FISH IN HERALDRY. 69 



the dukedom. The town seal of Coleraine shows the 

 salmon ; and the Lords of the Isles, as masters of many 

 fisheries, bear the same fish. The town of Stafford (Izaak 

 Walton's birthplace) is on the Sow, a river noted for its 

 trout and grayling. A charter from King John confirmed 

 the privileges which had been held by the town from 

 remote antiquity, and the corporation seal, showing the 

 fish in the stream, with the castle on the bank, alludes to 

 this right of fishing. So, too, Newcastle (on Trent) bears 

 an allusion to a " franchise " of fishery. Yarmouth has, of 

 course, herrings, and has carried them ever since King 

 John gave the burgesses their charter with the right of 

 the fishery, of which till then the privilege had vested in 

 the Barons of the Cinque Ports. Wexford displays the 

 hake ; and on the seal of Congleton (in Cheshire) two 

 congers glare at each other. Kilrenny, in Fifeshire, carries 

 fish-hooks on its shield as typical of its chief source of 

 revenue. Dunwich, Southwold, and Inveraray, all confess 

 their gratitude to the herring ; and Truro, Looe, Fowey, and 

 other Cornish towns, to the pilchard. 



As illustrative of the third class, the fish-crests com- 

 memorative of incidents of personal history are the Con- 

 stantinople dolphins of the Courteneys ; the whale of the 

 Enderbys, whose ancestors were mighty fishers in the 

 Northern Seas ; the barbels of the Colstons, one of those 

 fishes having the credit of stopping a leak in a ship in 

 which a Colston was embarked ; the shark of the Watsons, 

 Sir Brook Watson having lost his leg from the bite of a 

 shark in the harbour of Havannah. 



For the connection of heraldry with the sea-myths of 

 antiquity it would really be only necessary to instance the 

 dolphin. It is with heralds the " chief of fish "; and just 

 as in Hellenic devices it was always used to represent the 



