OF ESSES. It must be allowed that this window was probably erected a few years after the death of the Duke ;* but, as the collar is clearly placed round his personal coat, impaled with that of his wife, Blanche of Lancaster, (the mother of Henry the Fourth, it appears to intimate that the Duke, as well as his son, used the Collar of Esses. In his will the Duke of Lancaster mentions his "best collar," but without a further description of its appearance. It seems, however, to have been a Collar of Livery, as it was bequeathed to the Duchess his wife, together with his best Hart of King Richard's livery: "mon meillour Cerf ov le bonne rubie, et mon meillour Coler ovecq touts les diamandes ensemble." several records in proof of which were extracted by Anstis from the Wardrobe Accounts of that Prince, remaining in the office of the Duchy of Lancaster. In the earliest instance, occurring in 1391-2, his Collar was formed of seventeen letters S. which were either combined with, or made in the form of, feathers, having scrolls and mottos upon them : pro i Coler auri fact. pro domino Henrico Lancastrie, Comite Derb. cum xvij literis de S. ad modum plumarum cum rotulis et scripturis in eisdem, cum Signo [cigno] in torecto ejusdem. (Comp. 15 Ric. II.) Livrez a Richard Dancastre p' un Coler a luy done pr Mons'. le Conte de Derby pr cause d'une autre Coler done pr mondit Sr. a un esquier John Gower, vynt sys sold oyt deniers. De p' Hugh Wat'ton, Chamburlen au Conte de Derby. (17 Ric. II.) pro pondere argenti unius Colerii facti cum Esses rollati et dati Roberto de Waterton eo quod dominus [Hen. Com. Derb.] dederat Colerium ipsius Roberti alio armigero, &c. - pondere unius Colerii facti cum Esses de floribus de Soveigne vous de moy penden. et amaill. ponderis viij unc. (20 Ric. II.) The occasional addition of a Swan to the Collar of Esses, as described in the first of these passages, and appear * In the Letters Patent for the endowment of the Chantrey for the Duke, dated 4 Hen. IV. it was settled to be established in a certain chapel situate on the north side of the quire, which chapel was then newly built. (Dugdale's Hist. of St. Paul's.) The contents of the window are shown in the accompanying engraving from the collections of Nicholas Charles, Lancaster Herald, MS. Lansd. 874. The shields in the centre are, as will be seen, Lancaster surrounded by the Garter; and Lancaster impaling the first house of Lancaster, within the Collar of Esses. The arms in the margin are, England surmounted by a bend azure, for Henry Earl of Lancaster, the Duchess's grandfather; Or, a lion rampant purpure, for Lacy Earl of Lincoln; Barry argent and gules, an orle of martlets sable, for Chaworth, the Duchess's grandmother; Gules, a cinquefoil ermine, for the earldom of Leicester; Per fess dancette argent and gules, for Montfort Earl of Leicester; sable, three ostrich feathers enscrolled or, thecoat of peace" for the Blood Royal [see the will of the Black Prince and his monument at Canterbury: and Willement's Heraldic Notices of Canterbury Cathedral]; and Or, a spread eagle sable, of the import of which I am not aware. These insignia connectedly typified his Earldoms of Leicester and Lincoln, and the Duchess's ancestry. It is singular, however, that among several repetitions, there is no allusion to the Earldom of Derby, nor to the mothers of either the Duke or Duchess. That neither the arms of Castile and Leon, nor of Swinford, for the second and third wives of John of Ghent, should occur, is perfectly consistent with the erection of the window after the Duke's death, and during the reign of Henry the Fourth, the offspring of the first marriage. "mon saler dor ovecq le gartir, le coler overez entour le saler, un turturell assis desuis le covercle." The "turterell" was a turtle-dove. There is again a bed "enbroude d'un arbre d'or et un turturell assis desuis l'arbre ;" and to the Duchess his wife, "mon grand lit de noir velvet enbroude dun compasse de ferures (horse shoes, whereby the Earldom of Derby, anciently held by the house of Ferrers, OF ESSES. It must be allowed that this window was probably erected a few years after the death of the Duke;* but, as the collar is