were devised by Henry IV. to stand for his motto or "word" of
_Soverayne_. Many explanations are given of the origin of these letters,
but none has as yet been established with sufficient proof. During the
reigns of Henry IV., his son and grandson, the collar of Esses was a
royal badge of the Lancastrian house and party, the white swan being its
pendant. In one of Henry VI.'s own collars the S was joined to the
Broomcod of the French device, thus symbolizing the king's claim to the
two kingdoms.

The kings of the house of York and their chief followers wore the
Yorkist collar of suns and roses, with the white lion of March, the
Clare bull, or Richard's white boar for a pendant device. Henry VII.
brought back the collar of Esses, a portcullis or a rose hanging from
it, although in a portrait of this king, now possessed by the Society of
Antiquaries, his neck bears the _rose en soleil_ alternating with knots,
and his son, when young, had a collar of roses red and white. Besides
these royal collars, the 14th and 15th centuries show many of private
devices. A brass at Mildenhall shows a knight whose badge of a dog or
wolf circled by a crown hangs from a collar with edges suggesting a
pruned bough or the ragged staff. Thomas of Markenfield (d. c. 1415) on
his brass at Ripon has a strange collar of park palings with a badge of
a hart in a park, and the Lord Berkeley (d. 1392) wears one set with
mermaids.

Collars of various devices are now worn by the grand crosses of the
European orders of knighthood. The custom was begun by Philip of
Burgundy, who gave his knights of the Golden Fleece, an order founded on
the 10th of February 1429-1430, badges of a golden fleece hung from that
collar of flints, steels and sparks which is seen in so many old Flemish
portraits. To this day it remains the most beautiful of all the collars,
keeping in the main the lines of its Flemish designer, although a vulgar
fancy sometimes destroys the symbolism of the golden fleece by changing
it for an unmeaning fleece of diamonds. Following this new fashion,
Louis XI. of France, when instituting his order of St Michael in 1469,
gave the knights collars of scallop shells linked on a chain. The chain
was doubled by Charles VIII., and the pattern suffered other changes
before the order lapsed in 1830. Until the reign of Henry VIII., the
Garter, most ancient of the great knightly orders, had no collar. But
the Tudor king must needs match in all things with