West, Lord Delawarr, against West. A man who had been a famous wrestler, and bore the sobriquet of 'Jack in the West,' acquiring a fortune by keeping a public-house, assumed the regular surname of West, and the arms of Lord Delawarr's family. In support of this double assumption he got some venal member[269] of the College of Arms to furnish him with a pedigree, deducing his descent, through three or four generations, from the fourth son of one of the Lords Delawarr. His son, who had been bred in the Inns of Court, and was resident in Hampshire, presuming, upon the strength of his pedigree, to take precedence of some of his neighbours, they instigated Lord Delawarr to prosecute him in the Court of Honour. At the hearing, the defendant produced his patent from the heralds; but, unfortunately for his pretensions, an antient gentleman of the house of West, who had been long abroad and was believed to be dead, and whom our innkeeper's son had claimed as his father's father, returned at this juncture to England, and 'dashed the whole business.'[270] The would-be West was fined £500, and commanded 'never more to write himself gentleman.' On the breaking out of the civil wars the heralds espoused opposing interests. The three kings of arms, with a few of their subordinates, adhered to _their brother monarch_: the others sided with the Parliament. When, in 1642, Charles was compelled to take up his residence at Oxford, several of the officers of arms were in attendance upon him; and it affords very high testimony of their respectability and learning that some of them were admitted to the first distinctions the university could bestow. The afterwards famous Dugdale (then Rouge-Croix) and Edmund Walker, Chester, were created masters of arts, and Sir William le Neve, Clarenceux, was admitted to the dignity of LL.D. In 1643 and 1644, George Owen, York, John Philipot, Somerset, Sir John Borrough, Garter, and his successor, Sir Henry St. George, were also honoured with the last-mentioned degree. It is singular that an institution so immediately connected with royalty as was the College of Arms, should have been permitted to exist during the Commonwealth; and still more so that while the republicans carried their hatred to the very name of king so far as to alter the designation of the _King's_ Bench, and to strike the word _kingdom_ out of their vocabulary, that the principal functionaries of the College should have been allowed to retain their antient titles of kings of arms. The royal arms, of course, disappeared from the herald's tabard, though it does not very clearly appear what was substituted; probably the state arms, namely, two shields conjoined in fesse; dexter, the cross of St. George, and, sinister, the Irish harp.[271]