N. & Q.' about this coat, but, as far as I can recollect, my appeal was vain.
ST. SWITHIN.
- See a lengthy discussion upon this subject in
'N. & Q.,' 11 S. x., xi., xii. pawm.