clearly placed round his personal coat, impaled with that of his wife, Blanche of Lancaster, (the mother of Henry the Fourth, it appears to intimate that the Duke, as well as his son, used the Collar of Esses. In his will the Duke of Lancaster mentions his "best collar," but without a further description of its appearance. It seems, however, to have been a Collar of Livery, as it was bequeathed to the Duchess his wife, together with his best Hart of King Richard's livery: "mon meillour Cerf ov le bonne rubie, et mon meillour Coler ovecq touts les diamandes ensemble." To his daughter Philippa Queen of Portugal, he bequeathed "mon second meillour Cerf d'or." A salt-cellar bequeathed to the King was ornamented with the Garter, and with a collar.† COLLAR OF LIVERY OF THE EARL The Duke of Lancaster's son, Henry Earl of Derby, afterwards King Henry the Fourth, gave Collars of his Livery during the lifetime of his father: several records in proof of which were extracted by Anstis from the Wardrobe Accounts of that Prince, remaining in the office of the Duchy of Lancaster. In the earliest instance, occurring in 1391-2, his Collar was formed of seventeen letters S. which were either combined with, or made in the form of, feathers, having scrolls and mottos upon them : pro i Coler auri fact. pro domino Henrico Lancastrie, Comite Derb. cum xvij literis de S. ad modum plumarum cum rotulis et scripturis in eisdem, cum Signo [cigno] in torecto ejusdem. (Comp. 15 Ric. II.) Livrez a Richard Dancastre p' un Coler a luy done pr Mons". le Conte de Derby pr cause d'une autre Coler done p2 mondit Sr. a un esquier John Gower, vynt sys sold oyt deniers. De p' Hugh Wat'ton, Chamburlen au Conte de Derby. (17 Ric. II.) pro pondere argenti unius Colerii facti cum Esses rollati et dati Roberto de Waterton eo quod dominus [Hen. Com. Derb.] dederat Colerium ipsius Roberti alio armigero, &c. * In the Letters Patent for the endowment of the Chantrey for the Duke, dated 4 Hen. IV. it was settled to be established in a certain chapel situate on the north side of the quire, which chapel was then newly built. (Dugdale's Hist. of St. Paul's.) The contents of the window are shown in the accompanying engraving from the collections of Nicholas Charles, Lancaster Herald, MS. Lansd. 874. The shields in the centre are, as will be seen, Lancaster surrounded by the Garter; and Lancaster impaling the first house of Lancaster, within the Collar of Esses. The arms in the margin are, England surmounted by a bend azure, for Henry Earl of Lancaster, the Duchess's grandfather; Or, a lion rampant purpure, for Lacy Earl of Lincoln; Barry argent and gules, an orle of martlets sable, for Chaworth, the Duchess's grandmother; Gules, a cinquefoil ermine, for the earldom of Leicester; Per fess dancette argent and gules, for Montfort Earl of Leicester; sable, three ostrich feathers enscrolled or, thecoat of peace for the Blood Royal [see the will of the Black Prince and his monument at Canterbury: and Willement's Heraldic Notices of Canterbury Cathedral]; and Or, a spread eagle sable, of the import of which I am not aware. These insignia connectedly typified his Earldoms of Leicester and Lincoln, and the Duchess's ancestry. It is singular, however, that among several repetitions, there is no allusion to the Earldom of Derby, nor to the mothers of either the Duke or Duchess. That neither the arms of Castile and Leon, nor of Swinford, for the second and third wives of John of Ghent, should occur, is perfectly consistent with the erection of the window after the Duke's death, and during the reign of Henry the Fourth, the offspring of the first marriage. ተ "mon saler dör ovecq le gartir, le coler overez entour le saler, un turturell assis desuis le covercle." The "turterell" was a turtle-dove. There is again a bed "enbroude d'un arbre d'or et un turturell assis desuis l'arbre ;" and to the Duchess his wife, "mon grand lit de noir velvet enbroude dun compasse de ferures (horse shoes, whereby the Earldom of Derby, anciently held by the house of Ferrers, ing on the effigy of the poet Gower, in the church of St. Mary Overy, I must leave for consideration in my next paper. In Gower's metrical chronicle