I shall look with interest to the documents announced by Dr. ROCK (Vol.
ii., p. 280.), which in his mind connect the Collar of Esses with the
"Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" of the Salisbury liturgy: but hitherto I have
found nothing in any of the devices of livery collars that partakes of
religious allusion. I am well aware that many of the collars of knighthood
of modern Europe, headed by the proud order of the Saint Esprit, display
sacred emblems and devices. But the livery collars were perfectly distinct
from collars of knighthood. The latter, indeed, did not exist until a
subsequent age: and this was one of the most monstrous of the popular
errors which I had to combat in my papers in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. A
Frenchman named Favyn, at the commencement of the seventeenth century,
published {330} a folio book on Orders of Knighthood, and, giving to many
of them an antiquity of several centuries,--often either fabulous or
greatly exaggerated,--provided them all with imaginary collars, of which he
exhibits engravings. M. Favyn's book was republished in English, and his
collars have been handed down from that time to this, in all our heraldic
picture-books. This is one important warning which it is necessary to give
any one who undertakes to investigate this question. From my own experience
of the difficulty with which the mind is gradually disengaged from
preconceived and prevailing notions on such points, which it has originally
adopted as admitting of no question, I know it is necessary to provide that
others should not view my arguments through a different medium to myself.
And I cannot state too distinctly, even if I incur more than one
repetition, that the Collar of Esses was not a badge of knighthood nor a
badge of personal merit; but it was a collar of livery; and the idea
typified by livery was feudal dependence, or what we now call party. The
earliest livery collar I have traced is the French order of _cosses de
geneste_, or broomcods: and the term "order", I beg to explain, is in its
primary sense exactly equivalent to "livery:" it was used in France in that
sense _before_ it came to be applied to orders of knighthood. Whether there
was any other collar of livery in France, or in other countries of Europe,
I have not hitherto ascertained; but I think it highly probable that there
was. In England we have some slight glimpses of various collars, on which
it would be too long here to enter; and it is enough to say, that there
were only two of the king's livery, the Collar of Esses and the Collar of
Roses and Suns. The former was the collar of our Lancastrian kings, the
latter of those of the house of York. The Collar of Roses and Suns had
appendages of the heraldic design which was then called "the king's beast,"
which with Edward IV. was the white lion of March, and with Richard III.
the white boar. When Henry VII. resumed the Lancastrian Collar of Esses, he
added to it the portcullis of Beaufort. In the former Lancastrian regions
it had no pendant, except a plain or jewelled ring, usually of the trefoil
form. All the pendant badges which I have enumerated belong to secular
heraldry, as do the roses and suns which form the Yorkist collar. The
letter S is an emblem of a somewhat different kind; and, as it proves, more
difficult to bring to a satisfactory solution than the symbols of heraldic
blazon. As an initial it will bear many interpretations--it may be said, an
indefinite number, for every new Oedipus has some fresh conjecture to
propose. And this brings me to render the account required by Dr. Rock of
the reasons which led me to conclude that the letter S originated with the
office of Seneschallus or Steward. I must still refer to the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for 1842, or to the republication of my essays which I have
already promised, for fuller details of the evidence I have collected; but
its leading results, as affecting the origin of this device, may be stated
as follows:--It is ascertained that the Collar of Esses was given by Henry,
Earl of Derby, afterwards King Henry IV., during the life-time of his
father, John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster. It also appears that the Duke of
Lancaster himself gave a collar, which was worn in compliment to him by his
nephew King Richard II. In a window of old St. Paul's, near the duke's
monument, his arms were in painted glass, accompanied with the Collar of
Esses; which is presumptive proof that his collar was the same as that of
his son, the Earl of Derby. If, then, the Collar of Esses was first given
by this mighty duke, what would be _his_ meaning in the device? My
conjecture is, that it was the initial of the title of that high office
which, united to his vast estates, was a main source of his weight and
influence in the country,--the office of Steward of England. This, I admit,
is a derivation less captivating in idea than another that has been
suggested, viz. that S was the initial of _Souveraine_ which is known to
have been a motto subsequently used by Henry IV., and which might be
supposed to foreshadow the ambition with which the House of Lancaster
affected the crown. But the objection to this is, that the device is traced
back earlier than the Lancastrian usurpation can be supposed to have been
in contemplation. It might still be the initial of _Souveraine_, if John of
Ghent adopted it in allusion to his kingdom of Castille: but, because he is
supposed to have used it, and his son the Earl of Derby certainly used it,
after the sovereignty of Castille had been finally relinquished, but also
before either he or his son can be supposed to have aimed at the
sovereignty of their own country, therefore it is that, in the absence of
any positive authority, I adhere at present to the opinion that the letter
S was the initial of Seneschallus or Steward.