There is then, I think, little doubt that this device was the _symbolum_ or _nota_ of some word of which S was the initial letter; whether _Societas_, or _Silentium_, or _Souvenance_, or _Soveraigne_, or _Seneschallus_, or whatever else ingenuity or fancy may suggest, this is the question,--a question which it is scarcely possible to settle authoritatively without the testimony of some unequivocal contemporary statement. But I flatter myself that I have now clearly shown that the esses were neither the _links of a chain_ nor yet (as suggested in a former paper) identical with the _gormetti fremales_, or horse-bridles, which are said to have formed the livery collar of the King of Scots. JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS. "Christus purpureum gemmati textus in auro Signabat Labarum, Clypeorum insignia Christus Scripserat; ardebat summis crux addita cristis." By the same sort of reasoning--viz. conjecture--that MR. JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS adheres to the opinion that the Collar of SS. takes its name from the word _Seneschallus_, it might be contended that the initial letters of the lines above quoted mystically stand for "Collar, S. S." Enough, however, has already been written on this unmeaning point to show that some of us are "great gowks," or, in other words, stupid guffs, to waste so much pen, ink, and paper on the subject. There are other topics, however, connected with the Collar of SS. which are of real interest to a {363} numerous section of the titled aristocracy in the United Kingdom; and it is with these, as bearing upon the heraldic and gentilitial rights of the subject, that I am desirous to grapple. MR. NICHOLS, and those who pin faith upon his _dicta_, hold that the Collar of SS. was a livery ensign bestowed by our kings upon certain of their retainers, in much the same sense and fashion as Cedric the Saxon is said to have given a collar to Wamba, the son of Witless. For myself, and all those entitled to carry armorial bearings in the kingdom, I repudiate the notion that the knightly golden Collar of SS. was ever so conferred or received. Further, I maintain that there was a distinction between what MR. NICHOLS calls "the Livery Collar of SS.," and the said knightly golden Collar of SS., as marked and broad as is the difference between the Collar of the Garter and the collar of that four-footed dignitary which bore the inscription, "I am the Prince's Dog at Kew, Pray whose Dog are you?"