THE COAT

OF ARMS

Third Series Vol. II part 2. No. 212 Autumn 2006

ISSN 0010-003X Price £12.00

an heraldic journal published twice yearly by The Heraldry Society

THE COAT OF ARMS The j o u r n a l of t h e H e r a l d r y Society

Third series Volume II

2006 Part 2

N u m b e r 212 i n t h e o r i g i n a l series s t a r t e d i n 1 9 5 2

The Coat of Arms is published twice a year by The Heraldry Society, whose registered office is 53 High Street, Burnham, Slough SL1 7JX. The Society was registered in England in 1956 as registered charity no. 241456.

F o u n d i n g E d i t o r † John Brooke-Little, C.V.O., M.A., F .H .S .

H o n o r a r y E d i t o r s C. E . A . Cheesman, M.A., PH.D. , Rouge Dragon Pursuivant

M . P. D. O'Donoghue, M.A., Bluemantle Pursuivant

E d i t o r i a l C o m m i t t e e Adrian Ailes, B.A., F.S.A., F.H.S. Jackson W. Armstrong, B.A. Andrew Hanham, B.A., PH.D

A d v e r t i z i n g M a n a g e r John Tunesi of Liongam

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ORDINARIES OF A R M S Part 1: Thomas Jenyns' Book and its precursors

P a u l A . F o x

Thomas Jenyns' B o o k is the largest and most significant o f all the medieval ordi-naries o f arms, and as such warrants more attention than it has hitherto received. 1

Some intriguing insights into the story o f its evolution can be deduced from its struc-ture and composition. It owes its existence to a now lost ordinary from the reign of Edward III which was the very first o f its k ind. The contents of this rol l have been preserved in three later copies, o f which the earliest surviving version is Cooke's Ordinary o f 644 shields. 2 Cotgrave's Ordinary is essentially the same, but with the ordinary arranged in a slightly different sequence, and missing some 88 shields from Cooke's . 3 Both are dwarfed in scale by the later Thomas Jenyns' Book, which adds over a thousand shields, while remaining closely related to the other two. 4 In order to gain a clearer understanding of how, when and why these ordinaries were created a careful comparison was made of the three. The first and most obvious observation arising from this analysis is that Jenyns generally supplies us wi th a Christian name for the bearer of the arms, frequently omitted in Cooke and Cotgrave. There are 189 instances of matching arms and surname in all three ordinaries but with the Christian names supplied only in Jenyns. M a n y sequences of shields are strikingly similar in al l three, and the only possible explanation for these findings is that they are all based on a common progenitor, with Cooke's being an early copy and not the orig-inal . 5

Altogether some 565 shields in Jenyns, more than a third o f its total number, are based on the lost original. O f these 225 match the Christian names in either Cooke, Cotgrave or both, and there are 67 examples o f Christian name mismatches. These errors are mostly transcriptional, which is hardly surprising in a situation where none

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1 The only other ordinary of comparable size, rather confusingly called William Jenyns' Ordinary, contains far fewer families, but many examples of cadency, and will be the subject of a later paper. 2 Robert Mitchell's edition, Heraldry Society of Scotland, 1982, and C E M R A pp. 58-9. 3 Nicholas Harris Nicolas, A R o l l of a r m s c o m p i l e d i n t h e r e i g n of E d w a r d III (London, 1829); C E M R A p. 60. 4 There are various copies of this in existence, the earliest surviving being B L Add Ms 40851. I worked primarily from Soc Ant Ms 351, which is a remarkably faithful copy of the B L man-uscript, though two leaves have been lost and the pages are bound out of sequence. The numeration between the two differs slightly because the B L version includes some blank shields. 5 Cooke's is certainly a fourteenth century document, which led Sir Anthony Wagner, its then owner, to believe it was the original, see C E M R A p. xv. Some names found in Jenyns and Cotgrave are entirely wanting in Cooke, e.g. Jenyns no 710, although the loss may be due to wear and the fading of ink.

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o f the surviving documents is the original. 6 Despite the fact that the surviving text o f Cotgrave is later than Cooke, the degree o f concordance with Jenyns is the same for both.

