The Subjects Treated. 2 7 



the chief cry being " So how." The knowledge of when and how often 

 thefe cries fhould be ufed was moft important, as their proper ufe would 

 bring "worfhip among all men." Here, apparently, in the midft of 

 one effay, another is interpolated, and we are treated to a portion of 

 fome old dialogue like " The Mafter of the Hunt," in which the 

 " Man " afks all forts of queftions and the " Mafter " replies. It might 

 indeed be dubbed " The Hunter's Catechifm." This occupies eight 

 pages, and then we fall back upon the original rhyme again and the 

 inftrudlions of the Dame to "my childe," ending with the " Explicit" 

 of Dam Julyans Barnes. Some leaves remaining to be filled up, the 

 moral and other fentences, as already defcribed at page 21, were added. 



Perhaps the third treatife upon Coat Armour and the Blafon of 

 Arms is the moft interefting portion of the book. The quaintnefs of 

 fome of the explanations is very amufing, and many people will 

 find more points of fympathy, both hiftorical and technical, with this 

 than with the others. 



The headline, " Incipit Liber Armorum," gives us at once the 

 title of the manufcript from which the text was compiled. " Heraldry 

 Run Mad" might indeed have been an appropriate title for this, as 

 well as all fimilar tractates ; for the author, in his anxiety to honour 

 the fcience, does not fcruple to take the reader back hiftorically not to 

 Noah only, but to Adam, whofe fpade, he tells us, was the firft fhield 

 in Heraldry, and who was the firft to bear Coat Armour. The argu- 

 ment, if it may fo be called, is : — All " gentilnes " comes from God ; 

 there were originally in heaven ten Orders of Angels bearing Coat 

 Armour, but now only nine, Lucifer with "mylionys of aungelis" 

 having fallen out of heaven into hell and other places. As a bond- 

 man might fay that all men come from Adam, fo might Lucifer fay he 

 and his angels came from heaven. 



Cain, for his wickednefs, was the firft churl, and all his offfpring 

 were churls alfo by the curfe of God. Seth, on the other hand, was 

 a gentleman by his ^father's bleffing; Noah, too, was a gentleman by 

 nature, but of his three fons, "Sem, Cham, and Jafeth," Cham, for 



