And how the appearance of it, real or imagined, under any shape, and
upon vestments, was made available, after different ways, in our
law-courts, ask for and shall have a passing notice.
At the end of the fourteenth century, there arose, between the noble
houses of Scrope and Grosvenor, a difference about the legal right
of bearing on their respective shields the bend _or_ on a field
_azure_; and the suit was carried to the Court of Honour which sat at
Westminster, and commissioners were sent about the country for the
purpose of gathering evidence.
Besides a numerous body of the nobility, several distinguished
churchmen were examined; and their depositions are curious. John,
Abbot of St. Agatha, in Richmondshire, said the arms (_Azure_, a
bend _or_, the bearing of the Scrope family who contended against
its assumption by the Grosvenors) were on a corporas case belonging
to the church of his monastery, of which the Scropes were deemed the
second founders.[448] John de Cloworthe, sub-prior of Wartre, exhibited
before the commissioners an amice embroidered on red velvet with
leopards and griffons _or_, between which are sewn in silk, in three
pieces, three escochens with the entire arms of Sir Richard Scrope
therein, viz.--_azure_ a bend _or_.[449] William, Prior of Lanercost,
said they had in their church the same arms embroidered on the morse
of a cope.[450] Sir Simon, parson of Wenslay (whose fine grave brass
may be seen in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[451]) placed before the
commissioners an albe with flaps, upon which were embroidered the arms
of the Scropes entire, &c.[452] The Scropes were the patrons of that
living. Thomas de Cotyngham, prior of the Abbey of St. Mary, York, said
that they had vestments with the Scrope arms upon them.[453] Sir John
de Manfeld, parson of the Church of St. Mary sur Rychille, in York,
said that in the church were diverse vestments on which were sewn, in
silk, the entire arms of Scrope.[454] Sir Bertram Mountboucher said
that these arms of the Scropes were to be seen on vestments, &c., in
the abbey and churches where Sir R. Scrope was born.[455] Not the least
remarkable individual who bore evidence on the subject was the poet
Chaucer, who was produced on behalf of Sir Richard Scrope. When asked
whether the arms _azure_, a bend _or_, belonged, or ought to belong
to the said Sir Richard? said yes, for he saw him so armed in France,
&c., and that all his time he had seen the said arms in banners, glass,
paintings and vestments, and commonly called the Arms of Scrope.[456]
For the better understanding of all these evidences the reader should
look at No. 8307, p. 185, an amice with its old apparel still on it.
The “flaps” of an alb are now called apparels; and an old one, with
these ornaments upon it, both at the cuffs as well as before and
behind, is in this collection, No. 8710, p. 268 of the Catalogue. The
two fine old English apparels here, No. 8128, p. 146, show how shields
with heraldry could be put along with Scriptural subjects in these
embroideries. The monumental effigy of a priest --a Percy by birth--in
Beverley Minster, exhibits how these apparels, on an amice, were
sometimes wrought with armorial bearings. Of “corporas cases,” there
are several here, and pointed out at pp. 112, 144, 145, and 194 of the
Catalogue.
[448] Scrope and Grosvenor Rolls, ed. Sir H. Nicolas, t. ii. p. 275.
[449] Ibid. p. 278.
[450] Ibid. p. 279.
[451] T. i. p. 325.
[452] Scrope and Grosvenor Rolls, ed. Sir H. Nicolas, t. ii. p 330.
[453] Ibid. p. 344.
[454] Ibid. p. 346.
[455] Ibid. p. 384.
[456] Ibid. p. 411.
Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last of the Plantagenets, and
mother of Lord Montague and Cardinal Pole, was, like her son the peer,
beheaded, and at the age of seventy, by their kinsman Henry VIII. This
fact is recorded by Collier;[457] but Miss A. Strickland mentions
it more at length in these words:--Cromwell produced in the House
of Lords, May 10th, by way of evidence against the aged Countess of
Salisbury, a vestment (a chasuble no doubt) of white silk that had
been found in her wardrobe, embroidered in front with the arms of
England, surrounded with a wreath of pansies and marigolds, and on the
back the representation of the host with the five wounds of our Lord,
and the name of Jesus written in the midst. The peers permitted the
unprincipled minister to persuade them that this was a treasonable
ensign, and as the Countess had corresponded with her absent son
(Cardinal Pole) she was for no other crime attainted of high treason,
and condemned to death without the privilege of being heard in her own
defence.[458] The arms of England, amid the quarterings of some great
families, are even now to be found upon vestments; a beautiful one
was exhibited here, A.D. 1862, and described in the Loan Catalogue,
p. 266; another fine one is at present at Abergavenny. With regard to
the representation of the “Host with the five wounds of our Lord,” &c.
this is of very common occurrence in ecclesiastical embroidery; and in
this very collection, on the back orphrey to the splendid chasuble, No.
8704, p. 264 of this Catalogue, we find embroidered the crucifixion,
and a shield _gules_, with a chalice _or_ and a host _argent_ at top,
done in Flanders full half a century before the “Pilgrimage of Grace”
in our northern counties had adopted such a common device upon their
banner when the people there arose up against Henry VIII.
[457] Eccles. Hist. t. v. p. 51, ed. Lathbury.
[458] Queens of England, iii. p. 68.
To a Surrey, for winning the day at Flodden Field, King Henry VIII.
gave the tressured lion of the royal arms of Scotland to be borne upon
the Howard bend as arms of augmentation. In after years, the same
Henry VIII. cut off a Surrey’s head because he bore, as his House had
borne from the time of one of their forefathers, Thomas de Brotherton,
Edward I.’s son, the arms of the Confessor, the use of which had been
confirmed to it by Richard II. If, like Scrope, Surrey had bethought
himself of vestments, even of the few we have with the royal arms upon
them, and assumed by other English noblemen, perhaps those liturgic
embroideries might have stood him in some good stead to save his life.
Had the poor aged Countess of Salisbury been heard, she might have
shamed her kinsman the king not to take her life for using upon her
church furniture emblems, then as now, employed upon such appliances
throughout all Christendom.
For the genealogist, the lawyer, the herald, the historian, such of
these old liturgical garments as, like the Syon cope, bear armorial
shields embroidered upon them, will have a peculiar value, and a more
than ordinary interest. Those emblazonries not only recall the names of
men bound up for ever with this land’s history, but may again serve,
as they once before have served, to furnish the lost link in a broken
pedigree, or unravel an entangled point before a law tribunal.