learning, do all in their power to render the productions of wiser men as useless as possible; and in many cases, suffer their labours to be ruined by damp, cobwebs, and worms. Whilst they smile, with amusing superciliousness, at the bigotry and ignorance of "slothful monks," for God's sake let them reflect how little the productions of resident fellows and higher personages in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge will bear a comparison with the labours of those "slothful monks" in this, but more especially in other countries. Nay, more, let them contrast what has been done for literature, either ancient or modern, by those who it may almost be said are pensioned to study; whose wants are provided for by the liberality of others, and often by the very monkish priesthood which they despise, in the comparison with what has been effected by men who have had to strive against the tempests of the world, and to provide for the day which is passing over them. Whether these examples do or do not stimulate them to exertion is not so important a question as whether they will not possess at least the negative merit of rendering the MSS., which are unfortunately distributed in such an infinity of places, available to all who are willing to use them. If they do not, we repeat that they will one day either be compelled to do so, or the treasures of which they are such bad guardians must be intrusted to other hands. NOTICES RELATING TO THE ANCIENT “COLLARS OF THE KING'S LIVERY," AND, IN PARTICULAR, THOSE WHICH ARE STILL DENOMINATED" COLLARS OF SS." [BY GEORGE FREDERICK beltz, ESQ. LANCASTER HERALD.] THE Custom of encircling the neck with a gold or silver chain or collar, in order to distinguish the wearer for his rank, wisdom, or prowess, is of the highest antiquity, and coeval, probably, with the earliest application of the precious metals to purposes of personal decoration. Amongst the Jews, the ouch, or carcanet, formed part of the sacerdotal ornaments; in Egypt and Babylon a gold chain was bestowed as a symbol of official dignity; and a collar, stripped from the body of a vanquished Gaul by a Roman warrior, gave the surname of Torquatus to the Manlian family. It cannot be doubted that this external mark of preeminence, one of the first fruits, perhaps, of inequality in the relations of social life, was in general use in ancient Europe, and that it was introduced at a very remote period into Britain: the idea, however, of erecting it into a sign of adherence to a particular dynasty, family, or party, seems to have been reserved for a more modern era, and may be presumed to have originated in the same motives which influenced, during the middle ages, the creation of military orders. The collars described in the public records "Collaria de liberatâ," or "liberaturâ Regis," from the liberate under which they issued from the Great Wardrobe, or Jewel Office, have been treated by Favin1 and other writers as insignia of orders of knighthood; but that they were distinct from the symbols of those institutions, may be collected from the fact that, although the effigies of several knights of the garter, on sepulchral monuments, antecedently to the reign of Henry the Seventh, are represented as adorned with them 2, a collar was not amongst the ensigns of the order until it was added thereto by that sovereign. Whatever may have been the antiquity of similar collars in other states, every attempt has failed to carry the practice of conferring them in this country higher than the fourteenth of the reign of Richard the Second, 1390, 1.-4 year The select nature of the order instituted by his illustrious predecessor had afforded to that monarch comparatively few opportunities of decorating, in so acceptable a manner, not only his own chivalrous subjects, but also the numerous knights adventurers, who, in an age when the desire of renown in tourneys and feats of arms predominated over almost every other feeling, resorted to his splendid court from all parts of Europe. King Richard, therefore, on the occasion of the magnificent justs held in Smithfield on the 12th of October, 1390, in honour of the Counts of Ostrevant and St. Paul, and other eminent strangers, distributed his cognizance of the WHITE HART, pendent from a cOLLAR composed of cosses de genét, or broomcods, of gold. The records of the Pells, the Wardrobe Accounts, and the Fœdera, during that reign, furnish many instances of the distribution of this collar and badge amongst knights, ladies, and 1Théâtre d'Honneur, l. 5, c. 2. 2 See, in Blore's Monumental Remains, the tombs of Thomas Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who died, in 1415, at Arundel; of Ralph Nevil, first Earl of Westmorland, who died, in 1425, at Staindrop; of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who died, in 1444, at Wimborne: also, in Dart's Canterbury, that of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, second son of Henry IV., and several others. 