Nearly two thirds of the arms from the lost ordinary can be independently dated by reference to other rolls o f arms, seals, and the like, with the benefit o f the addi-tional Christian names supplied by Jenyns. B y far the largest proportion are from the reign of Edward III, with a somewhat smaller group who were l iv ing in the reign o f Edward II, and a still smaller one in the reign o f Edward I. On ly four of the 565 were sourced from rolls o f arms prior to Edward I. This demonstrates that the lost origi-nal ordinary was very much a working document of the reign o f Edward III, wi th some knights surviving from the previous two reigns. Wagner's date o f c. 1340 for Cooke and Cotgrave is probably about right, and places the lost original at the high point o f chivalry in the Engl ish court, in the period leading up to the foundation o f the Order o f the Garter. 7

The compiler o f Jenyns was working in the reign o f Richard II, the evidence for which w i l l be cited below, but he makes almost no attempt to update the names o f the bearers o f arms to his own time, some fifty years later. Some families had the name o f their paterfamilias updated to later in the reign of Edward III, for example Nicholas Cantilupe in Cooke who died in 1355, becomes his heir W i l l i a m in Jenyns. 8

Such a change may wel l have been an accidental consequence o f the use o f multiple sources, because Jenyns sometimes also moves backwards in time from the lost ordi-nary, for instance W i l l i a m de Valoignes died in 1288, whilst Cotgrave supplies Warren or Waris de Valoignes his son who was l iv ing in 1326. 9

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6 There are three cases where each of the ordinaries supplies a different forename: Jenyns no 679 is called Robert in Cooke and the contemporary Ashmole roll, Roger in Jenyns and John in Cotgrave; Jenyns no 685 is Adam in Jenyns, Amias in Cotgrave and Anketyn in Cooke, Boroughbridge and Ashmole; at Jenyns no 1228 the surname is spelt Hertford, in Cooke it is Retford, in Cotgrave Tetford, and in Ashmole Bedford. 7 It must certainly be after 1337 when William Montagu (no 628) was created Earl of Salisbury, but the t e r m i n u s post q u e m is more difficult to establish. Unfortunately some of the knights and peers included were already dead by 1337, e.g. Richard Lord Grey of Codnor (no 570; d. 1335), Robert Constable of Holderness (no 575; d. 1336), and Fulk Fitzwarin (no 957; d. 1336). Their inclusion signifies that the copyist was working from contemporary rolls of arms, and that the deaths even of peers cannot be relied upon as dating material. There is also Thomas Lord Poynings (no 574; d. 1339); William Lord Fitzwilliam (no 1032; dead by 1342 and succeeded by his brother John); Henry Lord Ferrers (no 1026; d. 1343, succeeded by his son William); William Lord Greystoke (no 581, the Christian name here supplied from Cooke as it is wanting in the other two; d. 1359 leaving a son and heir Ralph); Ralph Lord Neville of Raby (no 340; d. 1367, succeeded by his son John). The further we move away from 1337 the less likely it becomes that such transitions would have been overlooked, which makes 1340 a reasonable guess. The date must surely be before the Garter was instituted as the founder knights are sparsely represented. 8 No 1185: Nicholas Cantilupe's heirs were his grandsons William and Nicholas, who both died without issue by 1375. 9 No 1064. See G. J. Brault, The R o l l s of A r m s of E d w a r d 1 (Aspilogia 3: London 1997), vol. 2 pp. 432-3, s.v. Warresius ( d . s . p . m . ) .

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The method by which the original ordinary was augmented to form Jenyns was much as one might expect in that sections matching those from Cooke and Cotgrave were copied and corresponding heraldic charges were then added, before moving on to the next theme. The sequence of charges differs between Cooke, Cotgrave and Jenyns, but the internal structure within each section is retained. In some sections new shields are inserted more randomly into the original material, but for the most part in Jenyns it is possible to follow long runs o f shields from the precursor ordinary interspersed wi th runs o f additional material.

