HERALDIC FISH. 155 



caught one after nightfall, nor have I ever known 

 one to be captured at night, and I believe them to 

 be somnolent fish. 



As a typical fish in heraldry, or as a symbol 

 appropriated in the dim past by ancient potentates 

 and families, I fear the perch has been pish in 

 altogether ignored, for I have searched heraldry 

 heraldic and archaeological works relating to the sub- 

 ject fruitlessly ; and while the salmon, pike, barbel, 

 eel, the lobster and crab (which by-the-bye arc 

 crustaceous) and even the whale (a mammal) have 

 been taken up as emblems for family crests and 

 coats of arms, I find the perch makes hardly any 

 show at all. Of fishes, heraldry takes comprehensive 

 notice ; the fish symbol has come down to our own 

 day, and " the Pisces " may be seen on the door- 

 way of Iffley Church, on the Thames near Oxford ; 

 in the nave of Peterchurch in Herefordshire, and 

 elsewhere. Whales are the insignia of Whalley 

 Abbey ; bream of Peterborough ; haddock of Peter- 

 hausen ; herring of St. Edmunds, and also of the 

 Black Friars Priory at Yarmouth. The arms 

 assumed by monasteries were sometimes those of 

 their benefactors, as the pike of Caldcr Abbey, 

 largely endowed by the Lucy family ; and the 

 salmon of St- Augustine's at Bristol, in memory 

 of the fishery attached to that Abbey by the 

 Lords of Berkeley. Many prelates and some 

 primates have borne fish crests. Peter Courtenay, 

 Bishop of Exeter, afterwards of Rochester, assumed 

 a dolphin, and transmitted it to his sons Robert 

 and Baldwin. A dolphin curves itself upon 

 the arms of John Fyshar, another Bishop of 

 Rochester, who also bore three eel-spears. Arch- 

 bishop Herring, and Thomas Spratt, Bishop of 



