REMARKS ON SOME ANCIENT SHIELDS

IN THE

Ceiling of the South Aisle of St. Nicholas' Church,

GREAT YARMOUTH.

COMMUNICATED

BY THOMAS WILLIAM KING, ESQ., F. S. A.

Rouge Dragon.

IN April last, I had the pleasure of visiting Yarmouth, when the preparations were in progress towards the restoration of its noble church to a state worthy of its antiquity and importance; by rendering its architectural beauties more prominent, than when disfigured, as they had been, by modern and tasteless innovations. A series of shields in the south aisle, inserted in bosses at the intersections of the ribs of the ceiling, claimed my attention; but, from the length of time they had been placed there, the colours of the arms depicted upon them had become, in some instances, much obliterated; and in others, the heraldic charges were completely lost to the naked eye, and were not discernible even by the aid of a telescope. Happily, however, those charges were incised in the shields where this difficulty arose; so that no question, as to what they originally had been, occurred, on a closer inspection of them when taken down.

The Committee, under whose directions the works of restoration are proceeding, did me the honour of confiding to my care and supervision the re-emblazonment of these interesting heraldic remains; and for this purpose the shields were transmitted to me in London. Before I placed them

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in the hands of the artist, I took accurate drawings from the originals themselves, and noted every peculiarity attending them.

From the causes which I have mentioned, it was impossible to distinguish the heraldic distinctions upon the royal coats; and I was led to conclude, when I saw them previously to their removal, that they were the arms of King Edward the Third and his five sons; enough being distinguishable to show that six shields contained the arms of France ancient and England quarterly, and that one was in a bordure. Upon closer inspection, however, my supposition proved to be erroneous; and I have now to shew to whom those shields respectively belonged. I should not have deemed it necessary to advert to a previous conjecture, which remained open to proof and correction, had not a statement gone abroad, and been made in the provincial papers, and since echoed in a periodical magazine, that those shields consisted of the arms of King Edward the Third and his sons, "in the order of their birth.”

The entire number of shields which were discovered upon preparing the ceiling for restoration, was thirty-two, thirty of which were original, and composed of oak; each shield, and the boss to which it was attached, forming one piece. The remaining two were blank shields of fir, clumsily nailed on the original bosses, and daubed in imitation of quarterly coats of three bends, &c., giving a scenic effect to represent coats of arms. I merely mention this circumstance, as such tasteless and improper introductions may have led to their being noted as original arms; the fraud not being distinguishable, in consequence of the great height at which they were placed, as well as from the causes which rendered the genuine coats so uncertain in their details, as before observed.*

* These two shields have been replaced by two others in oak; one emblazoned with the ancient arms of the town, prior to the dimidiation as now borne; the other, with the arms of Gurney, argent, a cross engrailed gules.

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century, when Constantine the Great removed the scat of
the Roman government to Byzantium, and the empire was
divided into Eastern and Western. It appears difficult to
prove whether the ensign of the Roman power ever became
what is now represented in the armorial shield; but it is
not improbable, that, when heraldry was generally intro-
duced into Europe, the Emperors soon carried the double-
headed eagle on their escutcheons; and many opinions have
been formed upon this question.
The truth of its origin
will most likely ever remain in obscurity; but, to adopt the
language of Nisbet,* the opinion most entitled to considera-
tion is, that the Emperors of the East-but long after the
division of the empire-carried the eagle with two heads,
which practice was subsequently followed by the Western
Emperors upon the decline of the Eastern Empire; and that
from the time of Sigismund it was borne by his successors.

Although Nisbet fixes so late a date as the reign of
Sigismund, as the period when the use of this armorial en-
sign was first regularly adopted by the Emperors of the
West, there is no doubt that it was considered as the imperial
bearing antecedently to Sigismund's time. It occurs on rolls
of arms of the thirteenth century with the arms of other
foreign states, and with those of the sovereigns and princes
of the blood royal of England; copies of these rolls re-
maining in this College. † The imperial ensign (the double-
headed eagle) is also on the tomb of Edmond of Langley,
hereafter noticed, who died in 1402; and Sigismund was not
elected Emperor till 1411.

The shield immediately under consideration follows that of the Trinity, as before observed, and precedes that of King Edward the Third; a position which this imperial coat always possesses in point of precedency with the arms of European sovereigns, whenever, upon rolls of arms or

* Nisbet's Heraldry, Vol. I., p. 344.

† L. 14, pp. 26, 53, 63. Vincent, No. 165, fol. 131.

elsewhere, it is to be found amongst them. It had not suffered any injury during the lengthened period in which it had occupied its place in the ceiling. There was no appearance of a glory, or of a nimbus, about or over the heads of the eagle, as in later periods was sometimes the case in the arms of the Emperors, nor were there any regalia denoting the powers of the Emperor; but the arms were simply as here delineated, and in accordance with the authorities from the ancient rolls to which I have alluded.

From the suggestions that have very recently been offered in the Gentleman's Magazine, * tending to show that the double-headed eagle, which embellishes the church of East Dereham in Norfolk, St. Giles's Hospital in Norwich, and other places, is a religious emblem, I beg respectfully to differ. There can be no question as to its being an armorial ensign, and intended, wherever it may be found under circumstances similar to the present, to designate the alliance which this country had with the Emperors as temporal princes, and not as an emblem of the church. A strong instance in favour of its being purely an heraldic ensign, appropriated personally to the Emperor, is, that in the north windows of the chancel of All-Hallows in the Wall, at Colchester, the shield containing these arms was ensigned with the imperial crown.† The same arms were also in St. James's, Colchester, " in the south window aloft the church." In a manuscript of the date of 1602, in this College,§ are sketched many shields which were then in Norwich cathedral; amongst which, the same coat appears for "the Emperor," with the shields of arms of Castile and Leon, Arragon, and Thomas of Brotherton, and other royal coats, together with Scales and Bardolf, as existing in that cathedral; the three last-mentioned being also in Yarmouth church. But it does not appear whether those shields were in windows or sculptured in the building.