Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/221

THE ANCESTOR 169 From the constable's award Grosvenor at once appealed to the king, who with extraordinary promptitude appointed com- missioners to rehear the case, and pronounced sentence upon it in person barely a year later. By this second sentence, not merely did he confirm Scrope's title to the hende dore^ with costs against the defendant, but quashed and annulled the constable's grant of the differenced coat to Grosvenor, on the ground that a playn b ordure was no sufficient difference for a stranger in blood, but only for a kinsman.^ From the king there could be no appeal. Not many years later Sir Edward Hastings, for defying a similar sentence, was laid by the heels, and languished to the end of his days in the Marshalsea prison. Grosvenor had the good sense to give way, and, crushed under the burden of heavy costs, even made humble submission to his opponent.^ Thenceforward he assumed new arms, azure with a sheaf of gold, which his descendants have borne unchallenged to this day. The new coat is commonly said to be a diminution of the three sheaves of the Earls of Chester, whom Grosvenor claimed as his kin. But his alleged kinship was with Hugh Lupus, the Domesday earl, who is said to have borne on his shield a wolf's head erased. He however lived before the age of hereditary coat armour ; and even for his son the colours are changed, and the field crusilly. The third earl, a nephew of the first, dropped the wolf's head altogether. Sheaves were introduced by Hugh Kevelioc ; and the three are attributed only to Earl Randle, third of that name, styled de Blundeville, with whom, on his own showing, Grosvenor's connection would be somewhat remote. Further, as a general rule, heralds are accustomed to regard the simpler coat as anterior in time to the more complex, and in so far more honourable. We should expect therefore to find, besides some change of colour, a single who reversed tinctures, and bore " Or, a bend azure." * In England, D'Oyly bore 'Azure, 2 bendlets or' ; but more anciently, it is said, * Azure, a bend or, a label gules.' {Account of the House ofD^Oyly, by William D'Oyly Bayley, 1845, I, 2). See also the case of Philip de la Moustre, a French knight of the Genevile garrison, who was taken prisoner, and nearly killed by William Scrope (Deposition of John Charnels). There are other foreign examples. 1 * Nous considerantz . . . q' tiel bordere nest difference sufficeant en armes entre deux estraunges & dun roialme, mes taunt soulement entre Cousyn & Cousyn priuez de sane,' etc. 2 MS. Harl. 293, f. 200. This MS. to some small extent supplements the deficiencies of the record.