Queen's Col., Birm., Feb. 20. 1851.
_Red Hand_ (Vol. ii., p. 506., _et ante_).--A correspondent, ARUN, says,
"Your correspondents would confer a heraldic benefit if they would {195}
point out other instances, which I believe to exist, where family
reputation has been damaged by similar ignorance in heraldic
interpretation." I have always thought this ignorance to be universal with
the country people in England: I could mention _several instances_. First,
when I was a boy at school I was shown the hatchments in Wateringbury
church, in Kent, by my master, and informed that Sir Thomas Styles had
murdered some domestic, and was consequently obliged to bear the "bloody
hand:" and lastly, and lately, at Church-Gresley, in Derbyshire, at the old
hall of the Gresley family, I was shown the marble table on which Sir Roger
or Sir Nigel Gresley had cut up, in a sort of Greenacre style, his cook;
for which he was obliged to have the bloody hand in his arms, and put into
the church on his tomb.