Richard II, as shown by the Earl of Pembroke's remarkable picture of that monarch at Wilton, wore, in addition to his device the white hart, a collar of broom-pods. Henry IV employed the well-known collar of SS, derived from his father John of Gaunt. The collar of Edward IV was composed of two of his badges, the sun in its splendour, and the white rose; while a third, the white lion of March, was added as a pendant. Richard III retained the Yorkist collar, substituting for the lion pendant a boar.[60] Private family collars were also worn, and an early instance of one occurs in the brass of Thomas Lord Berkeley (1417) in the church of Wootton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire; the band round the neck being charged with mermaids, the badge of the Berkeleys. [60] _Archæologia_, XXXIX, p. 264. The SS collar is the best known of all. It is composed of the letter S in gold repeated indefinitely, either fixed on velvet or some material, or forming the links of a chain. The letters are generally united by knots; they sometimes terminate with portcullises and have a pendent rose. The collar is still worn by the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Mayor of London, and the chief heralds--that belonging to the Lord Mayor being an original and beautiful example of English jewellery of the sixteenth century. Despite all that has been written upon the SS collar no conclusive explanation has been offered as to its origin and meaning.[61] Several representations of livery collars appear upon monumental effigies of the latter half of the fifteenth century, and there is frequent mention of them in the inventories of the same period, but, with the exception of the SS collar, they are not met with at all in the sixteenth century. [61] Mr. Hartshorne (_Arch. Journ._, XXXIX, p. 366) considers the origin of the letters SS--_par excellence_ the "crux antiquariorum," he terms it--to lie between the words Seneschallus, Souverayne, and Sanctus, and of these he appears to be in favour of the first. [Illustration: Necklace worn by the daughter of Tommaso Portinari in Van der Goes' triptych in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.] CHAPTER XV MEDIÆVAL PENDANTS, ROSARIES, AND POMANDERS The wearing of religious emblems in the form of pendants by the Christians of the Middle Ages was possibly, in the first place, the unconscious perpetuation of pagan superstition. The demand for a convenient mode of carrying a reliquary may account in some degree for the use of necklaces in early times.