Some say that Coat Armour began at the siege of Troy, but it was of far greater antiquity than that, and was founded upon the nine Orders of Angels, who were crowned each with a diadem of precious stones—the Topaz (truth), Smaragdus (hardihood), Amethyst (chivalry), Loys (powerful), Ruby (courageous), Sapphire (wisdom), Diamond, a black stone (durable), Carbuncle (doughty and glorious). These represent Gentleman, Squire, Knight, Baron, Lord, Earl, Marquis, Duke, and Prince. Here we probably have the origin of the shape of various crowns and coronets. Everything is treated in nines, and the nine virtues and nine vices of gentleness follow, with nine rejoicings, nine articles that every knight should keep, and nine manner of gentlemen, in which we learn that the Evangelists and Apostles were all gentlemen of the right line of that worthy conqueror, Judas Machabeus, who in course of time had fallen to labour, and so were not called gentlemen. The four doctors of the Church—St. Jerome Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory—were also gentlemen of blood and of Coat Armour. There are nine differences of Coat Armour and nine quadrats, all of which are explained. The “Blasyng of Arms” comes next, the preface to which is by the author, and not by the printer. It begins with the varieties of the Cross as borne in arms, each being illustrated by a rude woodcut printed in its proper colours, and the blason, or technical description of each is given in Latin, French, and English. All varieties of arms follow, with the mysteries of bends, engrail, borders, chequers, balls, cakes, rings, &c., offering but little which can be quoted, but forming an interesting and useful book of reference. [Illustration: Fleuron] CHAPTER IV. =Philology.= There is a strongly marked individuality in the spelling throughout all the treatises in this work. If the Hunting rhymes belong to Dam Julyans, their orthography, like the prose portions, is that of the Schoolmaster, who appears to have been a North-countryman, many words leading to that conclusion. The formation of the plural by adding the letters “is” or “ys” strikes the attention at once. Thus the plural of bells is bellis; egg, eggis; vetch, fetchis; fulmert, fulmertis; hawk, hawkys; herd, herdys; person, personys, and so on. The change of a _y_ at the end of a word to an _i_ is common, as onli, softeli, unthrefti; and for if; algate; awth for all the; bowke; chylder; clepit; clees; knaw; ken; yowre; and many others are Northern. As might be expected, many Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman words now obsolete are found, such as benymme, blynne, byzete, canell, clepit, colver, dagon, gobbit, kawe, kydde, liggen, merde, nasethrils, nym,[5] raton, and many others. Footnote 5: In the slang of thieves to _steal_ is to _nim_ at this day. The following vocabulary will show the chief words in which peculiarity of spelling or dialect are noticeable:—