330 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 51. 



a folio book on Orders of Knighthood, and, 

 giving to many of them an antiquity of sevei'al 

 centuries, — often either fabulous or greatly exag- 

 gerated, — provided them all with imaginary col- 

 lars, 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 impor- 

 tant 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 gi-adiially disengaged from precon- 

 ceived and prevailing notions on such points, which 

 it has originally adopted as admitting of no ques- 

 tion, 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 dis- 

 tinctly, even if I incur more than one repetition, 

 that the Collar of Esses was not a badge of knight- 

 hood, 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 hefore 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. 

 Tlie 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 ensign 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. resximed the Lancastrian Collar 

 of Esses, he added to it the portcullis of Beaufort. 

 In the former Lancastrian reigns it had no pen- 

 dant, 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 

 tlie 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 

 bliizon. As an initial it will bear many interpreta- 

 tions — it may be said, an indefinite number, for 

 every new QEdipus has some fresh conjecture to 

 propose. And this brings me to render the ac- 

 count 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 affect- 

 ing the origin of this device, may be stated as fol- 

 lows : — It is ascertained that tlie 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 ap- 

 pears 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 cap- 

 tivating in idea than another that has been sug- 

 gested, viz. that S was the initial of Souveraine, 

 whicli is known to have been a motto subsequently 

 used by Henry IV., and which might be supposed 

 to foreshadow the ambition with whicli the House 

 of Lancaster affected the crown. But the objec- 

 tion 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, be- 

 cause 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 

 ojiinion that the letter S was the initial of Sene- 

 schallus or Steward. John Goucn Nichols. 



P. S. — Allow me to put a Query to the anti- 

 quaries of Scotland. Can any of them help me to 

 tlie authority from which Nich. Upton derived his 

 livery collar of the King of Scotland " de gor- 

 mettis fremalibus equorum? "^J. G, N. 



Collar of SS (Vol. ii., pp. 89. 194. 248. 280.).— 



1 am surprised that any doubt should have arisen 

 about this term, which has evidently no spiritual or 

 literary derivation from the initial letters of So- 

 vereign, Suncius, Seneschallus, or any similar word. 

 It is (as Mk. Ellacombe hints, p. 248.) purely 

 descriptive of the mechanical mode of forming the 

 chain, not by round or closed links, but by hooks 

 alternately deflected into the shape of esses; thus, 



02 c/: CO . Whether chains so made (being more 

 susceptible of ornament than other forms of links) 

 may not have been in special use for particular 



