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such who excelled in those branches of science; he therefore paid uncom. ELIZABETH mon attention to this institution. There are papers marked with his own hand, relative to the qualification of the members, to enable him to judge of the most proper manner of advancing the candidates to vacant places, and of the abilities of such who were petitioners to be admitted members of the College. These characters will be noticed. It is the most undeniable testimony of his care and attention, and of his love for the heraldic body. It is extraordinary, that so great a statesman should find leisure to apply so much to whatever related to the College. Cecil was a great economist of time, regular, accurate, and indefatigable. It is a pleasing trait in his character, that he searched out even his remotest kindred to promote their interests, suiting the post he placed them in to their respective capacities.

None of our Sovereigns were more tenacious of their just prerogatives than Elizabeth. Her eyes penetrated every part of her dominions, watching with a jealous care every department. Those who neither loved her person nor her religion, reverenced and feared her authority, however high their rank, or powerful their employment. The heralds were vehement. against each other, but they never, in a single instance, opposed her commands, nor risked her displeasure. Garter, in June 1587, obtained a warrant, before he dared to blaze and exemplify the arms of the late Duke "of Somerset, and his Duchess." At the same time she guarded the privileges of the heralds. In 1601, when Cresswell, Somerset, was arrested, it was brought before the House of Peers, who referring it to the Earl Marshal's office, it was resented, as a high breach of privilege against her Majesty, he being one of her servants in ordinary.

She kept the different orders of her subjects exactly distinct, forbidding by her proclamation, any of the inferior gentry assuming the style of esquire; and such who had no pretensions by descent to arms, were commanded not to use them, or take any other appendage or distinction, belonging to persons of ancestry, unless they procured them legally from the College. Brooke, York, says, that Cook, Clarenceux, in this reign granted five hundred coats of arms to different persons who applied for them, and that the two Dethicks gave more than that number; he also acquaints us that in his own time, one hundred and twenty were given within ten years. A convincing proof of the increasing wealth of individuals who could

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ELIZABETH. Could support the port of gentlemen; of the value annexed to heraldic distinctions; and the impracticability of assuming them without proper authority. It was found expedient, too, in the latter part of this reign, to restrain the excessive richness of apparel in the lower orders of society. The parliament passed acts for this purpose.

Though great pains had been taken by the Sovereign to keep inviolate the rights of the College, to give or allow arms, yet at the close of Elizabeth's reign there were adventurers who dared to violate the law, to procure money, by taking upon themselves the office of heralds: a practice which, in some measure, the College had occasioned, by permitting persons to go as precursitors, to collect materials for such who visited the provinces of Clarenceux and Norroy. These laid themselves open to persons of mean origin, who for a fee procured all the requisites to enable them to assume armorial distinctions, to the contempt of the institution, and the deserved umbrage of the gentry.

The College made great efforts to punish the delinquents and prevent a repetition of such illegal proceedings. There was a warrant issued by the Earl of Essex, then Earl Marshal, directed to Robert Tresswell, Somerset herald, to apprehend W. Dawkyns, " a notable dealer in armes, "and maker of false pedigrees;" for which fault, about twenty years past, he had lost one of his ears, and about a year before had been apprehended for the same offence, and had been imprisoned by the lord commissioner. This was dated December 31, 1597, and the names of nearly one hundred families were mentioned, for which he compiled spurious pedigrees, chiefly resident in the counties of Essex, Hertford, and Cambridge. A warrant was likewise issued, to apprehend Christopher Dawkyns, son of the above, and Edward Waterhouse, falsely calling himself servant to Clarenceux. This warrant was signed W. Dethick, Garter; W. Camden, Clarenceux ; and W. Segar, Norroy; dated from the office of arms, March 4, 1597; directed to all " justices of the peace, constables, headboroughs, and all "other her Majesty's officers, to whom it might appertain."

Camden, in his History of Elizabeth, under the year 1590, says "a "mischievous kind of men, taking upon them the authority and badges "of the Queen's pursuivants, wandered up and down England, with "counterfeit warrants and subscriptions of the Queen's counsellors, and "commissioners in causes ecclesiastical, searching the houses of widows

" and

❝ and papists, and taking away, by extortion, plate, jewels, and whatso- ELIZABETH,

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ever bare the image of Christ or the Saints, as things unlawful. The travelling charges due to pursuivants they roughly exacted, and cheated έσ many fearful people of their money, that they might not appear before "the magistrates. Of these men some were taken and compelled to restore "their stolen goods, lost their ears in the pillory, and were branded on the "forehead as counterfeits and cozeners. Nevertheless, this society could "not repress the pilfering dishonesty of such men, until proclamation was "made, that the Queen's pursuivants should not exact their travelling fees, "before such time as the persons summoned did appear, and that they "should come, together with the parties summoned, to the magistrates. "This, if they refused, the persons summoned should not appear. If many were summoned by one and the same warrant, against one and "the same day, that the pursuivants also should be present; that if the

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person summoned conceived any suspicion against the pursuivant, he might cause him to be brought before the next justice of peace, to be "examined, that the man might be known. That the persons summoned "should not, upon pain of imprisonment, corrupt the pursuivants with

money, that they might not appear: also, that the pursuivants should "not receive any money with that condition, unless they would lose their places, be imprisoned, and most grievously punished.”*

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In the Appendix† is given the regulations judged necessary by Dethick, jun., Garter, for the good of the College, and those made by the Lords Com

missioners.

