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The Earl Marshal, the Heralds, and the House of Commons, 1604–16411

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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Abstract

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The successful reassertion of the authority of the Court of the Earl Marshal, in the recent case of the Corporation of Manchester vs. The Manchester Palace of Varieties, Ltd., has renewed interest in this ancient institution. The court ruled that The Manchester Palace of Varieties had wrongly displayed the heraldic arms of the Corporation, contrary to the laws and customs of arms, and that the court itself, which had last sat in 1751 and which Blackstone described as having fallen into contempt and disuse, was still empowered to give relief to those who thought themselves aggrieved in such matters.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1957

References

page 106 note 2 The Times (London), 22 Dec. 1954 and 22 Jan. 1955; The Full Report of the Case of the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Manchester versus the Manchester Palace of Varieties Limited in the High Court of Chivalry on Tuesday, 21st December, 1954, The Heraldry Society, East Knoyle, Salisbury, 1955.

page 106 note 3 There is a voluminous literature on heraldry, some of which deals with the earl marshal. The best guide is Moule, Thomas, Bibliotheca Heraldica Magnae Britanniae, London 1822Google Scholar; see also Cope, S. Trehearne, Heraldry, Flags and Seals, : A Select Bibliography, with Annotations, Covering the Period 1920 to 1945, in: Journal of Documentation, IV (1948), 92146.Google ScholarAnstis, John, Curia Militaris: or, a Treatise of the Court of Chivalry; in three books (printed, not published, London 1702)Google Scholar contains only the introduction and table of contents of a work which was never completed. Hearne, Thomas, A Collection of Curious Discourses, London 1720Google Scholar; 2nd ed., 2 vols., 1765; 3rd ed., 1771, includes several contemporary papers on the earl marshal, composed in the first years of the seventeenth century. Other useful works are Edmondson, Joseph, A Complete Body of Heraldry 2 vols., London 1780Google Scholar; Dallaway, James, Inquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry, Gloucester 1793Google Scholar; and Noble, Mark, A History of the College of Arms, London 1805.Google Scholar The fullest modern account is by Grazebrook, George, The Earl Marshal's Court in England; comprising Visitations, and the Penalties incurred by their Neglect, in: Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancashire and Cheshire, n.s., IX (1894), 99140Google Scholar, also printed separately (Liverpool, 1895). Many of the visitations have been published by the Harleian Society. Grazebrook held that the records of the earl marshal's court had disappeared, but some Act Books for 1687–1702, together with a number of other original documents survive in the College of Arms. These are described in the authoritative work of the present Herald, Richmond, Wagner, Anthony R., The Records and Collections of the College of Arms, London 1952.Google Scholar

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page 109 note 1 Folger Shakespeare Library MS. 423.1.

page 109 note 2 Wyrley, William, The True Use of Armorie, London 1592Google Scholar, qu. in Dugdale, Sir William, The Antient Usage in Bearing of such Ensigns of Honour as are commonly call'd Arms, 2d ed., Oxford 1682, p. 30.Google Scholar

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page 110 note 1 Peacham's Compleat Gentleman, 1634, intro. by Gordon, G. S., Oxford 1906, pp. 160161.Google Scholar

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page 110 note 3 Public Record Office, S. P. 14/44, 76, 107; 16/468, 129.

page 110 note 4 Round, J. H., Peerage and Pedigree, London 1910, I, 69, 86, 9196.Google Scholar Under Charles I claims to peerage dignities appear to have been tried in the House of Lords.

page 110 note 5 Hist. MSS. Comm., Le Fleming MSS., London 1890, p. 13.

page 110 note 6 C.S.P., Dom., 1611–18, p. 82.

page 110 note 7 Ibid., p. 157.

page 110 note 8 Ibid., p. 166.

page 110 note 9 Acts of the Privy Council of England, n.s., 1617–19, London 1929, pp. 310311Google Scholar; C. S. P. Dom., 1619–23 (1858), pp. 17, 123. In 1620, when James visited St. Paul's in state, there was a dispute as to whether knighted councillors should follow earls' sons as decided by the commissioners (ibid., p. 135).

page 111 note 1 Proclamations of 15 Oct. 1613 and 4 Feb. 1613/14, Steele, R. R., ed., A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns, Oxford 1910, I, nos. 1134, 1142.Google Scholar

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page 111 note 3 Public Record Office, S. P. 14/44, 76.

