The _Ostrich Feather Badge_. The popular tradition, that the famous Badge of the Ostrich Feathers was won from the blind KING OF BOHEMIA at Cressi by the BLACK PRINCE, and by him afterwards borne as an heraldic trophy, is not supported by any contemporary authority. The earliest writer by whom the tradition itself is recorded is CAMDEN (A.D. 1614), and his statement is confirmed by no known historical evidence of a date earlier than his own work. As Sir N. HARRIS NICHOLAS has shown in a most able paper in the _Archæologia_ (vol. xxxi. pp. 350-384), the first time the Feathers are mentioned in any record is in a document, the date of which must have been after 1369, and which contains lists of plate belonging to the King himself, and also to Queen PHILLIPA. It is particularly to be observed, that all the pieces of plate specified in this roll as the personal property of the Queen, if marked with any device at all, are marked with her _own initial_, or with some heraldic insignia that have a direct reference to _herself_. One of these pieces of plate is described as “a large dish for the alms of the Queen, of silver gilt, and enamelled at the bottom with _a black escutcheon with Ostrich Feathers_--_eym in fund vno scuch nigro cum pennis de ostrich_.” And these “Ostrich Feathers,” thus blazoned on a sable field upon the silver alms-dish of Queen PHILIPPA, Sir N. H. Nicholas believed to have been borne by the Queen as a daughter of the House of HAINAULT; and he suggested that these same “Ostrich Feathers” might possibly have been assumed by the Counts of the Province of Hainault from the Comté of Ostrevant, which formed the appanage of their eldest sons. [Illustration: No. 394.--At Worcester Cathedral.] [Illustration: No. 395.--At Peterborough Cathedral.] [Illustration: No. 396.--At Peterborough Cathedral.]