Mark Antony Lower

“ There, too, was the young knight Toustains Rtz-Rou le Blanc, bearing the sacred gonfanon which the pope had blessed and presented to William. This had been offered, in turn, to Raol de Conches, the hereditary standard-bearer of Normandy, and to Walter Giffard, but declined, by the former on the ground of his desiring the more useful service of the sword, by the latter on account of his bald and hoary head. "I shall be in the battle," he cried, "and you have not any man who will serve you more truly; I will strike with my sword till it shall be dyed in your enemies' blood!" ”

“ Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. ”

“ What dashing to pieces of arms; what clashing of strokes; what shrieks of dying men; what grief, what sighs, were heard! How many groans; how many bitter notes of direst calamity then sounded forth, who can rightly calculate? What a wretched exhibition of human misery was there to call forth astonishment! In the very contemplation of it our pen fails us." [48]
The time when Harold received the arrow-wound may be regarded as the moment from which the tide of battle turned in favour of the Normans. ”

“ But whoever but for one moment contemplates this structure with its solid towers and walls twelve feet thick, thirty feet high, and enclosing an area half a mile in circumference, will perceive that it could neither have been a work of haste, nor the undertaking of a people about to abandon a long-possessed province. It has far more the air of having been constructed at a time when the Conquerors of the World were extending and consolidating their dominion in Britain. ”

“ Now these two feelings, though they often combine in one individual, have no necessary connexion with each other. Man is said to be a hunting animal. Some hunt for foxes; others for fame or fortune. Others hunt in the intellectual field; some for the arcana of nature and of mind; some for the roots of words or the origin of things. I am fond of hunting out a pedigree. Parva decent parvum.
Family pride, abstractedly considered, is one of the coarsest feelings of which our nature is susceptible.
“Those who on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.” ”

“ The duke now called for his horse, and was soon mounted upon a noble charger, a recent present from the King of Spain. William's carriage on this occasion was eulogised by one of his followers, the Viscount of Tours: "Never," said he, "have I seen a man so fairly armed, nor one who rode so gallantly, or bore his arms, or became a hauberk so well; neither any one who bore his lance so gracefully, or sat his horse and manoeuvred him so nobly. There is no other such knight under heaven! A fair count he is, and fair king he will be." ”

“ The capture of Anderida by Ælla, the founder of the South Saxon kingdom, is the next historical epoch ; but that the structure itself suffered any considerable damage when its unfortunate occupants fell beneath the seaxes of the invaders seems improbable, considering the simplicity of their military operations. Such buildings as they found suitable for strongholds the Saxon people occupied during war; but they built no castles, — at least none of sufficient strength to have survived till our times. We look therefore in vain amongst the walls of Pevensey for any trace of Saxon building. ”

“ CHAPTER X. Distinctions of Rank and Honour.
Any treatise on Heraldry, whatever its scope or its design, would certainly be deemed defective if it did not embrace this subject. Heraldry consists of two distinct parts, namely, first, the knowledge of titles and dignities, the proper sphere of each, and the ceremonials connected with them; and, secondly, the science of blazon, or the rules by which armorial insignia are composed and borne. One treats of honours; the other of the symbols of those honours. The first, though some will refuse to concede it that distinction, is a science ”

“ For I contend that the study of archæology is every way calculated to improve the human mind and character. We review the barbarous past with interest it is true, but with no regret that our lot was not cast in Saxon or in Norman times. We can survey these venerable walls with pleasure, without the slightest yearning after cloistral life. In a word, like the traveller who has laboriously gained the summit of a lofty hill, we can look back upon the devious windings and rugged passes of the way, brightened and mellowed by distance ”

“ Some families, as has already been observed, have no crests; a still greater number have no mottoes; and supporters belong to an exclusive few. Badges are still more unusual, and in modern times it would perhaps be a matter of difficulty to enumerate twenty families who use them.
Badge, in its ordinary acceptation, signifies the mark or token of any thing; thus we are accustomed to call fetters the badge of slavery, and a plain gold ring the badge of matrimony; and thus in a figurative, or moral sense, Shakspeare says,
“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” ”

“ In these embroidered scenes neither the banner nor the shield is furnished with proper arms. Some of the shields bear the rude effigies of a dragon, griffin, serpent or lion, others crosses, rings, and various fantastic devices; [37] but these, in the opinion of the most learned antiquaries, are mere ornaments, or, at best, symbols, more akin to those of classical antiquity than to modern heraldry. Nothing but disappointment awaits the curious armorist, who seeks in this venerable memorial the pale, the bend, and other early elements of arms. ”

