John Morton (1410-1500).
[369]Cardinal Morton:—lettre from A. Ettrick, esq., 9 July 1681:—'The grant of Morton's coate was not to the cardinal, but I beleeve he like other great new clergie-men tooke the libertie to use what coate he pleased; but about the 7th of Henry VIII <1515>, the coate is granted by three heralds to one of the same family with a gratis dictum recital in the grant of a descent of a pretty many auncestors ingraffing him into the family of Bawtry (vide [370] of Bawtry) in Yorkshire. This Sir Edward Bysh shewed me in the Heralds' Office.'—Quod vide.
Vide Utopia, pp. 49, 50, an immortall elogie; Sir Thomas More in aula ejus educatus.
[371]In my last I gave you some memoirs of cardinall Morton, and that the tradicion of the countrey people in Dorset, when I was a schooleboy there at Blandford, was that he was a shoe-maker's son of Bere in com. praedict.: but Sir William Dugdale ... sayes 'by no meanes I must putt in writing hear-sayes.'
His coate is this[372], 'quarterly, gules and ermine, in the first quarter a goat's head erased ...': which something resembles the shoemakers' armes, who give 'three goates' heades,' as you may see in the signe without Bocardo.
This coate of Moreton is in the west chamber of the Katherine-wheele Inne at Great Wiccomb in Bucks, with (as I remember) the cardinall's cappe.