In the curious engravings, published by the Society of Antiquaries, not only the names of the officers who attended the Queen's very magnificent funeral, but their baptismal and surnames are mentioned, which is unusual.

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On Monday, the 14th day of October, 1566, upon complaint made by Mr. Grafton against Philpot, a "Pursuivant, in the Court of Wards, touching two promoters for extortion; "the said pursuivant was sent for." D'Ewes Journal of the House of Commons. This Philpot was not a member of the College of Arms. The Court of Wards, like some other courts, had. pursuivants, who were messengers. What these promoters were we learn from. Camden, in his History of Elizabeth under that year. "About this time," says he, "was restrained by "wholesome severity, the insolency of certain bad people, which here and there offered. "violence, beat, and openly in the street cried out against those informers, whom the vulgar. "sort called Promoters."

+ See Appendix, letter D,

ELIZABETH. Usual. The procession, as far as it is complete, was drawn by Camden, Clarenceux. The whole body of the incorporation are included, as also Philip Holland, Rose pursuivant extraordinary, the only extra one then in being.

Garter.

GARTER, PRINCIPAL KING AT ARMS.

Edw. vi.-Sir GILBERT DETHICK, Knight.

The Dethicks pretended to be descended from a family of that name, seated at Dethick-hall, in Derbyshire, averring, that the father of Garter was steward to Edmond, Earl of Suffolk, who afterward became a yeoman of the armory to Henry VIII. The acrimonious Brooke, York herald, says their origin was from Robert Dericke, a Dutchman, who came into England with Erasmus Crukenez, yeoman armorer to the above Monarch, whose wages under this man was ten pence a day. He says he married Agatha, daughter of Matthias Leyen, a Dutch barber of Acon, in Germany, who also became an armorer to Henry; the issue was Dericke, Matthias, and Gilbert. The latter procured for himself and his brothers denization by parliament; and by the daughter of one Leonard, a Dutch shoemaker, at the sign of the Red Cock, in St. Martin's-lane, became father of Garter. This is a very particular relation; the genealogy, as far as the names, is warranted by some pedigrees still extant. There can be little doubt but that the Dethicks were of Dutch extraction, and not descended from the English family of the same surname they assumed; it is also probable, that Garter's father was in the service of the Earl of Suffolk, and afterwards of Henry VIII. That their connexions were so mean as the libellous Brooke, York, pretends, seems improbable. The three brothers, Dericke, Matthias, and Gilbert, were all opulent: the second settled in the North. In York cathedral is a grave-stone inscribed " Mattheus Dethick obiit die “mensis Augusti, MDLXXXIII." With three water-bougets given as his arms. Copying the example of the Wriths, they attempted to impose upon. the public respecting their family: Brooke perceiving this, perhaps, made their origin less than it really was. When they took the surname of Dethick, they assumed for their arms, Argent, a Fesse vairy of Or and Gules, between three Water-bougets, Sable. Garter must have been early devoted to the service of the court, being only sixteen years of age when he was

created

Garter.

created Hampnes pursuivant extraordinary; a proof how young persons ELIZABETH. were who took the tabard, that they might in advanced age be equal to the performance of the duties enjoined them. He became a very useful servant to several Sovereigns. He gave an instance of the most mistaken courage in delivering a message to Ket, the rebel, who with difficulty was dissuaded from hanging him. This probably occasioned his promotion in the College. Henry VIII. gave him a grant of a mansion, and an acre of land, at Poplar, in the parish of Stepney. He and his descendants made this their residence, for nearly two centuries. He was often employed in foreign service, either as a negotiator, or in conveying the insignia of the Garter to princes elected into the order. Several times he went to the court of Denmark, to claim ships, &c. Some of his letters relative to this business are preserved in the Cottonian library. Henry also sent him to Lubeck, and other states in Germany: he attended at the Diet of Ratisbon. In the reign of Edward VI., he was sent to various places to pacify the rebels. The Protector, Somerset, took him into Scotland. So fluctuating were politics then, that February 11, 1551, he was sent to take down this Duke's arms, from his stall in St. George's chapel, Windsor. Edward knighted him on Easter-Tuesday, in the fifth year of his reign. He was sent by that Sovereign to the Duke of Cleveland, relative to a marriage between him and a princess of that house; as he was also to Scotland, to negotiate a union between the two British Monarchs, Edward and Mary, an alliance that seemed calculated to terminate the internal wars of the island. Providence ordained otherwise. Mary was doomed to be the sport of fortune, and the victim of treason; whilst Edward soon expired in a blaze of reputation, lamented by admiring Europe. In this reign he was sent in the magnificent embassy, at the head of which was the Marquis of Northampton, to present the Garter to Henry II. of France. A treaty of marriage was concluded also at Angers, July 19, 1551, between Edward and Elizabeth, that Monarch's daughter, which never took effect. In the reign of Mary, he assisted in investing her royal consort, Philip, with the Order of the Garter, proclaiming their long and numerous titles. These Monarchs sent him, November 25, 1554, to Flanders, to publish the justs between Ferdinando de Toledo, Don Francisco de Mendoza, and Garcelasco de la Vega, declaring the terms agreed upon. He and Norroy proclaimed war against France, in 1557. In this reign he invested Emanuel Philibert,

Duke

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