The Curiosities of Heraldry by Mark Antony Lower

Author:Mark Antony Lower [Lower, Mark Antony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2022-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Trevelyan of Somersetshire, Bart. ‘Gules, a horse argent armed or, issuant from the sea in base, party per fesse wavy, azure and of the second.’ This family primarily bore a very different coat: their present armorials were assumed “on occasion of one of their ancestors swimming on horseback from the rocks called Seven Stones to the Land’s End in Cornwall, at the time of an inundation, which is said to have overwhelmed a large tract of land, and severed thereby those rocks from the continent of Cornwall.”[232] This story may appear rather improbable, but it should be remembered that some similar disruptions of land from the coast, such as the Goodwin Sands, Selsey Rocks, &c. are authentic matters of history. Whether the most powerful of the equine race, which are, even under far more favourable circumstances, “vain things for safety,” would be able to outbrave the violence of the sea necessary to produce such a phenomenon, I leave to better horsemen than myself to decide.

The arms of Aubrey de Vere, the great ancestor of the earls of Oxford,[233] in the 12th century, were ‘Quarterly, gules and or; in the first quarter a star or mullet of five points or.’ “In the year of our Lord 1098,” saith Leland,[234] “Corborant, Admiral to Soudan of Perce [so our antiquary was pleased to spell Persia,] was fought with at Antioche, and discomfited by the Christians. The night cumming on yn the chace of this bataile, and waxing dark, the Christianes being four miles from Antioche, God, willing the saufté [safety] of the Christianes, shewed a white star or molette of five pointes on the Christen host; which to every mannes sighte did lighte and arrest upon the standard of Albry de Vere, there shyning excessively!” The mullet was subsequently used as a badge by his descendants. “The Erle of Oxford’s men had a starre with streames booth before and behind on their lyverys.”[235]

Thomas Fitz-Gerald, father of John, first earl of Kildare, bore the sobriquet of Nappagh, Simiacus, or the Ape, from the following ludicrous circumstance. When he was an infant of nine months old, his grandfather and father were both killed in the war waged by them against M’Carthy, an opposing chief. He was then being nursed at Tralee, and his attendants, in the first consternation caused by the news of the disaster, ran out of the house, leaving the child alone in his cradle. A large ape or baboon, kept on the premises, with the natural love of mischief inherent in that mimic tribe, taking advantage of the circumstance, took him from his resting-place and clambered with him to the roof of the neighbouring abbey, and thence to the top of the steeple. After having carried his noble charge round the battlements, exhibiting the while various monkey tricks heretofore unknown to nursery-maids, to the no small consternation and amazement of the spectators, he descended with careful foot, ad terram firmam, and replaced the child in the cradle. In consequence of this event

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