The Town: Its Memorable Characters and EventsHunt, Leigh
History
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events
Hunt, Leigh
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
past times, otherwise what an illustrious window would they make! We
should like to have presented the reader with such of the escutcheons
above mentioned as have been created or modified in some respect by
their ennoblers; and to have shown him how different the old parts now
appear, with which the individuals had nothing to do, compared with
those of their own achievement, or adoption, even when nothing better
than a motto. Sir Philip's motto almost rejects his coat.[63] If all
persons, ambitious of good conduct and opinions, were to adopt our
suggestion, and assume a device of their own, windows of this kind
might abound among friends; and many of them would become as
interesting to posterity, as _such_ "coats of arms" would, above all
others, deserve to be.
The most eminent names in the Heralds' College are Camden, the great
antiquary; Dugdale (whose merits, however, are questionable); King, a
writer on political arithmetic; and Vanbrugh, the comic writer, who
wore a tabard for a short time, as Clarencieux. Gibbon had an
ancestor, a herald, who took great interest in the profession. He had
another progenitor, who, about the reign of James the First, changed
the scallop shells of the historian's coat "into three ogresses or
female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising three ladies, his
kinswomen, who had provoked him by an unjust lawsuit."[64] A good
account of heraldry, its antiquities and its freaks, is a desideratum,
and would make a very amusing book.
[Illustration: LUDGATE.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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