Whi le Cooke and Cotgrave begin wi th crosses, Jenyns begins wi th lions, and moves the crosses to the middle o f the ordinary. A new section o f 22 shields of lions belonging to kings and great men o f yore was placed at the head of the book and before the section of lions from the lost ordinary. It has been possible to date 40% of the 1,034 additional shields, and once again the great bulk o f them are from the reigns of the three Edwards, with the largest group being datable to Edward III. 1 0

Most o f the undatable shields are totally unique to Jenyns, but it is reasonable to sup-pose that they derive from lost rolls o f arms from the same period.

The first 1,211 shields o f Jenyns maintain the structure of an ordinary, whilst at first sight the remaining 388 shields were seemingly added at random. For this rea-son it has been traditional to consider the two parts almost as i f they are separate enti-ties, the first part being commonly referred to as Jenyns' Ordinary, and given the let-ter Y in Papworth, whilst the second part, frequently referred to as Jenyns' R o l l , is given by Papworth the letter X . There is considerable internal evidence to show that the final section o f the ordinary is closely connected with the remainder of the doc-ument. The structure o f the ordinary breaks down at the end for two reasons: firstly because it contains a lot o f miscellaneous material that is more difficult to classify, and secondly because the original ordinary does not include sections for certain charges, giving the later copyist no easy model to follow. One can sympathise wi th the medieval scribe surrounded by scrolls, becoming a little fed up wi th the size o f the project, and feeling unequal to the task o f properly organising what remained to be copied. F rom shield no 1250 onwards nearly all the shields are supplementary to the lost ordinary, but the main focus o f the additions is stil l the reign o f Edward III.

Wagner tentatively dated Jenyns to c. 1410, while conceding that it might date to the reign o f Richard II.11 H i s dating is somewhat arbitrary, based on the presence of Edward Courtenay, Ear l o f Devon, who acceded in 1377 and died in 1419. 1 2 No t a single individual included in Jenyns requires a date so late as Henry IV, apart from two intrusive shields from the reign of Henry V I which are o f considerable interest, and to which I shall return. The description of John o f Gaunt as Duke of Lancaster places the date o f compilation after November 1362. Bartholomew L o r d Burghersh

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1 0 M y tools for this research were primarily Papworth and the D B A . When the latter is com-plete the datable portion wil l doubtless increase, but it seems unlikely that such an exercise would change the conclusions of this paper. Joseph Foster, Some F e u d a l C o a t s of A r m s (London 1902), was also of some value, but there are a great many errors and omissions, and Foster frequently attributes individuals to certain reigns on the basis of mere conjecture. 11 C E M R A p. 74-75 and introduction, p. xv. 1 2 No 1473.

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who died without male issue in 1369, and whom we find in Cotgrave, is updated by Jenyns to John Burghersh who adopted his arms. 1 3 One o f the very last names in the ordinary, Thomas Burton o f Tolthorpe, Leics. , acceded in 1375/6. 1 4 The mention o f Edward Courtenay as Ear l o f Devon who acceded the month before Richard II came to the throne takes us into Richard's reign. Edmund of Langley was not created Duke of York until 1385, while L o r d Burnel l takes us still later, because his arms are quar-tered wi th those of the Botetourt heiress whom he married in 1386. 1 5

Arr iv ing at a t e r m i n u s post q u e m for Jenyns is by no means straightforward. One o f the additions, W i l l i a m lord Heron, a parliamentary peer, died in 1379 and was succeeded by his son Roger, which illustrates the problem of using such dates as benchmarks. 1 6

The death o f another named individual, Sir Simon Burlay, K . G . , in 1388 is rather more significant. 1 7 A friend o f the Black Prince, he became tutor to Richard II, and Richard in his turn was devoted to h im. He came to be reviled for what was con-sidered to be a malign influence over that monarch, was impeached by the Merciless Parliament and executed as a traitor; a fact which would have been known to al l . I f the date o f compilation was after 1388 then a close connection with the royal court and its sympathies is confirmed.