called the Chronica Tripartita,* appended to his "Vox Clamantis," the Earl of Derby is introduced as giving the Letter S. for his Badge so early as the year 1387; when he joined the confederacy of the Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Arundel, and the Earl Marshal (Thomas Mowbray afterwards Duke of Norfolk), who are respectively designated as the Swan, Bear, Horse, and Crowned Feather: Sunt Olor, Ursus, Equus, stat eorum quilibet equus, Non hii divisi, set in unum sunt quasi visi; Nobilis ille quidem, probus et juvenis fuit idem, The person intended by this description is placed beyond doubt by the original side-note affixed, "Strenuissimus comes Derbeie." He was then about twenty-one years of age. Additional proof that Richard the Second, whilst reigning in unsuspecting security, honoured the Lancastrian livery of the Esses by his own use, is furnished by several articles in the Inventory made in the first year of his successor, particularly in the instance of a pair of basins in which the impaled arms of Richard and his Queen (this must have done before the death of Anne of Bohemia in 1394) were surrounded by a Collar of Mons'. de Lancaster. The following are the passages of the Inventory, which bear upon the present part of our subject: [49.] Item viij l'res de S prun Coler, chescun de xv perles, pois' viij unc. (Calendars and Invent. of the Exchequer, vol. iii. p. 321.) [52.] Item un paire de basynys d'argent ennorrez dount lune steant su un pee ove [un] Coler gravez ove l'res del livere de Mons' de Lancastre, et le coverehile ove une corone desuis gravez ove l'res de S. entoure, et les armes de Mons de Lancastre dedeins, poisantz xx lb. ii. unc. (Ibid. p. 322.) [55.] Item un autre paire de basyns playns d'argent ennorrez et enbossez d'un rose gravez ove oyselx et les armes en le fonce de Roy et Emperor partiez, ove un Coler de Mons" de Lancastre entoure les ditz armes et les bordurs enaymelez ove rosez, poisantz xxij lb. iiij unc. (Ibid. p. 323.) [61.] Item un saler d'argent ennorrez en manere d'un Faucon coronez, et entor le cole l'rs de S. steant st un terage plein pois. xix marcz, i unc. de Lyons, Cerfs, et autres diverses bestes, (Ibid. p. 324.) THEORIES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLAR OF ESSES. The fact that the letter S was the device of Henry of Lancaster, Earl of * As Mr. Beltz (Retr. Rev. N. S. iii, 506), has termed this Poem unpublished, it may be useful to remark that the whole of the Chronica Tripartita, amounting to 1053 lines, is printed as an Appendix to Gough's History of Pleshy, 4to. 1803. It is singular, however, that in p. 18, by an error of the press, our all-important letter S is omitted, the line reading "Qui gerit tandem," &c. The King is in this Poem designated as the Sun, the Earl of Northumberland as the Crescent of the North (Aquilonica Luna), and the Earl of Oxford as the Boar (Aper). The Londoners took part against the King, favouring the Duke of Gloucester Dumque suis alis Cignus fuit imperialis. When the Earl Marshal, (who was the grandson and heir of Thomas of Brotherton, the fifth son of King Edward the First,) had a grant of augmentation to his arms, he was also specially permitted to share in the Royal Badge of the Ostrich Feather," duobus pennis strutionis erectis." In this present year's Archæologia, (Vol. XXIX. part ii.) is engraved a very curious representation of the armorial insignia of the royal house of England, found at Venice, and supposed to be commemorative of this nobleman, who died at that city. There are Östrich feathers, but with scrolls, and not crowned. A Swan stands bearing on its head a helmet, upon which is the royal crest of a lion; across the helmet is a Collar of Esses; and another Collar of Esses in the margin is attached by a chain to the staff of the Royal Standard, as also is a White Hart impaled. These devices, in themselves, appear connected rather with the Lancastrian branch of the royal family, than with the Earl Marshal. The White Hart inclosed in paling might be intended to typify the imprisonment of Richard II. SMS. Cotton. Tib. A. IV. f. 153. Derby, afterwards King Henry the Fourth, if not of his father