page 111 note 4 “A Breeff Discourse of the causes of Discord amongst the officers of armes: and of the great abuses and absurdities comitted by Painters, to the great prejudice and hindrance of the same office,” written in 1606, Folger Shakespeare Library MS. 1186.1.

page 112 note 1 Englefield, W. A. D., The History of the Painter-Stainers Company of London, London 1923, pp. 81Google Scholar et seq. The painters argued in support of their claims that their art went back to the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekial (C.S.P., Dom., 1635–36 [1866], p. 38).

page 112 note 2 Rymer, XVII, 321–22.

page 112 note 3 Hervey, Mary F. S., The Life, Correspondence & Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Cambridge 1921.Google Scholar

page 112 note 4 Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, London 1883–1884, IV, 137138Google Scholar; Firth, C. H., The House of Lords during the Civil War, London 1910, pp. 3940.Google Scholar

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page 112 note 6 John, Cowel, The Interpeter (first pub. 1607), London 1701Google Scholar, s.v. Constable and Court of Chivalry.

page 112 note 7 The First Part of the Institutes, London 1628, secs. 102, 745.Google Scholar

page 112 note 8 The famous hearing, in 1630, between Lord Reay and David Ramsay, was occasioned by an appeal of treason, and was ordered to be settled by combat, although eventually the king intervened and the parties were committed to the Tower until they gave security to keep the peace. But in this instance the court was enlarged by the special appointment of a Constable (Rushworth, John, Historical Collections, II [London, 1680], pt. i, 112128Google Scholar).

page 113 note 1 Cabala, pt. i, 200–1.

page 113 note 2 Public Record Office, S. P. 14/124, 38.

page 113 note 3 Hist. MSS. Comm., Sixth Report (1878), p. 250.

page 114 note 1 Hist. MSS. Comm., Salisbury MSS., XVIII (1940), 68, 127.

page 114 note 2 Liber Familicus of Sir James Whitelocke, ed. John, Bruce (Camden Soc., o.s., LXX, 1858), pp. 3439.Google Scholar

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page 115 note 1 Ibid., 1621–23 (1932), pp. 98–100, 364–66; C.S.P., Dom., 1619–23, pp. 321, 412, 413; Robert Plot (Mowbray Herald Extraordinary in 1695), A Defence of the Jurisdiction of the Earl Marshal's Court, in: Hearne, Thomas, A Collection of Curious Discourses, 3rd ed., London 1771, II, 265267.Google Scholar

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page 115 note 3 Acts of the Privy Council, 1621–23. p. 450.

page 115 note 4 Folger Shakespeare Library MS. 393.4.

page 115 note 5 Grazebrook, The Earl Marshal's Court, p. 112.

page 115 note 6 C.S.P., Dom., 1623–25 (1859), p. 95.

page 115 note 7 Ibid., p. 401.

page 116 note 1 Ibid., p. 506.

page 116 note 2 An excellent account of the procedures is given in the introduction to George, Grazebrook and John, Paul Rylands, eds., The Visitation of Shropshire…. 1623 (Harleian Soc., 1889).Google Scholar

page 116 note 3 Noble, History of the College of Arms, pp. 191–92.

page 117 note 1 Steele, Bibliography of Royal Proclamations, I, no. 1225; cf. C.S.P., Dom., 1611–18, p. 593, and King, T. W., ed., Lancashire Funeral Certificates (Chetham Soc., LXXV, 1869)Google Scholar, p.v. Fees totalling 380l. 10 s. were levied at a funeral in 1639 (C.S.P., Dom., 1639 [1873], P. 522).

page 117 note 2 Journals of the House of Commons (n.p., n.d.), I, 692–93.

page 117 note 3 Ibid., I, 701, 704.

page 117 note 4 Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. Hind, A. B., XIX, London 1914, 12.Google Scholar

page 118 note 1 C.S.P., Dom., 1627–28 (1858), pp. 230–31.

page 118 note 2 Segar, William, The Earl Marshal his Office, in Guillim, John, A Display of Heraldry, London 1724, pt. ii, 4041.Google Scholar

page 118 note 3 Rushworth took notes of some which he published in his Historical Collections, II, pt. ii, 1054–56. James Dalloway printed some from mss. in the College of Arms in his Inquiries into… Heraldry in England, pp. 295–302.

page 118 note 4 De La Warr vs. West, in Rushworth, II, pt. ii, 10541055Google Scholar; Blount vs. Moore, in Grazebrook, The Earl Marshal's Court, p. 111.