The tiny proportion in Jenyns of knights from the time o f Richard II provokes the question what possible use could such a ordinary have been to a contemporary herald. 1 8 It does in fact have a purpose, which can only have been an attempt to reconstruct the knighthood of a perceived golden age, that o f the heyday o f Edward III. Material from the reigns o f Henry III and Richard II alike was for the most part eschewed, apart from the inclusion o f a very small number of 'worthies' from those two eras. The focus on the reign o f Edward III fits wel l wi th the preoccupations of Richard's court, and with Maurice Keen's observation that the knights o f Richard II lacked military experience. 1 9 Some o f the inclusions point to the personal interest o f Richard himself. The the arms o f Piers Gaveston, the great favourite o f Edward II, were added in two places. 2 0 Richard doubtless felt that Edward and Gaveston had been greatly wronged, most especially because his own style of kingship so closely resembled that o f his revered great-grandfather. He made strenuous attempts to have

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1 3 No 43. This is a rare instance of the editor updating the precursor document. John sealed with these arms in 1371-2 and 1374-5. D B A vol. 1, pp. 174, 177. 1 4 No 1595. The Visitation of Rutland (Harl. Soc. vol. 72) p. 22; James Wright, H i s t o r y a n d A n t i q u i t i e s of R u t l a n d (1684), p. 128. 1 5 Langley and Burnell are at 175 and 955 respectively, for Botetourt see G E C vol. 2, p. 435. 1 6 He was in fact only summoned to parliament once, which might account for why the herald was unaware of his death. 1 7 No 1395. Note particularly that between nos 1395 and 1452 are to be found ten of the thir-ty shields for which the earliest alternative surviving examples are dated to the reign of Richard II. 1 8 Only thirty of the 1,034 additions are for individuals who flourished in his reign. 19 Maurice Keen, N o b l e s , k n i g h t s a n d m e n - a t - a r m s of t h e M i d d l e Ages (London 1996), chap. 10 ('English military experience and the Court of Chivalry: the case of G r e y v H a s t i n g s ' ) , esp. pp. 176-85. 2 0 Nos 227, 1225.

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Edward II canonised. The most telling antiquarian addition was the arms o f all the Earls o f Chester before the earldom became a royal appendage, even including a pre-conquest earl. 2 1 Richard II had succeeded his father as Ear l o f Chester a year before his accession to the throne.

A l l o f which points very strongly to Jenyns having been compiled with Richard expressly in mind. There are two faint indications that this might have occurred after Burlay 's death in 1388. A n aspect o f the ordinary which would support a date o f 1397 or later is the curious absence o f Thomas o f Woodstock Duke o f Gloucester from a royal section of the ordinary. Here we find Richard's three uncles, Woodstock's brothers John of Gaunt, Edmund Duke o f York and L ione l Duke o f Clarence. 2 2

Richard hated his uncle Woodstock because o f the attempt to dethrone h i m in 1387, and engineered his murder in 1397. The inclusion of another o f Richard's favourites, Sir John Bussy, could be due to the fact that he was a prominent man in Lincolnshire, where he was sheriff in 1379. Bussy's arms were in Cooke and Cotgrave but without a Christian name, and the head o f the family in 1340 was John's father Walter. This probably represents another rare example o f the lost ordinary being updated. Sir John in his younger days served John of Gaunt, but became the hero o f K i n g Richard's attack on his opponents in 1397 while serving as Speaker o f the Commons. He was to pay for his adherence to Richard II wi th his life when he was executed by the mob at Br is to l in 1399, and was posthumously attainted by Henry IV. Thus we can place Jenyns wi th certainty between 1386 and 1399, and probably c. 1398.

The earliest surviving manuscript o f Jenyns is Queen Margaret's version which is thought to have been copied in the early fifteenth century by the same person who copied the earliest known copy o f Grimaldi ' s roll. 2 3 Two intrusive coats o f arms and a later postscript reveal the identity o f its fifteenth-century owners. A t no 1527 are the arms o f Stanley quartering Lathom: Sir John Stanley married the Lathom heiress in or before 1385. 2 4 The shield is actually named for his grandson Thomas, who was not born until circa 1405, and only acceded in 1437 on the death o f his father John. The family had strong links with Chester, and this particular rol l wi th its series of earls o f Chester would have appealed to them. Sir John Stanley was controller of Richard the second's household in the late 1390s, and the book may wel l have sim-ply remained in his hands after Richard's captivity began at Chester in August 1399. It was certainly at the behest o f his grandson Thomas that the rol l was recopied, and had his arms inserted, which fits with the early fifteenth century date o f Queen Margaret's version. The insertion of a number o f blank shields indicating arms which could not at that time be deciphered points to the original being in a damaged state.

