The Winged Horse is supposed by some to be a corruption of the ancient seal of two Knights Templars riding on one horse, indicative of their original poverty; for here they had their headquarters in England ‘till they decayed through pride.’ The two designs, however, resemble each other to a very slight extent, and in point of fact have no connection. It seems that in the fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign the Society of the Inner Temple adopted, as a heraldic charge, the Pegasus with the motto ‘Volat ad æthera virtus,’ at the suggestion of Gerard Leigh, one of its Benchers, a pedantic student of heraldry, the idea being that the knowledge which might be gained at this seat of learning would raise its possessor to the highest pinnacle of fame. Sir George Buc,[56] master of the revels, appears to be responsible for the lamb and flag. He tells us that in 1615, more than fifty years after the adoption of the Pegasus by the twin society, the authorities of the Middle Temple had neither arms nor seal, and to supply the want he suggested either ‘two armed knights riding upon one horse, or a field argent charged with a cross gules, and on the nombril thereof a Holy Lamb;’ the first having been, as I have said, the ancient seal of the Knights Templars, and the second what they appear to have assumed later, when they became prosperous. This at least is Sir George Buc’s statement, on the authority of an illuminated manuscript containing the statutes of their order, which belonged to Lord William Howard of Naworth. Mr. Barrington thought that the Holy Lamb, as a representation of Christ, should be encircled by a nimbus. To confirm this view and to prove that the Templars did use the device, he gives a quotation from Blomefield’s MS. collections for Cambridgeshire, wherein the Holy Lamb, with its nimbus and banner, appears on the seal of a deed dated 1273, by which Guido de Foresta, ‘magister militiæ Templi in Anglia et fratres ejusdem militiæ,’ leased out certain lands in Pampesworth, Cambridgeshire, the rent to be paid, ‘domino Templi,’ at Dunworth of the same county. Round the seal is the following inscription, ‘✠ SIGILLVM TEMPLI.’ From the fact that Sir George Buc suggested to the Society of the Middle Temple the two devices which had been used by the Templars, it is evident that the Pegasus, already adopted by the Inner Temple, was not considered in his time to have any connection with the original seal of the Knights Templars.