3 Bibl. Cotton. Tib. c. 9, p. 25. Leland's Col. vol. ii. p. 312 and 482. 4 The white hart couchant, gorged with a coronet, and having a chain reflexed over the back, is conjectured to have been assumed by Richard in imitation of Charles VI. of France, and in the same spirit in which his royal grandfather had adopted the arms of that kingdom. A strange story is related by Juvenal des Ursins, in his History of the French monarch, of a hart having been chased and taken in the forest of Senlis with a chain of gilt copper about his neck inscribed "Caesar hoc mihi donavit," and of the king having consequently adopted, in the year 1380, a hart for his device, and two harts for supporters to his arms. esquires, foreigners and subjects; and the king himself is represented as wearing such a collar in the celebrated contemporary picture in the Pembroke collection at Wilton, engraved by Hollar1 in 1639, and by him dedicated to Charles I. Soon after the institution of this device, or livery, the French king appears to have introduced the same at his court; for, in 1393, Charles VI. sent a magnificent collar, formed of broomcods, interspersed with the letters composing his word, or motto, "JAMES" [jamais] to the king of England, with three other similar but less weighty collars for the Dukes of Lancaster, Gloucester, and York. Upon the dethronement of Richard, the White Hart continued for a short time to be worn as an emblem of party by the opponents of the Lancaster faction; and complaints were made that the Countess of Oxford had caused certain Harts of gold and silver to be fabricated for distribution amongst the friends of the deposed monarch. Hotspur is said to have also issued them to his military followers 5. Henry IV. and his unfortunate predecessor were nearly of the same age, and had both imbibed in their infancy a predilection for the display of pomp, costly apparel, and splendid ornament. At the coronation of Richard, the young Earl of Derby, as he was styled by courtesy, though scarcely ten years old, carried the sword Curtana for his father, John of Gaunt, who had claimed the performance of that service in right of his earldom of Lincoln. He was then already a knight of the garter; it appearing that garters, adorned with roses and ostrich feathers, badges of his royal house, had been prepared for his decoration at that solemnity. A rare impression from this plate is preserved in the British Museum. The king is in a kneeling posture, and habited in a robe, powdered, with collars of broomcods encircling a white hart couchant, with a collar of the same about his neck, and the white hart as a badge, not attached to the collar, but placed, like the star of a modern order, on his left breast. Several angels are introduced, all adorned with similar collars, and having the badge of the white hart on the left breast. The following description of the device is found in the verses subjoined to the engraving: "Cur Regi e siliquis torques contexta genistæ Cognomen Regis Plantagenista fuit. Albam insigne tulit filius unde marem." 2 Hist. des Ordres Religieux, tome viii. p. 278, where the device is minutely described. Upton de Militar. Off. p. 33. Menestrier, Art du Blason, p. 97, where it is erroneously treated as a military order. 3 Philippa de Coucy, second daughter and co-heir of Ingelram, Earl of Bedford, (by the Princess Isabel, eldest daughter of K. Edw. III.) and wife of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland. 4 Walsingham, sub anno 1404. 5 Leland's Collect. 6 Exit. Pell. Pasch. 1 Ric. II. Froissart mentions that King Henry, at his coronation, wore about his neck the device of the king of France', whose favour towards his flagrant usurpation it was his policy to conciliate. Soon afterwards he distributed with a liberal hand amongst his adherents his own device, or collar, called S. or, (from the repetition of the letter), SS., which became thenceforward, and during the Lancastrian ascendancy, the sign, or livery, of the court. The antiquity and origin of this collar, and the signification of the device, having occupied the attention of several writers, it will be the object of this essay to state the different hypotheses which have been produced on the subject. Wicelius, a German polemical writer, contemporary with Queen Mary, and a violent adversary of the Reformation, asserts that he had found, amongst the manuscripts in the abbatial library of Fulda, a description of a society or religious order of Saint Simplicius, consisting of men of noble families whose custom it was to wear