68 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"i S. IX. Jan. 28. '60. 



In a dissertation entitled An Assemblage of 

 Coins fabricated by Authority of the Archbishops 

 of Canterbury, published in 1772 by Samuel 

 Regge, M.A. (p. 7.), that writer, when speaking 

 of the mitre, remarks, " there is also some differ- 

 ence now made in the bearing of the mitre by me- 

 tropolitans and the suffragans : the former placing 

 it on their coat armour on a Ducal Coronet, a 

 practice lately introduced, and the latter having it 

 close to the escocheon."* 



In the Gentleman's Magazine for the month of 

 May, 1778 (vol. xlviii. p. 209.), is a communica- 

 tion (signed Rowland Rouse) in answer to a 

 query similar to the present, put to the editor of 

 that publication in July, 1775, which had not be- 

 fore received any reply. That communication 

 contains some remarks upon the subject of mitres, 

 illustrated by six wood engravings, exhibiting 

 their various shapes and forms, and giving the 

 authorities from which they were taken. 



The illustrations are, 



No. I. The mitre of Simon Langham, Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, from his tomb, anno 1376. 



No. II. That of Archbishop Cranmer (who 

 died 1558), in Thoroton's Antiquities of Notting- 

 hamshire, fol., printed in 1677. 



No. III. That of Archbishop Juxon, who died 

 in 1663, from a window in Gray's Inn Hall f with 

 the date 1663 under it. In another compart- 

 ment of the same window, the writer adds, were 

 the arms of John Williams Bishop of Lincoln, and 

 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to King James j 

 with a mitre of the very same character, and orna- 

 mented in the same form and fashion as those 

 of the two last-mentioned Archbishops, viz. Cran- 

 mer and Juxon, none of them having the coro- 

 net. 



No. IV. The mitre of Archbishop Gilbert 

 Sheldon, which Mr. Rouse esteems a great curio- 

 sity as being the first instance he had met with of 

 a specific difference between the mitre of an Arch- 

 bishop and that of a Bishop : it was placed over 

 the arms of Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, by that very able and judicious 

 Herald Francis Sandford, Lancaster Herald, in his 

 dedication to him, the Archbishop, of his fine print 

 of the chapel and monument of King Henry VII., 

 etched by Holler in 1655.§ He observes that 

 this mitre rises from a coronet composed of the 

 circulus aureus heightened up with pyramidical 

 points or rays, on the top of each of which is a 

 pearl. 



This seems to be an instance, and the first of a 



* Mr. Pegge's dissertation is dedicated to Archbishop 

 Cornwallis, and on the top of the page is a shield of his 

 arms, viz. the See of Canterbury impaling Cornwallis, and 

 surmounted with a mitre in the ducal coronet. 



t Dugdale's Origines Judiciates, fol. 1671, p. 303. 



i lb. 302. 



§ Genealogical History, fol. 1677, pp. 439. 442. 



deviation from the usual mode of depicting the 

 mitre, and that on a plate bearing upon the face 

 of it the sanction of Lancaster Herald, though it 

 is no evidence that the mitre was so used by 

 Archbishop Sheldon, to whose funeral certificate, 

 as already remarked, the usual mitre was attached 

 by Sir William Dugdale twenty years afterwards. 

 It may have been the act of the engraver, and not 

 that of Sandford. 



Mr. Rouse calls the coronet a Celestial Croum 

 (but it is more of an Earl's coronet), and says he 

 finds it not many years after changed for a mar- 

 quis's coronet, citing the instance of the mitre at- 

 tributed to Sancroft. 



No. V. That of Archbishop Sancroft placed 

 over his effigies about the time of the Revolution, 

 in R. White's print of the Archbishop and six 

 Bishops, his colleagues (over each of whom there 

 is a plain mitre only), who were committed to the 

 Tower for not ordering the declaration of King 

 James for liberty of conscience to be read in their 

 respective dioceses. The same form of mitre was 

 placed by the same R. White over the arms of 

 Archbishop Tillotson (Sancroft's successor) in a 

 print of him prefixed to a folio volume of his 

 Sermons ; but on an octavo edition of Tillotson's 

 Sermons, published in 1701, he places a mitre in 

 no wise distinguished from that of the ordinary 

 mitre of a Bishop, and resembling that of Cranmer, 

 No. II. 



In 1730 the Marquis's Coronet seems to have 

 yielded to the Ducal Coronet, as in the illus- 

 tration, 



No. VI. That of Archbishop Wake, whose 

 mitre rises from the Ducal Coronet upon the 

 authority quoted of a work entitled The British 

 Compendium (Lond. 12mo. 1731); and this pro- 

 bably induced the remark of Mr. Pegge, that the 

 practice was then lately introduced. The same 

 authority ascribes a similar mitre as surmounting 

 the arms of Lancelot Blackburn, Archbishop of 

 York. 



With the exception of the instance of the mitre 

 ascribed by Sandford to Archbishop Sheldon, the 

 authorities cited cannot be said to have any of- 

 ficial import, but rest upon the acts of engravers 

 and persons having no cognizance of the subject, 

 and therefore not to afford any authority for the 

 practice which subsequently, and has now for 

 many years, prevailed with the Archbishops. 



It would seem from these remarks that the first 

 variation in the usage of the mitre, by the intro- 

 duction of a coronet, is in 'the case of Archbishop 

 Sheldon, in a plate dedicated to him by Francis 

 Sandford, Lancaster Herald, which is certainly 

 a singular circumstance when adverting to the 

 funeral certificate of Archbishop Sheldon, re- 

 corded in 1677, where the mitre is without. 

 Holler's print was etched in 1655 ; and although 

 the dedication of the plate bears the initials of 



