30 Notes on the Corporation Plate and Insignia of Wiltshire. 



been the head of the old war mace became the handle of the mace 

 of dignity, and the original knob of the handle swelled into a large 

 bowl-shaped head bearing the royal arms, and in later times sur- 

 mounted by the open arches and the ball and cross of the royal 

 crown. The flanges, on the other hand, gradually diminished until 

 they became mere flutings on what in some of the earlier specimens 

 remained the iron handles of the mace, or developed into merely 

 ornamental scrolls — disappearing altogether in the maces of the 

 eighteenth century, and only leaving rudimentary evidence of their 

 former existence in the ornamental foot knop in which they end. 



This gradual evolution could be traced in the most interesting 

 way in the remarkable collection of maces, numbering nearly two 

 hundred, from all parts of England, exhibited at the Mansion 

 House during the London Meeting of the Eoyal Archaeological 

 Institute in 1893. The change could be traced step by step from 

 the flanged war mace, such as the iron specimen of the early 

 sixteenth century possessed by Grantham, in Lincolnshire, and the 

 earliest of the civic maces, such as that of Hedon, in Yorkshire, of 

 the time of Henry VI., with its iron grip ; and the two handsome 

 Winchcombe maces of the fifteenth century, with triangular flanges 

 at the butt-end, evidently following the lines of the war mace of 

 the time — through the small, short, plain-stemmed, semi-globular 

 headed maces of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, 

 with their single fleur-de-lys cresting — to the large, long-stemmed, 

 bowl-headed, crowned, and elaborately-crested examples of the later 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 



The County of Wilts, although it possesses only seventeen maces 

 in all, is fortunate in having good examples of most of the steps in I 

 this curious process of evolution. 



The earliest are those of Wootton Bassett, which are dated 1603. 

 These are of the type of still earlier examples, and show the flanges j 

 on the butt-end in unusual perfection — scarcely altered, indeed, ex- 

 cept in size, from what they originally were on the weapon of war. j 

 The heads are semi-globular, and plain, except for a low cresting of f 

 fleur-de-lys. 



Next comes the beautiful smaller mace at Wilton, dated 1639, in j 



