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IV.—The Swan Badge and the Swan Knight
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2011
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The scribe of these and the following lines, which lament the English disasters France about 1449, had the kindness to insert the names of the noblemen, thus denoted by their badges. The Root, he tells us, for example, is Bedforde, the swan Gloucetter, and the cresset Excetter. This swan badge of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who died in 1447, is familiar, but he was by no means the only bearer of a swan in his time. It had been the badge of the great house of Bohun, earls of Hereford and Essex (pls. XXXVI, g; XXXVII, g; XL), and is assumed to have come to Humphrey through the marriage of his father the earl of Derby, later King Henry IV (pls. XXXVI, f; XXXVII, g; XL), with Mary de Bohun the younger daughter and coheir of Humphrey, earl of Hereford. But even among Mary's own descendants Duke Humphrey was not alone in using it, for Henry V (pls. XXXIV, a, b; XL), Henry VI, and the latter's son Edward did so too. Mary's elder sister Eleanor (pls. XXXVII, f; XL) used it also, as did her husband, Thomas of Woodstock (pls. XXXIV, c, d, e; XL), duke of Gloucester, and the Staffords, dukes of Buckingham (pls. XXXVI, a, c; XL), descended from their daughter Anne. Nor was this all, for in 1325 Margaret de Bohun (pls. XXXIX, b; XL), the daughter of an earlier Humphrey, earl of Hereford and Essex, had married Hugh de Courtenay, earl of Devon, and many of their descendants, Courtenays (pls. XXXIV, f, j; XXXVII, h; XL), Luttrells (pls. XXXVII, a, b, c, e, i, j; XL) and others (pl. XXXIX, a) used swans as badges, or as crests or supporters in their arms.
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page 127 note 1 Rolls Series, 14 (ii), Political poems and songs relating to English History, composed during the period from the accession of Edw. Ill to that of Richard III, ed. Wright, Thomas, 1861; p. 221, On the Popular Discontent at the Disasters in France, written c. 1448-1449, from Cotton Rolls, ii. 23Google Scholar.
page 127 note 2 See, however, p. 137 for evidence of use of the swan by Edward III. Our Fellow Mr. J. L. Nevinson informs me that the palace of the kings of Portugal at Cintra contained a room painted with swans, the Sala dos Cisnes, from the time of John I (d. 1433), the son-in-law of John of Gaunt. In its present, reconstructed forms it is illus trated in pl. v (description on p. 87) of Quatro Palavras Sobre Os Pacos Reais da Vila de Sintra, by Raul Lino, Lisbon.Google Scholar I owe this reference to our Fellow Sir Thomas Kendrick.
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ûz ir geslehte verre erkant.
page 132 note 2 Dr. Paul Adam-Even of Paris has drawn my attention to a painting of the arms of this Duke Adolf of Cleves (d. 1448), supported by a swan, in the armorial of John of Luxemburg by the herald Hainault: Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS. 6567, p. 220.
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page 138 note 1 Since this was written our Fellow Mr. John Harvey drawn my attention to Miss Jenkins's, C. K. article in Apollo of March 1949,Google Scholar ‘Collars of SS: A Quest’, which suggests that S. is for Signus = Cygnus. I cannot here discuss this but other parts of Miss Jenkins's argument link with my own.
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