9" S. IX. AFRIT. 12, 1902.) NOTES AND QUERIES.
291
contend that before the time of Richard I.
arms were borne anyhow at the choice and
option of the bearer and that there was no
ecognized title or property in such posses-
sions. That is the opinion in some parts of
America at the present moment, so it is
possible that several persons might have
acted upon it in the eleventh century.
But if armorials in the eleventh century
were wild and disorderly, they seem to have
been tolerably well regulated in the tenth,
which is a little argument in favour of their
existence previous to 1066. We need not
worry about the true date of early armorial
seals, many of which can be duly and
regularly proved from pedigrees, such, for
example, as that of Waleran, Earl of Mellent.
But what is the meaning of the following
document of the year 938 if it does not refer
to hereditary heraldic bearings in the same
sense as employed in " regular heraldry"?
" Henrici I. Aucupis Imperatoris Augusti Leges Hastiludiales sive de Torneamentis Latse Getting in Saxonia anno Domini DCCCCXXXVIII. cap. xii.
" [De hominibus novis.] Quisquis recentioris et notae nobilis et non talis ut a stirpe nobilitatem suam et origine quatuor saltern generis auctorum proximorum gentilitibus insignibus probare possib, is quoque ludis his exesto.
The Hastihulial Laws or Laws for the Regula- tion of the Tournaments held at Gottingen, in Saxony, in the year 938, under the Emperor Henry I., called the Fowler.
" Chapter xii. [concerning new men.] Whatever noble is of recent and known family, yet not such as can prove his nobility from stem and origin of at least four generations of a race of immediate ancestors with family insignia (or armorial bear- ings), he also must be excluded from these games."
It is only an extract, but it will serve as a sample of the whole. What can the upholders of the bald statement have to say after this dated document?
To argue on the general question of sym- bolism, &c., which is as old as the hills, is to miss the point. I do not intend to waste time and space by dealing with it. I want to show by dates that heraldry did exist as clearly heraldry as it is at the pre- sent moment before 1066, without reference to any prolepsis or ignorant assumption. If what I have given is not evidence I do not understand the meaning of the term. I should like the opinion of other reasonable readers of ' N. <fe Q.' CHEVRON.
The fact that the nations of classic anti- quity were accustomed to use pictorial sym- bols for denoting a family or gens no more proves that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were familiar with heraldry than the designs painted on their shields prove that the Norman warriors of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries possessed hereditary
coats of arms and practised heraldry in the
full sense of the word. Dr. Woodward, in
his ' Heraldry, British and Foreign,' clearly
shows the later rise of coat-armour as we
understand it. True, the subject is com-
plicated by the late mediaeval practice of
attributing to such personages as King
Arthur and King Edward the Confessor
arras which those monarchs never used ; but
this need not confuse us when we remember
that even Adam, Noah, and the Virgin Mary
were similarly distinguished by the same
heralds. The Welsh heralds also attributed
fixed and hereditary coats to British princes
who died long before heraldry was practised
even in France ; and it is really wonderful
with what consistency and unanimity the
old Welsh genealogical MSS. assign a par-
ticular coat to each such chieftain. But this
only shows the ingenuity and care of the
inventors of those armorial bearings. No
one really believes that Jestyn ab Gwrgan
in the eleventh century went to battle with
a shield bearing Argent, three chevronels
gules. Yet all the heralds agree in assigning
those and no other arms to the last de facto
Prince of Glamorgan, and many native
families bear the same as his actual or pre-
sumptive descendants.
For my own part I never could understand
by the designation "science" should be
refused to heraldry. Perhaps it is because
quacks and faddists have done so much to
oring it into contempt, and genuine heralds
so little to advance its prestige. Until Dr.
Woodward's book appeared one had to go
to French works to learn much about the art,
craft, or mystery of blazonry. Is it that its
title to be called a science is withheld by those
whose perseverance has been unequal to a
mastery of its details ?
JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.
THE WEST BOURNE (9 th S. viii. 517 ; ix. 51,
92, 190, 269). There can be no doubt that the
river was once so called right down to its
mouth, where it formed, till Sir Hugh
Owen's changes, the west boundary of
Westminster (St. George's, Hanover Square,
parish). The name was preserved by the
terrace at the Chelsea boundary at Bloody
Bridge. But in my childhood it was called
"the Ranelagh River" from Sloane Square
to its mouth. CHARLES W. DILKE.
THE FIRST BRITISH SUBJECT BORN IN NEW SOUTH WALES (9 th S. ix. 206, 272). MR. CUR- WEN should read more accurately. The note
