NOTES ON ARMORIAL HORSE TRAPPINGS. 237 



named Alice, who, about 1424, married Sir Richard Neville, 

 K.G., who became Earl of Salisbury, first apparently in her 

 right, and afterwards by creation or confirmation. This 

 Alice would, according to modern usage, have been entitled 

 to quarter two coats in addition to those of Montacute and 

 Grandison ; for her great -grandmother, the wife of Sir John 

 Montacute, was the heiress of Monthermer, and her mother 

 a sister and co-heir of Edmund Holand, Earl of Kent. 

 It is, therefore, not improbable that the missing escutcheons 

 bore respectively the arms of Monthermer and Holand. It 

 is to be observed that the escutcheons are lozenge-shaped, and, 

 though that form of shield had not then become exclusively 

 appropriated to females, examples of it are most commonly 

 referable to ladies. The form, therefore, of the escutcheons, 

 though not conclusive on the point, does certainly favour 

 the opinion that the relic is to be referred to a lady ; and, if 

 so, for no one does it seem so likely to have been made as 

 for the Alice Countess of Salisbury just mentioned. 



If such were the case, there was, we may reasonably 

 suppose, in the middle of the four other escutcheons, one of 

 her arms according to the heraldry of that age, which would 

 have been Neville and Montacute impaled ; for their impaled 

 arms were generally the coat of the wife, and not of the 

 husband and wife as in modern practice. 



Her father, Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, well 

 known as a distinguished Commander in the war with France, 

 was killed at the Siege of Orleans, 1428, and she was then about 

 22 years of age and had issue a son and heir apparent, who 

 was afterwards the famous Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, 

 who gained the soubriquet of the King-maker. Her mother 

 had died before her father, and he took for his second 

 wife the daughter of Thomas Chaucer, who is generally 

 believed to have been a grand daughter of the poet. 



If I have succeeded in showing a high degree of probability 

 that this object belonged to a descendant of William 

 Montacute, the first Earl of Salisbury of that family, and 

 possibly to the Countess Alice herself, it will, I trust, be a 



