THE ARMS OF DORCfiESTER AND DORSET. 10 1 



officials of the Heralds' College, we may accept the blazon of the 

 Arms I have given as final. Let us suppose that we are strangers 

 to the town of Dorchester and know nothing of its history. "What 

 do the Arms of the borough tell us about the borough ? Firstly, 

 they indicate to us, from the purple tincture of the field, that the 

 town of Dorchester has, or has had, some connection with Royalty. 

 We dive into the history of the borough and we find that this 

 indication is correct, for the borough for many centuries was a 

 Koyal manor. In the Stuart days, when the Sovereign was in 

 want of funds, an offer was made to the burgesses to purchase of 

 the Crown the manorial rights. The Corporation, acting for the 

 town, purchased these rights, and to-day the Corporation of 

 Dorchester are lords of the manor of Dorchester in succession to 

 the Crown. The effect of this, amongst other things, is that the 

 Corporation of Dorchester actually owns the soil underneath the 

 streets of Dorchester. In other towns the local authorities have 

 only a surface right of use over the roads, and the soil underneath 

 and the air above are, in law, the property of the adjacent property- 

 owners, whose rights extend to the middle of the highway from 

 either side. But in Dorchester this is not so. In this to\in these 

 rights belong to the municipality as lords of the manor. "When we 

 look, then, upon the purple field of the shield we see a history 

 woven into it of ancient Royal rights now transferred to the 

 municipality. Secondly, we note the castle. This is an indication 

 that the town is, or was, in some way protected from attack, either 

 by a fortified castle or embattled walls. Although but a slight 

 vestige remains we know that down to the middle of the last 

 century the old Roman walls stood round the town " four square 

 to all the winds that blew." Lastly, the escutcheon at the base of 

 the castle is of quite extraordinary interest, as it takes us back to a 

 brief period of 65 years, to the days of Edward III., Richard IL, 

 and Henry IV., to a time limited on the one hand by the year 

 1340, when Edward III. made claim to the crown of France and 

 adopted the lilies of France on the shields of the English sovereigns, 

 to a time limited on the other hand by the year 1405, when 



