302
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. APRIL 20, 1901.
mansion at Doddington was built."* The
statues, which have been said by Hkich-
liffe (p. 10) to be "as large as life,"
were probably made by order of Henry
Delves, the young squire of Doddington,
temp. Elizabeth, to decorate the staircase
of the castellet ; much in the same way
as John, Lord Lumley, in the sixteenth
century, ordered several stone effigies to be
added to complete the monumental line of
his ancestors, as a decoration to the north
aisle of- the church at Chester-le-Street, in
the county of Durham.
Now let us examine these identifications of the four esquires in the light of documentary history, and the grant of augmentation of arms in the light of heraldry, which has been called the " shorthand " of history.
Firstly. Thomas do Dutton, born in 1314, was forty-one years of age in 1356. It is, however, very improbable that he was present at Poitiers, because having been appointed sheriff of his county on 19 August, 1353, and continuing in that office in 1356, it is natural to suppose he would have resigned his shrievalty in favour of some one else if he had been called upon to leave England for France.
But no such resignation is recorded, although,
of Chester (the Black Prince), t for which in
1361 he appears to have been knighted.
Neither is it likely that Thomas de Dutton,
whose lands were situate in Bucklow Hun-
dred, in North Cheshire, was an esquire
attache of Sir James Audley, whose Cheshire
lands lay in the south part of the county ;
and there is no proof whatever that he held
lands under Sir James prior to 1356, nor,
indeed, obtained any lands from him after
that date. Nor are heroic deeds of the said
Dutton at Poitiers ever referred to by Sir
Peter Leycester, the great authority on the
history of ancient Cheshire families, and
particularly those in Bucklow Hundred. But
Sir Peter, from his knowledge of ancient
documents, however, does say that " Thomas
de Dutton usually sealed with his coat of
arms, viz., Quarterly [argent and gules], a
fret [or] in the second and third"; but it
must be remembered that in the time of
Edward III. quartering, rather than impale-
ment, was the common mode of indicating
marriage with an heiress ; and, consequently,
the fret or on Thomas de Dutton's seal was
- Pennant's ' Tour from Chester to London,' 1782,
t Cheshire Recognizance Rolls.
not an augmentation of arms at all, but
simply the family badge of one of his wives
perhaps that of his second wife Philip pa,
whose family was unknown to Sir Peter
Leycester. On these counts, therefore, it
does not seem possible to reckon Thomas de
Dutton as one of Sir James Audley's esquires.
. Secondly. The original coat armour of Delves was the canting badge of three delves, or spadefuls of earth, according to the seal of Henry de Delves attached to a deed dated at Hunsterton on Monday after Palm Sunday, 23 Edward III. (1349). But an older brother of the said Henry, named Thomas de DelvevS, sealed a deed at Betley, on Thursday next after the feast of St. Francis (4 October) in 17 Edward III. (1343), with the family arms and an added chevron fretty. Also John de Delves, the eldest brother, one of the traditionary esquires, executed a deed con- stituting Johan-Peti-Johan his attorney for receiving lands in Weston from Sir John Griffin, Knt., dated at Chester on Friday next before the feast of St. Michael (29 Sep- tember) in 28 Edward III. (1354), to which he appended his armorial seal, namely, On a tilted shield, a chevron fretty between three delves, with a demi-heron issuing from a coronet on a helmet as his crest, which arms and crest were borne by his successors at Doddington down to the seventeenth century.*
Here is unmistakable evidence that the " chevron fretty or " formed part of the
coat armour of John
Delves at least
two years before the battle of Poitiers was
fought ; and therefore the oft-repeated story
accounting for that particular bearing must
be a baseless fabrication. Nor is there any
proof among the numerous charters relating
to the said John de Delves no fewer than
twenty-four in number between the year
1343 and the year of his death, 1369 that
he had any grant of land from Sir James
Audley, although he had grants of land from
Edward III. in 1358 and in 1359; for he was
an esquire of the body of the king, and
received the honour of knighthood in 1362,
and the wardship of the Duchess of Bretagne
in 1363. In 1364 he served the king in
Gascony ; and in 1365 the king gave him
40. annually for his good services, and made
him judge of King's Bench ; while the Prince
- The original deeds and seals above mentioned
are not now extant ; but transcripts of the former and drawings of the latter, under the direction of the great antiquary Dugdale when he was Norroy King of Arms, and his amanuensis Gregory King, in or about the year 1664, are preserved at Dodding- ton in the MS. folio before mentioned.
