NOTES ON ARMORIAL HORSE TRAPPINGS. 235 



trapping ; it appears to have been wrenched from its support 

 with some force, but the two slots apparently served the 

 purpose of strap guides. 



(Fig. 12) Is an example that the Blackmore Museum 

 has reason to be proud of, dug up in Salisbury in drainage 

 operations. It is interesting in many ways : from the aspect 

 of use, it helps to explain the former example ; there the 

 central stem and a portion of a subsidiary only remain, here 

 we have the four supports without the central rod, but we 

 have the male screw for attachment to the horse's head. 



What gives this example further interest is the fact that 

 heraldry in this case can speak down the years to us and say 

 almost certainly by whom this trapping was used by no 

 less a personage than the Countess Alice of Salisbury, mother 

 of the famous Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, the King 

 Maker. Quoting from a letter of W. S. Walford, Esq., to Sir 

 Henry Ellis * printed in the Minutes of the Society of 

 Antiquaries, Dec. 21st, 1854 " It consists of a small copper 

 ball, about one inch in diameter, with four slender projecting 

 pieces of the same metal, about one and a-half inches in 

 length, attached to the sides of it, round a hole a quarter of an 

 inch in diameter, and originally diverging like the feathers of 

 a shuttlecock, though now partially bent inwards ; to the 

 ends of two of these are appended, by a loose hinge joint, two 

 lozenge escutcheons of arms, about one inch and a quarter 

 long, one escutcheon to each ; and the other two would seem 

 to have had escutcheons also, though they have disappeared. 

 The sides of the lozenges are slightly concave, an unusual 

 form. The ball is hollow, and opposite the hole is a smaller 

 portion of a tube of like diameter to the hole. 



On examining the escutcheons I found on one the arms of 

 Montacute, and on the other those of Grandison ; and the date 

 of the object, judging from its own evidence, can hardly be 

 much later than the early part of the 15th Century. The 



* From a scarce pamphlet kindly lent me, with the Museum 

 specimens, by Dr. H. P. Blackmore, of Salisbury. 



