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German secretary, he speaks in raptures of the festivities, and of 
the honours conferred upon the Emperor, and especially of the 
gorgeous collar and garter richly adorned with jewels, with which 
the Sovereign of the order himself invested his illustrious guest. 
In compliance with the statutes of the Order of the Garter the 
newly created knight made an offering of a sword, which, with 
other achievements, was to be suspended above his stall in the 
chapel of St. George, at Windsor, and to remain there during his 
lifetime. The death of the Emperor Sigismund took place on the 
9th of December, 1437, and within two years afterwards the sword 
which he had offered at Windsor became one of the state swords of 
the municipality of York. Of Master Henry Hanslap, the generous 
donor of the Sigismund sword, who boasts that he was a native of 
York, little can be told more than is stated in the document by 
which his gift is recorded. Eung Henry the Sixth presented him 
to his canomy in the chapel of St. George, at Windsor, on the 23rd 
of April, 1437. In June, 1448, he exchanged his prebend of Skip- 
with, and his rectory of Middleton, for the prebend of Langstowe, 
in the diocese of Lincoln, which was then held by Mr. William le 
Scrope. There is reason to believe that the dignitary, by whom 
the sword was presented to Hanslap, was himseK a native of York¬ 
shire, and was not unacquainted with the disposition intended to be 
made of his splendid gift. It is upon record that Bobert Ayscough 
was the name of the ecclesiastic who was Dean of Windsor, in the 
year 1447, and as his predecessor, John Arundel, was appointed in 
1417, and is not named as Dean later than 1428, we may reason¬ 
ably infer that Dr. Ayscough had succeeded to the Deanery pre¬ 
viously to the death of the Emperor Sigismund in 1437, and that 
he was the same person who in 1441 was made a prebendary of 
Eenton, in the Cathedral church of York, and at the time of his 
death in 1448, was a prebendary of Southwell, and rector of 
Campsall, near Doncaster, to which he had been presented by the 
Crown, in 1443. There can be little doubt that the Dean was a 
member of the well-known family of Ayscough, of tke parish of 
Bedale-ciim-Ayscough, or Aiskew, in the North Biding, from which 
sprang two x^ersons bearing the same Christian and surname, each 
of whom was twice Lord^ Mayor of York: Bobert Askwith, the 
father, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and Bobert Askwith, the 
son, in the reign of her successor. King James the Eirst, at whose 
hands he received the honour of Knighthood in the year 1617. 
Perhaps neither of them was aware that one of the swords of State 
