with which the mind is gradually disengaged from
preconceived and prevailing notions on such points, which it has originally
adopted as admitting of no question, I know it is necessary to provide that
others should not view my arguments through a different medium to myself.
And I cannot state too distinctly, even if I incur more than one
repetition, that the Collar of Esses was not a badge of knighthood nor a
badge of personal merit; but it was a collar of livery; and the idea
typified by livery was feudal dependence, or what we now call party. The
earliest livery collar I have traced is the French order of _cosses de
geneste_, or broomcods: and the term "order", I beg to explain, is in its
primary sense exactly equivalent to "livery:" it was used in France in that
sense _before_ it came to be applied to orders of knighthood. Whether there
was any other collar of livery in France, or in other countries of Europe,
I have not hitherto ascertained; but I think it highly probable that there
was. In England we have some slight glimpses of various collars, on which
it would be too long here to enter; and it is enough to say, that there
were only two of the king's livery, the Collar of Esses and the Collar of
Roses and Suns. The former was the collar of our Lancastrian kings, the
latter of those of the house of York. The Collar of Roses and Suns had
appendages of the heraldic design which was then called "the king's beast,"
which with Edward IV. was the white lion of March, and with Richard III.
the white boar. When Henry VII. resumed the Lancastrian Collar of Esses, he
added to it the portcullis of Beaufort. In the former Lancastrian regions
it had no pendant, except a plain or jewelled ring, usually of the trefoil
form. All the pendant badges which I have enumerated belong to secular
heraldry, as do the roses and suns which form the Yorkist collar. The
letter S is an emblem of a somewhat different kind; and, as it proves, more
difficult to bring to a satisfactory solution than the symbols of heraldic
blazon. As an initial it will bear many interpretations--it may be said, an
indefinite number, for every new Oedipus has some fresh conjecture to
propose. And this brings me to render the account required by Dr. Rock of
the reasons which led me to conclude that the letter S originated with the
office of Seneschallus or Steward. I must still refer to the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for 1842, or to the republication of my essays which I ha