(Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, p. 555, writing in 1631; Ashmole MS., 784, f. 41, writing in 1657; Sandford, Genealogical History, 309, writing in 1677 and dating the epitaph about 60 years earlier; History of the County of Hertfordshire, by Robert Clutterbuck (London, 1815), i. 73.)

The third line of this epitaph refers to a legend which first appears in the works of Sir Thomas More, and which had a great popularity at one time. It recounts how a man, who declared that he had been blind from birth and that he had been miraculously cured at the shrine of St. Alban, was proved to be lying by the Duke of Gloucester, who asked him the colours of the coats of the various people standing round and was answered correctly. As the man declared that his sight had been restored that very day, the impossibility of his having learned the various colours in so short a time proved the baselessness of his story. (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iii. 713; cf. Shakespeare, Second Part of King Henry VI., Act II. Scene i.)

Later generations made a strange mistake with regard to the place where Duke Humphrey was buried. The reverent affection with which his name was regarded, after the defamations of the Lancastrians had caused a reaction which went to the opposite extreme, led the Londoners to do him honour, and for this purpose they selected a tomb in the old St. Paul’s Cathedral. By what chance the mistake was made cannot be known, but in the days of John Stow, the chronicler, the tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, son of Guy, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1358, was thought to contain the remains of the ‘Good Duke.’ Every year a ceremony was observed when ‘on May Day tankard-bearers, watermen, and some other of like quality beside, would use to come to the same tombe early in the morning’ and strew herbs and sprinkle water thereon. The precise significance of this proceeding seems to be unknown. (Stow’s Survey of London, ed. Thomas, 1842, p. 125.)

In connection with this mistake as to Gloucester’s tomb, there grew up a saying, which is known to most people at the present day, though in many cases the origin is forgotten. ‘To dine with Duke Humphrey’ was till comparatively recent years synonymous with not dining at all, and the saying arose from the mistaken idea, that the tomb in St. Paul’s was Gloucester’s last resting-place. In the days when the Cathedral was a public meeting-place for Londoners, and a centre of social and commercial life, it was the custom for certain gallants, whose pretensions were greater than their purses were full, to hang about there in the hopes of receiving an invitation to dinner, and failing in their quest, they were compelled to dispense with dinner altogether. The rendezvous of these hangers-on of society, who sought to live on men whose social position they despised, was opposite the tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, and it is of them that Thomas Dekker, who has left us so many interesting facts relating to the early seventeenth century, wrote, when he said: ‘Such schemes are laid about eleven o’clock in St. Paul’s (even amongst those that wear gilt rapiers by their sides), where for that noone they may shift from Duke Humphrey, and be furnished with dinner at some meaner man’s table’ (Dekker’s Dead Terme, D. 3). Those that failed in their endeavours, and were left dinnerless near the tomb where they had taken their stand, were therefore said ‘to have dined with Duke Humphrey.’ A reflection of this same phrase is to be found in Bishop Corbet’s ‘Letter to the Duke of Buckingham,’ where he alludes to