around the neck collars of silver, composed of the twin letters SS, the initials of the name of their patron: that the collar so worn contained, alternately with these letters, twelve very small silver plates, whereon were engraved the twelve articles of the Christian faith, together with "the Simplician trefoil:" that the image of the saint was seen pendent from the collar, with seven plates attached thereto, signifying the seven charismata of the Holy Spirit: and that this mystery was intended to express, that those who should be decorated with such a collar would prove, in peace and war, most constant in their devotion to the religion of Christ. Where and when such an order or society existed does not appear; and, in the absence of any thing in the shape of evidence on that point, it may be reasonably asked, whether the whole be not one of the numerous inventions to which religious controversy at that period gave rise? Following the steps of this writer, though with a different theory on the subject, Nicholas Harpsfeld, sometime Archdeacon of Canterbury, who died in 1583, after having suffered an imprisonment of twenty-three years for his adhesion to the ancient creed, treating, in his ecclesiastical history of Eng 1 Chroniques de Froissart par Buchon. Paris, 1826, tome xiv. p. 226. The editor, in a note, calls it "celle (la devise) que le roi de France lui avoit donné, en signe d'amitié, pendant son exil à Paris." Modius, in his Pandecta Triumphales, p. 150, describing the costume of the king on this occasion, says, "gestans conchyliatum torquem ordinis gallicani :" but he wrote after the institution of the order of St. Michael, and evidently mistook the device of the cosse de genêt for the collar of that order, which was not founded until the reign of Louis XI. 2 Geo. Wicelius de Divis tàm Veteris quàm Novi Testamenti, 8vo. Basiliæ, 1557, p. 254, quoted by Dugdale in his Orig. Judicial. p. 102. 6 land1, of the claims to sanctity of Etheldreda, consort of Egfrid, King of Northumberland, and, after separation from her husband, Abbess of Ely, relates that this princess, being afflicted with a tumour on her neck which occasioned her death, had, in her dying moments, expressed her gratitude to Divine Providence for having visited with so slight a punishment her youthful indulgence of pride and vanity in wearing around her neck a collar of gold. The author then observes," It has been the custom of our English matrons to wear around the neck a collar of thin silk, called Etheldreda's Collar,' in memory, perhaps, of the circumstance which I have mentioned: and, would to God that this memorial might excite our minds to imitate the virtues of Etheldreda 2! which was the intent, as I conceive, of the institution and practice. I could wish that the nobles of our own, as well as of other nations, who wear about their necks that collar which is called a Collar of SS,' might be animated by like motives; those letters denoting the name of St. Simplicius, of a senatorial family of Rome, who generously died for Christ." He then refers, for the origin, cause, and signification of that collar, to Wicelius and his treatise on St. Simplicius. 6 Notwithstanding the air of romance which pervades the two different narratives of these zealous theologians, Dugdale appears to have not altogether withheld his belief that such had been the foundation of the Collar of SS. In his " Origines Juridiciales," he observes, "That this kind of ornament [the Collar of SS, worn by the chief justices and baron] hath been very anciently used here in England, especially by knights, we have sufficient testimony from monuments and tombs of near three hundred years old: how long before, I dare not take upon me to say; but the original occasion of them is of much greater antiquity, which from an author of credit (Wicelius) writing of the lives of Simplicius and Faustinus, brethren and Roman senators, who suffered martyrdom under Dioclesian the emperor, I shall here add [quoting then the passage from Wicelius abovementioned]; and the reason of this chain, so used by such noble persons, was in regard that those two brothers were martyred by tying a stone with a chain about their necks, and casting their bodies into the river Tyber." As Dugdale published this observation in 1671, the testimony of the Monuments and Tombs, to which he alludes, would, from 1 Edited by Richard Gibbon, an English Jesuit, at Douay, in 1622, p. 86. 2 Amongst the virtues of this virgin queen, the following are enumerated by Harpsfeld: laneis solis vestibus, lineis nunquam, rarò callidis balneis usa, et tùm quidem post omnes sorores [cænobii quo præfuerat] quibus abluendis diligenter priùs inservierat: non amplius quam semel per diem comedere solita, &c. &c. 3 Page 102. |