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2 1 The first of these insertions is in the second row of shields where we find lions for the 4th and 5th Earls, Ranulph le Meschin and Ranulph de Gernon. The latter's attributed arms can also be found in the county roll of Richard II. Shields for the 6th, 7th and 8th Earls were inserted at nos 1170, 1170a and 1171, and for the pre-conquest earl Leofric and the second to fifth post-conquest earls at nos 1218-1223. The attributed arms for the Hugh Lupus (Hugh d'Avranches) and his successor are also in the county roll of Richard II. The only earl missed out was Gherbod, who was earl for one year only, in 1070. 2 2 Nos 174-6. 23 C E M R A p. 74. 2 4 G E C vol 12a, p. 249.

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The Stanleys rapidly changed sides fol lowing the fall o f Richard II and John Stanley was steward to the household o f Henry IV. Sir Thomas Stanley in his turn was controller o f the royal household at the time when Margaret o f Anjou arrived in England in 1445, and the book may have been his wedding gift to her.2 5 H i s gen-erosity was amply rewarded in 1448 when he was appointed chief steward o f the Duchy o f Lancaster. The wedding-gift theory is supported by the final intrusive coat at no 968. Here the arms of Wydvi l l e , A r g e n t a b a r a n d a q u a r t e r g u l e s , quartering G u l e s a n e a g l e d i s p l a y e d o r , for Sir Richard Wydvi l l e , K . G . , were painted over the arms of John f i t z Geoffrey. 2 6 This was an ideal location for such an insertion because within the section o f quarterly shields at no 967 and 968 the same arms had been unaccountably repeated twice: Q u a r t e r l y o r a n d gules a b o r d u r e v a i r . A neat red line was drawn through the second inscription for John fitz Geoffrey, and underneath was written only ' W i d v i l l e ' and the blazon. There can be no doubt that the M s in the Br i t i sh Library was Queen Margaret's own copy because o f this original insertion. 2 7

The date o f this final addition may have been not long after the queen received the book, because Richard and his wife Jacquetta (daughter o f Pierre de Luxembourg, Count o f St P o l , and widow o f John Duke o f Bedford) were in the party which escorted Margaret o f Anjou to England for her marriage. 2 8 Jacquetta was the sister o f Margaret's aunt, and they must have looked at the book together to see the arms of Luxembourg which occur twice within it. We can be certain that the shield was added before 1461, because after the great Lancastrian defeat at Towton in Yorkshire Sir Richard went over to Edward IV, and his daughter later became queen.

Margaret left the book behind in her headlong flight to escape after that battle. This can be deduced because its next owner was Sir John Conyers of Norton Conyers, Yorkshire, a place north o f York just off the Great Nor th Road, the route which Margaret would have taken on her way to Scotland. 2 9 It is a safe assumption that her baggage had to be abandoned on the way in the interest o f speed. Sir John's eldest son fought at Towton on the Yorkist side in the retinue o f the Ear l o f Warwick, having been attainted by parliament wi th the Duke o f York in 1459, so it is possible that the book was given to h im as a just reward for his services. 3 0 Thomas Jenyns' B o o k thus passed into the backwaters o f history, but was cherished and escaped the ravages of time, passing through the hands of numerous heralds until the beautiful manuscript was fittingly bought for the nation.

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2 5 A new title page was added resplendent with her own magnificent arms. 2 6 The same arms were recorded by Dering from the tomb of Wydeville's father at Maidstone ( A r c h a e o l o g i a C a n t i a n a vol. 1) and occur again on Sir Richard's Garter stall plate. 2 7 B L Add Ms 40851. A l l surviving copies must stem from this one, since all include the arms of Widville. This includes the so called Thomas Jenyns version, which is not a different ver-sion at all, and which survives as a copy only in B L Ms Stowe 696. 2 8 G E C vol 11, pp. 15-25. 2 9 Sir John added his arms on a spare page at the end of the manuscript some time before his death in 1489. 3 0 This son, another Sir John, lost his life ten years later at the battle of Edgcote.