APPENDIX C
GLOUCESTER’S WILL

Wheathampsted tells us that the Duke died intestate (Whethamstede, i. 74), and on March 24, 1427, a commission was issued to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Say de Sele, Sir Thomas Stanley, John Somerset, and Richard Chester, empowering them to dispose of the goods and chattels of the late Duke of Gloucester, since he had died intestate (Rot. Pat., 25 Henry VI., Part ii. m. 35; Rymer, V. i. 171). On the other hand, there is a strong presumption that a will did really exist, and that the Duke’s enemies suppressed it. No such document has survived, but in one of their frequent letters written to various persons in the hope of securing the books promised to them, the authorities of the University of Oxford ask for a copy of Gloucester’s will, as though it were a well-known fact that such a document existed (Epist. Acad., 285). In several other letters the will is referred to, though it is noticeable that when writing to the King on the subject, its existence is not mentioned (Epist. Acad., 252). The date of this last letter is 1447, whilst the former was written in 1450, which seems to imply that the University had obtained evidence of the existence of a will in the interval. Moreover, in one letter there is a thinly veiled suggestion that those in power were diverting the property of the late Duke to their own private ends (Epist. Acad., 286). It seems likely that Gloucester’s enemies seized the majority of his property, and that the King himself presented some of his uncle’s possessions to the foundations at Eton and Cambridge in which he was so much interested. Certainly some church ornaments and jewels, which had belonged to Humphrey, and were then in the keeping of the Abbey of St. Albans, found their way to these institutions, though the monks were to a certain extent compensated for the loss (Rot. Parl., v. 307; Whethamstede, i. 65), and we have already shown the probability that the Library of King’s College, Cambridge, was begun with a collection of Humphrey’s books. It is noteworthy that a loving-cup, now in the possession of Christ’s College, bears the arms of Gloucester quartered with those of his Cobham wife; (ex relatione Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, Garter); this, too, was probably part of the plunder which fell to the King on his uncle’s death. The supposition that there was a will, and that it was suppressed, is strengthened by the fact that the Parliament of Bury passed an ordinance annulling Eleanor of Gloucester’s right to any dower, or to any freehold or other possession left to her by her husband (Rot. Parl., v. 135). Apart from the question of dower, how could Eleanor have any claim to the late Duke’s possessions except under the terms of his will?

It is significant that the question of the settlement of Duke Humphrey’s affairs was reopened by the Parliament which was called after the first battle of St. Albans under Yorkist influence, the same assembly that petitioned the King for the vindication of his uncle’s memory. In another petition this Parliament besought the King to provide for the administration of Gloucester’s estate, since his creditors had not been paid, and were in great want. It was suggested that fresh commissioners for this purpose should be appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that they should have right of action against those who were detaining the property of the Duke illegally. It was definitely stated that the existing goods and chattels would not both pay his debts and fulfil his will, a statement which cannot be regarded as consistent with the assertion that he died intestate (Rot. Parl., v. 339). The petition was dismissed with the familiar formula ‘Le roi s’advisera,’ but some steps were ultimately taken, and in 1462 we find the Archbishop of Canterbury busy in arranging for ‘the performance of the will of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Westminster Abbey MSS., Miscellanea, Press 6, Box 2, Parcel 20; see Hist. MSS. Rep., iv., Appendix, p. 176). All the facts suggest that Wheathampsted was once again mistaken with regard to the events which surrounded his friend and patron’s death, and that a will was made by Gloucester, but suppressed by his triumphant enemies, and probably in the end never completely executed.

APPENDIX D
GLOUCESTER’S RESIDENCES

There are indications that Duke Humphrey possessed several houses scattered about the country in which he dwelt from time to time. We have seen him residing and holding his Court at Pembroke Castle (Rot. Parl., iv. 474); on one occasion, at least, he was resident at his manor of Penshurst in Kent (Oriel MS., xxxii.); and he is said to have at one time dwelt at the Manor of the Weald, near St. Albans (Newcome, History of Abbey of St. Albans, 510). Another story declares that he held the castle of Devizes and had a mansion there (Holkham MS., p. 68), but there is no trace of the possession of the castle in official records, and it is known to have been demolished towards the end of the reign of Edward III. It would seem likely that he resided at Leicester and Pontefract at certain times, as on the fly-leaf of a book that he gave to his wife there are scribbled certain accounts relative to his household, dated at the two above-named places (Sloane MS., 248). The most famous of Gloucester’s residences was the one situated at Greenwich. This mansion is supposed to have been a royal residence as far back as the days of Edward I.; Henry IV. was constantly resident there, and from it his will is dated. Henry V. gave it to Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, for his life, and within two years of the latter’s death, we find it in the possession of Duke Humphrey (St. Albans Chron., i. 32)—possibly under the provision in Henry V.’s will that gave all his castles in the south of England to his youngest brother (Test. Vetust., i. 21). Henceforth it was Duke Humphrey’s favourite resort, and between 1432 and 1437 he transformed it into a far more important house than it had been hitherto. He was given permission to increase his possessions in the immediate neighbourhood by exchanging some lands for seventeen acres belonging to the Carthusian Monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem at Shene (Ancient Petitions, File 113, No. 5612; Rot. Parl., iv. 466; Ordinances, iv. 136-138), and ultimately he surrounded the manor with a wall, embattled the mansion itself, and built towers and turrets within the park, one of which stood on the spot on which Greenwich Observatory is now placed. The house was surrounded by a park of some two hundred acres, most of which had been enclosed and afforested by special permission of the King (Rot. Parl., iv. 498, 499; Ordinances, iv. 136-138; Cal. Rot. Pat., 277). Both in official documents and in letters written from Greenwich this residence is called ‘the manor of Plesaunce,’ and at Humphrey’s death it reverted to the Crown and was inhabited by Henry VI., when Jack Cade’s rebellion had made the capital unsafe (Fabyan, 623). Edward IV. enlarged and furnished this palace, Henry VII. spent much time there, his son Henry VIII. and his grand-daughters Mary and Elizabeth were all born there. At the Restoration, the King pulled down the old building, and in the days of Humphrey’s seventeenth-century biographer hardly a stone of it was left; and a new building was rising on the site (Holkham MS., p. 68). This new house, by the gift of William III. and Mary, became, and still is, the National Hospital for Seamen. (See Gentleman’s Magazine, New Series, vol. xiii. pp. 21-24; ‘Cygnea Cantio auctore Joanne Lelando,’ in Leland’s Itinerary, ed. by Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1768), vol. ix. p. 17.)

