and, cattle,
etc., were identified"; and in Sussex, we are informed, the post-mortem
inquisitions from the time of Henry VII. to that of Charles II. exhibit
a large number of yeomen's marks--"other than crosses"--which were
employed as signatures. Masons' and printers' marks are further
varieties of the same mode of identification.

All these are distinctively trade uses, but the astonishing thing is
that, in Germany at any rate, marks were affixed, in conjunction with
regular signatures, by ecclesiastical dignitaries and secular nobles,
probably as an additional guarantee. They were also used on shields, and
in England were frequently impaled with the owners' arms.

Marks, then, were in no sense the exclusive characteristic of the
merchant class; and yet, owing to the fact that these devices were
necessarily more used by traders, they may be considered on the whole as
belonging to their domain. As we have seen, every baker in the City was
obliged to stamp his loaves with his own proper mark; and in other
branches of commerce men would value their mark as a means of
advertisement. As persons engaged in commerce were commonly debarred
from the privilege of armorial bearings, marks were freely employed not
only in relation to special callings, but also for ornamentation or
commemoration in any and every sphere in which merchants desired to
leave the impress of their personality and interest. They were to be
found on the fronts of houses, over the fireplace in halls, on seals, on
sepulchral slabs and monumental brasses, and on painted windows. In his
description of a Dominican convent--printed in full in Prof. Skeat's
"Specimens of English Literature" (a.d. 1394-1579)--the author of "Peres
the Ploughman's Crede" speaks as follows:

Than I munt me forth the minster to knowen
And awayted a wone wonderly well y-built,
With arches on every hall & belliche [beautifully] y-carven
With crochets on corners, with knots of gold,
Wide windows y-wrought, y-written full thick,
Shyning with shapen shields to shewen about,
With _marks of merchants_ y-meddled between,
Mo than twenty and two, twice y-numbered;
There is none herald that hath half such a roll,
Right as a ragman hath reckoned them new.

Another circumstance has to be noted--namely, that merchants' marks were
entirely distinct from shop signs, such as that of the Golden Fleece,
which, though serving the same purpose of aiding or enlightening the
unle