29 
The Swoed of the Empeeoe Sigismund. 
Tlie circumstances attending the presentation to the citizens of 
York of an ensign of dignity, which had originally belonged to a 
personage of such exalted rank as Sigismund, Emperor of Grermany 
and King of the Eomans, were deemed worthy of being recorded in 
the archives of the Corporation with great particularity. The 
document, composed in the Latin of that period, is drawn up in a 
very formal manner, most probably by the Town-Clerk of the city, 
who appears to have been somewhat of a humoimst. It runs 
thus :—In the name of the Lord, Amen. Whereas many 
Catholic kings in the exercise of their most valued prerogative of 
love, have in former times granted ensigns of honour to their cities 
and other places, yet it happens that with the lapse of years not 
only the names of such benefactors, but often the dates of their 
gifts, have passed away from the minds of men. That such noble 
grants might be more firmly held in remembrance, the wisdom of 
our ancestors devised a precaution of this kind, namely, that what 
is worthy of commendation should be reduced into writing, so 
that by frequent perusal it might obtain more serious attention; 
and by the aid of reflection even this present slight written memo¬ 
rial may be impressed upon the minds of posterity. In the year of 
our Lord 1421, and in the eighth year of the reign of Ehng Henry 
the Fifth, it happened that the most Christian Prince Sigismund, 
by divine permission Emperor of Grermany, and King of the 
Eomans, came into England, and was forthwith constituted a knight 
and brother of the military order founded in the royal chapel of 
Saint Greorge at Windsor, where all the knights of the same order, 
upon their reception, offer their swords to be there suspended 
during the life of the offerer, upon whose decease such swords are 
at the disposal of the Deans of the same chapel for the time being, 
according to the custom of the chapel hitherto observed: and the 
aforesaid Emperor being now dead, the sword by him offered in 
the said chapel the Dean of the same chapel presented to that 
discreet person, .Master Henry Hanslap, canon of the same chapel 
and prebendary of the prebend of Skip with, in the collegiate 
church of Howden, and rector of the church of Middleton, near 
Pickering, and not far from the city of York, from whence he 
sprang, as it pleased him to say. Therefore the aforesaid Master 
Henry, preferring in his mind as a man of much gratitude to dis¬ 
tinguish his own country by such a gift, on the 5th day of May, in 