Besides his residence in Greenwich, Humphrey possessed a house in London, ‘a place callid the Duke’s Wardrobe atte Baynardes Castel in London, otherwise called Waterton’s Aley’ (Rot. Parl., v. 239). This mansion was situated on the banks of the river, just west of Paul’s Wharf, and bounded on the north by what is now Queen Victoria Street. It has been thought that this was the same site as the original castle of Bainard and the Fitzwalter family (Stow’s Survey of London (London, 1720), Book i. pp. 60, 61), though modern research tends to prove that this earlier fortress was in another parish (London, by J. W. Loftie, Historical Towns Series (London, 1887), p. 80). Possibly the palace of the earliest Saxon kings stood on this spot, and in Chaucer’s day it seems to have been a royal residence, to which Edward II. had added a lofty tower (The Pageant of London, by Richard Davey (London, 1906), i. 42, 188). In 1428 a devastating fire reduced this quarter of London to ashes, and it seems that it was at this time that Humphrey built the palace associated with his name, though no documentary evidence exists to justify the suggestion (Stow’s Survey, Book i. pp. 60, 61; London City, by W. J. Loftie (London, 1891), p. 249). The fact that in 1427 the Duke was at an ‘Inn,’ when the representatives of Parliament called upon him, supports the theory that at that time he had no permanent residence in the city. The house was called Baynard’s Castle after the ward in which it was built, extensive grounds surrounded it, and it was only second in magnificence to the palace at Greenwich, if we are to believe a political songster of the time, who makes Eleanor sadly take leave of ‘fayer places on Temmy’s side’ (‘The Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester,’ in Polit. Songs, ii. 207). Mansion, gardens, and all pertaining thereto were given by the King in 1447 (when they reverted to him at the death of his uncle) to King’s College, Cambridge (Rot. Parl., v. 132), but in the reign of Edward IV. we find the King’s mother there resident, and it was at Baynard’s Castle that the Mayor of London waited on Richard of Gloucester in 1483 with the formal offer of the English Crown (London City, pp. 76, 116). Henry VII. rebuilt the palace early in his reign, but it was not then embattled, ‘or so strongly fortified castle-like,’ as in Duke Humphrey’s days, but was more of a royal and family residence (Stow’s Survey, Book i. pp. 60, 61). We next find it in the possession of the Herbert family, and on July 19, 1553, the Privy Council met there to proclaim Mary queen, the owner being then William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (The History and Survey of London, by B. Lambert, London, 1806, iii. 98). John Cooper, the seventeenth-century biographer of Duke Humphrey, had himself visited Baynard’s Castle, and by that time, he tells us, the property had been split up, and was intersected by streets and lanes, but they still bore ‘the name of Duke Humphries.’ Indeed there stood an inn which bore the sign of the Duke just on the edge of the site of the old mansion, and at the time of writing was famous for a recent brawl on the premises (Holkham MS., pp. 68, 69). The whole district was swept away by the great fire of 1666, but in 1809 two towers of the old castle were still standing, and to this day Castle Street and Castle Yard commemorate the past glories of Gloucester’s London residence (Davey’s Pageant of London, i. 337).