page 118 note 5 Dispute for precedence in Holland between the Earls of Oxford and Southampton, who were both colonels of regiments in the service of the Elector Palatine (C.S.P., Dom., 1623–25, pp. 297, 311); charges arising out of the expedition to La Rochelle (ibid., 1628–29 [1859], p. 419); sentence of death against William Homes (ibid., 1634–35 [1864], p. 436); committing by the earl marshal of individual persons for failure to find arms (ibid., 1627–28, p. 588; newsletter of 25 Sept. 1635 in Bodleian Library MS. Carte 77, ff. 423–24). See Holdsworth, W. S., Martial Law Historically Considered, in his Essays in Law and History, ed. Goodhart, A. L. and Hanbury, H. G., Oxford 1946.Google Scholar

page 119 note 1 Holdsworth, W. S., Defamation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Law Quarterly Review, XL (1924), 407408Google Scholar; cf. Holdsworth, , A History of English Law, V, Boston 1927, 206Google Scholar; VIII (1926), 334–47, and Van Vechten, Veeder, The History of the Law of Defamation, in: Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Boston 1909, III, 446473, esp. p. 464.Google Scholar

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page 119 note 3 Spedding, James, Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, VII, London 1874, 529530.Google Scholar

page 120 note 1 C.S.P. Dom., 1637 (1868), pp. 569–70.

page 120 note 2 Rushworth, , Historical Collections, II, pt. ii, 10551056Google Scholar; C.S.P. Dom., 1635–36 (1866), p. 435; 1636–37 (1867), p. 495; 1637, pp. 52–53.

page 120 note 3 C.S.P. Dom., 1639–40 (1874), p. 261.

page 120 note 4 Hist. MSS. Comm., Various Collections, I (1901), 105.

page 120 note 5 A Calendar of the Court Minutes, etc. of the East India Company, 1635–1639, ed. Ethel, Bruce Sainsbury, Oxford 1907, pp. xxxiv–xxxviGoogle Scholar; 1640–43, Oxford 1909, p. 33.

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page 121 note 3 The commission to Clarenceux and Norroy is printed in Noble, History of the College of Arms, pp. 222–23.

page 121 note 4 C.S.P., Dom., 1634–35, pp. 148, 156, 157, 179, 186.

page 122 note 1 The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon… written by Himself (Oxford, 1857), I, 6768Google Scholar; copy of the speech in Bodleian Library, MS. Clarendon 18, f. 155.

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page 122 note 5 Arthur Duck, the King's Advocate in the earl marshal's court, and a noted civilian, wrote: “the common lawyers blame us for pursuing the useless learning of foreign laws, and accuse us of being citizens of a foreign state and strangers in our own” (De Usu et Authoritate Juris Civilis, qu. in Holdsworth, , History of English Law, V, 2425Google Scholar).

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page 122 note 7 Ibid., pp. 54–55.

page 122 note 8 Ibid., pp. 68, 76, 96–98, 125, 226–27, 242–44, 366; Journals of the House of Commons, II, 34; Noble, , History of the College of Arms, p. 225.Google Scholar

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page 123 note 2 Gardiner, S. R., ed., Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 3rd ed., Oxford 1906, p. 213.Google Scholar

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page 123 note 4 Ibid., pp. 375–79.

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page 123 note 6 “Upon Saturday in the evening in a committee in the Lords House the Lord Mowbray (viz., the Earl of Arundel's eldest son) gave the Earl of Lindsey, High Chamberlain, the lie, whereupon the Earl of Lindsey struck him over the head with his white staff, and the other threw an ink horn into his face.” (Hist. MSS. Comm., Cowper MSS., II [1888], 289–90).

page 124 note 1 Walker, Sir Edward, Historical Discourses upon Several Occasions, London 1705, p. 212.Google Scholar

page 124 note 2 Englefield, , History of the Painter-Stainers, pp. 119120.Google Scholar

page 124 note 3 Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Montague, F. C., London 1903, I, 50.Google Scholar

page 124 note 4 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, ed. Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., London 1911, I, 266, 604.Google Scholar The ordinance of 1646 for regulating the heralds’ office was “opposed by many inclining to levelling.” (Whitelocke, Memorials, I, 586).

page 124 note 5 Grazebrook, and Rylands, , Visitation of Shropshire, pt. i, p. xxxiv.Google Scholar

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