There is then, I think, little doubt that this device was the _symbolum_ or
_nota_ of some word of which S was the initial letter; whether _Societas_,
or _Silentium_, or _Souvenance_, or _Soveraigne_, or _Seneschallus_, or
whatever else ingenuity or fancy may suggest, this is the question,--a
question which it is scarcely possible to settle authoritatively without
the testimony of some unequivocal contemporary statement. But I flatter
myself that I have now clearly shown that the esses were neither the _links
of a chain_ nor yet (as suggested in a former paper) identical with the
_gormetti fremales_, or horse-bridles, which are said to have formed the
livery collar of the King of Scots.