APPENDIX E
PORTRAITS OF GLOUCESTER

I. In a book of portraits in Vol. 266 of the Bibliothèque de la ville d’Arras, on folio 37, there is a portrait bearing Gloucester’s name, a reproduction of which hangs in the Bodleian Library. It appears among a series of portraits of people from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, which represent in most cases Flemish grandees and prominent courtiers of the Court of Burgundy. On folio 36 there is a portrait of Jacqueline of Hainault, and on folio 35 another of the Dauphin John, her first husband. All are in crayon, and are probably the work of Jacques Le Boucq, a herald of the Toison d’Or, who was known as a painter in the days of Philip II. of Spain. It has been thought probable that he copied contemporary portraits for these crayon drawings, and if this be true, he provides us with the only attempt at real portraiture of Duke Humphrey (Catalogue of the Arras Library; Les Portraits Aux Crayons, by Henri Bouchet, Paris, 1884).

II. In the initial letter of the dedication to Duke Humphrey, prefixed to Capgrave’s Commentary on Genesis, a miniature portrays the author in the act of presenting his book to his patron. The workmanship of this miniature is too coarse to allow of any portraiture, though a slight likeness to the Arras portrait may be traced (Oriel MS., xxxii.). A line reproduction of the Duke’s head, taken from this manuscript, is given in Doyle’s Official Baronage.

III. In a register at St. Albans Abbey there is a small illumination representing Duke Humphrey and his wife Eleanor, painted on the occasion of the latter’s reception into the confraternity of St. Albans. There is here a more successful attempt at portraiture than in the Oriel manuscript, and the type of face, long, clean shaven, almost apathetic, is similar to that in the Arras drawing. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere there is no real character in the face of Humphrey, and still less in that of his wife; there is, indeed, a strong suggestion of mediæval formalism (Cotton MS., Nero, D. vii. f. 154).

IV. Among the royal collection of manuscripts in the British Museum there is a Psalter which was prepared for Duke Humphrey, and which, besides being beautifully illuminated, bears a miniature which may contain a portrait of the owner (Royal MS., 2, B. i.). It represents a man kneeling at a Prie-Dieu, with a patron standing behind him. The kneeling figure may very well be taken to represent the owner of the book. Again there are very few signs of portraiture, but such as it is, the miniature seems to be the likeness of Humphrey when still a young man The manuscript was written about 1415, which would lead us to suppose that the artist here tried to present the Duke’s features at the age of twenty-five.

V. In the church at Greenwich which was destroyed in 1710 there was a stained-glass window representing the Duke in a kneeling posture. A copy of this window is still extant, and is to be found as the headpiece of the preface to the old catalogue of manuscripts contained in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1697). A rough drawing thereof, executed in 1695, is also to be found in Tanner MS., 24, f. 107, and another, dating from some seventy-five years earlier, exists in Ashmole MS., 874, f. 113^vo. Humphrey is represented in armour, and in appearance he is here totally unlike any of the above-mentioned portraits, being represented as wearing a beard. The window was probably placed in Greenwich church some time after his decease.

VI. In the year 1610 there was at the west end of the church of St. Helen’s, Abingdon, a glass window, in which were portraits of Henry V. and his three brothers. ‘These Dukes be in their robes and their coronalls with their arms over their Hedds, and their names written under their feet.’ No drawing of this window has survived, and it has disappeared as completely as the one in Greenwich church. (Ashmole MS., 874, f. 113^vo.)