“ At length, according to Wace (to whose ample account of the battle I am principally indebted) ," the English stood ready to their post, the Normans still moving on; and when they drew near, the English were to be seen stirring to and fro; men going and coming; troops ranging themselves in order; some with their colour rising, others turning pale; some making ready their arms, others raising their shields; the brave man rousing himself to the fight, the coward trembling at the approaching danger." ”

“ As Saracen-killing has long ceased to be a favourite amusement,—as the winning of standards is an undertaking as rare as it is perilous,—as few in protestant England have the good fortune to serve abbots and bishops,—and, as a grant of arms by the heralds is a somewhat expensive affair,—how very few have now the chance of becoming gentlemen in the heraldrical sense of the term. Widely at variance with the courtesies of every-day life are these antiquated laws of chivalry!
We have seen that nearly every man, from the throne to the stable, each in his own sphere, is recognized as a gentleman ”

“ We can well understand how the army could in a few hours erect a fortification of some strength by such means, when we remember that the ordinary mode of constructing houses of the meaner sort in Saxon times was by driving large stakes into the ground, and filling up the spaces by interweaving pliant branches of young trees, and covering the whole with clay or mud—a style of building still retained for out-houses in some parts of Sussex, and known by the rather unclassical designation of "raddle-and-dab." ”

“ The College of Arms, or, as it is often called, the “Heralds’ College,” owes its origin as a corporation to a monarch who has the misfortune to occupy a very unenviable place in the scroll of fame; to a man whose abilities and judgment would have received all due honour from posterity had they been coupled with the attributes of justice and benevolence, and attended with a better claim to the sceptre of these realms. ”

“ Men are known by titles of honour, by titles of disgrace, or by titles given to them on account of some individual quality. A brave man will be called the lion, a ferocious one the tiger. Others are named after a signal act of their lives, or from some peculiarity of personal appearance; such as the slayer-of-three-bears, the taker-of-so-many-scalps, or straight-limbs, long-nose, and so on. Some of these, especially such as express approbation or esteem, are worn as proudly by their savage owners as that of duke or marquis is by European nobles. ”

“ Far different was the scene presented by the Norman army on the eve of the battle. The priests were everywhere busy, confessing and shriving the soldiery, and mingling with their penances and pardons exhortations to valorous deeds. All night they watched and prayed in portable chapels which had been fitted up throughout the camp. Among the priests-militant so engaged, two were especially conspicuous: Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the Conqueror's uterine brother, afterwards Earl of Kent; and Geoffrey de Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances, a name subsequently famous in Sussex history. ”

“ It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.” [239]
It is a fact not perhaps generally known that poverty formerly disqualified a peer from holding his dignity. In the reign of Edward IV, George Neville, duke of Bedford, was degraded on this account by Act of Parliament. ”

“ A cry now ran through the Norman host that the duke had fallen in the disaster at Malfosse, and the varlets [38] who had been set to guard the harness, seeing the sad loss of life in the fosse, began to quit their post and to fly from the impending danger. But William having been apprised of the report, and seeing numbers running away, hastened to stop them. Brandishing a spear with his right hand in a menacing manner, and at the same time removing his helmet with his left, he cried out, "Look! I am alive, and with God's help I will yet conquer." ”

“ Taking into consideration the great antiquity of these “name-devices,” and their early introduction into the armorial shield, I cannot see any good reason for the strong prejudices which have existed against them in modern times. To me, indeed, they appear not only ‘allowable’ but ‘commendable’ armory; for arms, like names, are signs of personality, and therefore those which ‘speak to the eye’ most intelligibly are preferable to those charges which have in themselves no meaning. ”

“ The age of chivalry may be past—the knight may no more be seen issuing from the embattled portal-arch on his barbed charger, his lance glittering in the sun, his banner streaming to the breeze,—but the spirit of chivalry can never die ”

“ A person who by birth, education, and wealth, is entitled to the distinction of gentleman, and who chooses to devote his capital to agriculture may be properly designated a farming-gentleman, though the occupation of a large estate without those qualifications can never constitute a gentleman-farmer. Tenant-farmer, a phrase which has lately been in the mouth of every politician, is as fine a piece of tautology as ‘coat-making tailor’ or ‘shoe-mending cobbler’ would be.
“It maketh me laugh to see,” says Sir John Ferne’s Columel, “a jolly peece of worke it were, to see plow-men made Gentle-men!” ”