John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster, has now been fully proved; but the origin of that device, and the signification of the letter, has never been positively ascertained. Mennens has given an account and representation of the Collar of the Knights of Cyprus, founded by the family of Lusignan. It was adorned, he says, with golden capital Esses, which were interlaced (lengthwise, as he represents them) upon a golden chain and with regard to the latter S, which he says with the Romans signified Silence, it in this case implied Society, or association. : "Per literam autem S. quæ Silentii apud Romanos nota fuit, secretum societatis et amicitiæ simulachrum, individuamque pro patriæ defensione Societatem denotari." Fr. Mennenii Delicia Equest. Ordinum, 12mo. 1613, p. 153. Favyn, as usual, favours us with a a fresh design for this Collar of the Knights of Cyprus: with him it was composed of silken love-knots, interchanged with the letters S. R. for Securitas Regni. But again, in the Histoire des Ordres Militaires, Amsterdam, 1721, 12mo. iii. 198, and Paris, 1719, 4to. iv. 430, the same is called the Order of Silence, and the Collar represented as of lengthways; and the pendant sword, placed by Mennens within an S-shaped scroll, is placed within the same letter. In the portfolio of my friend Mr. Willement, I have seen a woodcut engraving in which the armorial atchievement of a German, 66 Erbliche wappen Herr Florian Waldauff," of about the time of Albert Durer, is surrounded with three collars, 1. of hearts between saws, with a figure of the Virgin as a pendant, and below her a swan within a wreath; 2. of lilypots, with a griffin for a pendant; and 3. of the letters linking into one another, terminating in front with portcullises, to which hangs as a pendant a lion statant, his tail cowed. The materials of this last collar are all so like the heraldic emblems of the royal house of England, as to make it very remarkable. No one, however, so far as I am aware, has ventured to suggest the existence of any connection between the English Collar of Esses and the Collar of Cyprus, or other foreign device. The theories which have actually been propounded, and they are not few, I now proceed to enumerate: 1. That the letters SS were the initials of Saint Simplicius, a Roman senator who suffered martyrdom under the emperor Diocletian, in the year 287. The origin of this hypothesis has been attributed to Wicelius, a German polemical writer, contemporary with Queen Mary, who, indeed, describes the Collar of "the Society of Saint Simplicius," with a confidence and minuteness which might be envied even by Favyn himself. "It was (he says) the custom of those persons to wear about their necks silver collars, composed of double SS. which noted the name of Saint Simplicius: between these double SS the collar contained 12 small plates of silver, in which were engraved the 12 articles of the Crede, together with a single trefoyle. The image of Saint Simplicius hung at the collar, and from it 7 plates, representing the 7 gifts of the Holy Ghost."‡ Here was a Collar of "the Order of Saint Simplicius,” very ingeniously designed and completely appointed. The name of this Saint was not, however, connected with the English Collar of Esses by Wicelius, but by an Englishman, Englishman, Nicholas Harpsfield, whose " Ecclesiastical History was printed at Douay in 1622, but who died in 1583. He was, so far as I can find, the first to affirm that the letters of the "Collar of SS. " denoted the name of Saint Simplicius.§ Camden, indeed, from some un *See engraving copied in Ashmole, Hugh Clark, &c. &c. It is the leaf of a book, and is marked at the foot "fol. iij." On the reverse is another engraving representing the "Kuniglicke Majestat Wappen." Historia de Divis, tam vet. quam novi Testamenti, Basiliæ, 1557, p. 254. I quote the passage as translated by Ashmole: but the original passage may be seen in Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales, p. 102, the only discrepancy being in the words "trifolio Simpliciano," for which Ashmole appears to have read "trifolio simplici." S Ecclesiastical History, Douay, 1622, p. 86. The passage, which is connected |