VII. Horace Walpole possessed amongst his collection of pictures at Strawberry Hill three paintings in which he claimed there were portraits of Duke Humphrey. The first was a representation of the marriage of Henry VI., and Walpole thought that it was probably designed for the King, but executed after his death. The King and Queen stand in the front of the picture, and behind the former is a nobleman, bald headed, with a beard, and wearing a furred mantle. The workmanship throughout shows considerable power and expression, and would seem to be of a later date than is supposed. (Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, London, 1876, i. 34, 35; Catalogues of Strawberry Hill Sale, p. 197.) The second picture was once part of the doors of a shrine in the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury, which Walpole had sawed into four panels. According to his judgment two of the panels bear portraits of Cardinal Beaufort and Archbishop Kemp; the third may represent St. Joseph in adoration, or more probably the donor, the fourth is described as a portrait of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and corresponds exactly in dress and appearance with the figure said to be a likeness of the same Duke in the ‘Marriage of Henry VI.’ The third and fourth panels ‘are so good that they are in the style of the school of the Caracci. They at least were painted by some Italian; the draperies have large folds, and one wonders how they could be executed in the reign of Henry VI.’ (Walpole’s Letters, Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, xi. 183, 184; Catalogue of Strawberry Hill Sale, p. 211.) Probably neither of these pictures was painted in the reign of Henry VI. The King would not have wished to have the uncle whom he had been taught to hate introduced into a picture of his marriage, nor would a contemporary have painted Cardinal Beaufort, Kemp, and Gloucester on adjoining panels. Far more probably the marriage picture represents the union of the houses of Lancaster and York in the persons of Henry VII. and his wife Elizabeth, an event fraught with far more significance than the one suggested by Walpole, and the shrine is most likely of much the same date. However, Walpole’s theory had been universally accepted, and prints of the figure from the panel of St. Edmundsbury were made, as being an authentic likeness of the Duke of Gloucester (Ackerman’s History of Oxford (London, 1814), ii. 272; Collections for the History of Hertfordshire, by N. Solomon, i. 87: Extra illustrated copy of Wood’s History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford in the Bodleian, MS. Top. Oxon., c. 16, p. 914). George Perfect Harding also painted one of his well-known water-colour portraits from this panel, and it is now in the possession of Miss C. Agnes Rooper, Per Selwood, Gervis Road, Bournemouth. It is to be noticed that the likeness between the two so-called portraits of Gloucester is not so exact as Walpole would have us think, for whereas, in the marriage of Henry VI., he is represented with a beard, in the panel he is clean shaven. This last, though probably not contemporary, seems to possess some indications that it represents the same face as the Arras manuscript, but at a later stage of life. Also it was quite possible that when personal rivalries had been forgotten in the lapse of years, the monks of Bury might erect a memorial to one of their patrons, along with others who had not been his friends during his life. Nevertheless, we cannot generalise as to Humphrey’s appearance from this portrait, which, to say the least, has a doubtful authenticity. The third picture of the Strawberry Hill collection, said to contain a portrait of the Duke of Gloucester, was once an altar-piece at Shene, and was probably painted for Henry VII. It represents Henry V. and his three brothers, together with his wife and other ladies, but the faces have no individuality, and are too conventional to be taken as portraits. These three pictures were sold to two different buyers at the Strawberry Hill sale. The ‘Marriage of Henry VI.’ and the panels from St. Edmundsbury were bought by the Duke of Sutherland, while the picture of Henry V. and his family went to the Earl of Waldegrave (Catalogue of the Strawberry Hill Sale).

VIII. In St. Mary’s Hall, Coventry, there is an Arras tapestry, which hangs below the north window. It is divided into six compartments, the two centre ones containing allegorical figures, and in the upper ones to left and right certain saints are represented. In the remaining two compartments a king and queen kneel before desks with their suite in attendance. The king and queen are supposed to be Henry VI. and his wife. Behind the king stands a bearded figure, which ‘is with no small reason supposed to be the good Duke of Gloucester’ (Thomas Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Mysteries at Coventry (Coventry, 1825); The Coventry Guide (Coventry, 1824), p. 46; The History of the Antiquities of the City of Coventry, No. vi. pp. 187, 188; Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, by M. Jules Labarte (London, 1855), p. 90. An illustration of the tapestry is to be found in this last). However, the workmanship of this tapestry tends to prove that it dates from Tudor rather than Lancastrian times, and in all likelihood it was made to celebrate the visit of Henry VII. and his Queen to Coventry, not that of Henry VI. and Margaret. Both these monarchs and their consorts were members of the Guild of the Holy Trinity in that city.

