408 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
It is easy to see where the charges of the castle coat came from. 
The saltire is, of course, the cross of St. Andrew; the castles 
represent clearly the four towers of the ‘castle quadrate.”” This 
was erected, or at least commenced, early in the fifteenth century, 
under the fostering care of Bishop Stafford, 1395-1419, whose 
armories—Or a chevron gules, perhaps with the appropriate motto 
“‘ Gard ta foy,”’ Risdon says were ‘lately to be seen in the work,” 
of which the townsfolk were doubtless very proud, and into which 
in time of danger the Corporation used to go for residence. 
The present borough seal bears both the coats described, but not 
combined in all respects in true heraldic fashion. The castles and 
lions have been put on board the ship, which floats lightly notwith- 
standing its strange cargo, and the crown of fleurs-de-lis has been 
adopted as the crest, garnished with six flags of the town arms, 
supposed to symbolize the six wards. One unfortunate result of 
the combination is that the purpose of the beacon-crested masts has 
been forgotten. They have apparently been mistaken for brooms— 
such perchance as those which Van Tromp hoisted—only it so 
happens that, as in one of the chief carvings of the Plymouth coat 
at the New Guildhall, the middle broom is sometimes left dependent 
on nothing, the mainmast being severed in the midst, while the 
object of the mizen and fore masts seems simply to be the affording 
holdfasts to the lions’ tails. I cannot trace the town motto, ‘ Turris 
fortissima est nomen Jehova,” further back than the days of the 
Commonwealth; and probably it was adopted then in memory of 
the great mercy vouchsafed to the townsfolk during the siege. 
Perhaps we owe it to the suggestion of Hughes, the Puritan 
vicar. 
Next in point of antiquity, without doubt, are the fragments of 
armorial glass still remaining in the windows of the Free Library. 
These are the sole relics now left of the old Jacobean Guild- 
hall in Whimple Street, which supplanted its humbler predecessor 
about the year 1607, and ran the Corporation terribly in debt, as 
the records of that date grievously show. By the way I am not 
at all sure that there may not be portions of the previous Southside 
Street Guildhall still in being. It is quite possible that the portion 
of the distillery which in the seventeenth century was occupied as 
the town Marshalsea, and which has been assigned to the Domini- 
cans, may have had a civic origin; and that the Dominicans may 
have had another habitation hard by. But to return to the old 
