THE BEOOM. 19 



ferently used. Ordinary history tells us that 

 Henry II. of England, wearing the broom -planta 

 genista in his cap, assumed, and transmitted, the 

 now royal surname of Plantagenet. But there is 

 strong evidence to prove that Fulke, Earl of Anjou, 

 the grandfather of Henry, wore the plant as the 

 symbol of humility, in his penitential pilgrimage to 

 the Holy Land ; while it is certain that the son of 

 this earl, Geoffry, surnamed Pulcher, or Le Bel ; both 

 used the crest, and bore the name, or more properly 

 soubriquet, surnames being then unknown. 



The broom frequently occurs as an ornament in 

 the wardrobe rolls both of England and France. 

 We read that the queen of Richard II. had a 

 dress of rosemary and broom of Cyprus, in gold and 

 silk on a white ground. And a broom-plant with 

 its open pods despoiled of their seeds, ornaments the 

 robe of her husband, in his tomb in Westminster 

 Abbey. Not a little learning and heraldic research 

 have been expended on this one simple, and well- 

 imagined emblem. Antiquarians have endeavoured 

 to shew that the armorial bearings of this monarch 

 were distinguished from those of others of his family 

 by the absence of the seeds from the pods, which 

 last appear to have been borne from the earliest 

 period of its adoption as a device. But they have 

 overlooked all the beauty of the design. They have 

 not felt, with the designer, the truthful force of the 

 silent record. The ripened seed had fallen from its 

 husk ; the germ of immortality was parted from its 

 shell ; the body was laid in the dust, and the soul 

 was called into a life eternal, e'er the marble tomb 