APPENDIX F
A LEGEND OF GLOUCESTER’S DEATH

Amongst seventeenth-century chroniclers there are many accounts as to the way in which Gloucester was murdered, the most popular of which, perhaps, is the one that he was smothered to death between two pillows. A contemporary Frenchman gives a different version, which has an extraordinary resemblance to the stories which surround the death of George, Duke of Clarence, in 1478. This occurs in a rhymed account by George Chastellain of the unusual and interesting events which happened in his days and runs as follows:

(Introduction to Georges Chastellain, Chronique (ed. Buchon), p. xlviii). The rhyming chronicle in which this is found is not extant in manuscript, but in a printed form bearing the date 1528; and appended to it a continuation by Jacques Le Bouvier. Chastellain died at least three years before Clarence, so that he could not have borrowed the idea from the latter event. Nevertheless, it seems too obvious that the circumstances of the two deaths have been confused with one another to lightly dismiss its possibility. Bouvier mentions the death of Clarence and the well-known legend, putting it quaintly as follows:

(Introduction to Georges Chastellain, Chronique (ed. Buchon), p. liii), but none the less he may have interpolated the passage about Gloucester into his predecessor’s poem.

The theory of drowning, however, finds some support from an English authority. In a popular poem called ‘The Dyrge of the Commons of Kent,’ sung by the rebellious followers of Jack Cade in 1450, the following passage occurs:

(Three Fifteenth-century Chronicles, Camden Series p. 103.) It is possible that from these two legends we can get an indication of what nature Humphrey’s end really was. The story of Clarence’s drowning can have no share in suggesting the earlier poem of Jack Cade’s followers, and here may be the solution of the problem which has puzzled modern historians. It must be remembered, however, that in another work, already cited in the text, Chastellain gives the more usual story of Gloucester’s murder, when he describes his death to a red-hot spit thrust into his body. (Chastellain, Œuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vii. 87.) In both cases, however, he lays stress on the fact that the manner of death was devised so as to prevent the appearance of murder.

APPENDIX G
GLOUCESTER’S ARMS, BADGES, AND SEALS

Gloucester does not seem to have altered his armorial bearings after his marriage to Jacqueline of Hainault, for a seal attached to a charter in the archives of Mons seems to be the same one he had hitherto used (Cartulaire, iv. 440). After his marriage with Eleanor Cobham, however, he impaled the Cobham arms with his own, of which we have two recorded instances. In the east window of the church of Cobham in Kent there stood his arms ‘in two several places, dimediated with those of the Duchess Eleanor Cobham’ (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 308), and they appeared in a similar form in a window of Greenwich Church before its destruction. A reproduction of this east window is to be found as the headpiece to the preface of the old catalogue of manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum, Oxford, 1697), and the following description thereof was written in 1695: ‘An Helmet and crest with Mantles, and the Antelopes holding it up with Humphrey Duke of Gloucester kneeling, and his Arms, scilt. quarterly France and England within a bordure argent on one side, and the same arms impaling Cobham, viz., Gules on a Cheveron or, three Estoils sable, on the other side, a good distance from him; stand all in one of the south windows near the Belfry of Greenwich Church’ (Tanner MS., 24, f. 107). The manuscript also contains a rough drawing of the window, as is also the case in an Ashmole record written about 1659, which gives the same information, though at less length (Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 228). Humphrey, it will be noticed, used as one of his supporters an antelope, which had been borne by Henry IV., and had appeared on the trappings of his horse in the Lists of Coventry (Tyler, Henry of Monmouth, p. 30). It appears from a manuscript in the Heralds’ College that his supporters were to the Dexter a Greyhound argent collared and leashed or, to the Sinister an Heraldic Antelope argent Ducally gorged and chained or (Heralds’ College MS., 14, f. 105, B.).

II. BADGES

Humphrey bore no less than three badges. From a political song, written probably about 1449, it appears that he was known by the title of ‘the Swan,’ a name taken from the badge he had adopted from his Bohun ancestors. In the course of the poem the phrase ‘the Swanne is goone’ appears, and in a different though contemporary hand the word ‘Gloucetter’ is written above the word ‘Swanne’ (Political Songs, ii. 221. Cf. Excerpta Historica, p. 161)

The second badge was on a shield sable three ostrich feathers argent surrounded by the Garter and supported to the Dexter by the Greyhound, to the Sinister by the Antelope. (Window in Greenwich Church, College of Arms MS., L. 14, 105, B.) These appear in the Greenwich window (Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 228. Cf. Archæologia, xxxi. 368), though from impressions of his seal he seems then only to have used two feathers. (Seal described in Cartulaire, iv. 440, and Seal attached to British Museum, Additional Charters, 6000.)

The third badge has a particular interest. It is found at frequent intervals on the St. Albans tomb, and it appears in a slightly different form in other places. It seems to represent a cup with sprays of some plant issuing from the top. On the tomb the sprays look like daisies or their foliage, whereas in drawings of this same badge that occur in several manuscripts in the College of Arms and elsewhere, they seem to be laurels. They vary, too, as to the number of sprays. On the tomb there are seven or eight in each cup, whilst in the extant drawings, which date mostly from the seventeenth century, they vary from one to three (College of Arms, Garter Types and Badges, and MS., L. 14, f. 105, B.). Gough thought that this badge was the rebus of Wheathampsted, and represented wheat sheaves (Gough, Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii. part III. p. 142). This, however, is disproved by the fact that it was not Wheathampsted who built the Duke’s tomb, and it was unlikely that Abbot Stoke would put his predecessor’s mark on a monument built by himself, and secondly by an entry which we find in more than one place under the drawings of the cup, which reads, ‘Humfrey Duke of Gloucester bare this cup with a Laurell branch, in the respect he bore to Learning’ (College of Arms, Miscellanea Curiosa, i. 105, B. Cf. Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 227).

III. SEALS

There are few impressions of Gloucester’s seal still surviving. In the British Museum there is attached to a warrant a very small seal bearing the Duke’s coat of arms and round it the motto ‘Loyalle et Belle’ (Additional Charters, xxxvi. 146). This is the only evidence to prove the use of this motto by the Duke, save some rather inconclusive remarks on the fly-leaf of one of his manuscripts (Sloane MS., 248). A larger impression is attached to a grant of custody given by Gloucester and dated September 22, 1426 (Additional Charters, 6000). This seal is in fairly good preservation and on one side bears the Duke’s arms between two feathers and surmounted by a cap, on the other a representation of the Duke himself holding a drawn sword and riding on a horse.

In the Mons archives attached to a charter granted by Gloucester there is a round seal which is described as follows: ‘Il represente un ecu ecartele aux 1 et 4 a trois fleurs de lis et aux 2 et 3 trois lions passants, surmounté d’un heaume qui a pour cimier un léopard, et accosté de deux plumes; supports: deux beliers.’ The legend runs: ‘Sigilu. Humfridi. filii et fratris. regis. ducis Glocestrie. comitis Pembr. et camerarii Anglie’ (Cartulaire iv. 440).

Two more seals are preserved amongst the deeds in Magdalen College, Oxford. Both are attached to warrants issued by Gloucester in his capacity of Chief Keeper of the King’s Forests on this side of the river Trent. The first is a round brown seal bearing the ducal arms within a border of antlers rising from a deer’s head. Above is the figure of an heron, which with the antlers were the signs of this particular office. The inscription so far as it can be read runs: ‘S. H. duc Glouc ... Angl ac just. et capit. cust. forestr’ (Magdalen College Deeds, Selborne, 112; cf. Selborne, 115). The second is a seal of green wax, hollow on the reverse, and though much broken, still reveals the stag’s head and antlers surrounding Gloucester’s arms (Magdalen College Deeds, Shotover, 4).

SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES

I. PRINTED BOOKS

Contemporary Chroniclers who wrote in England

Books Illustrating the History of Literature