have become hereditary, as they probably did in many cases in England and France.

In the Strand Magazine for April 19101 there is an interesting paper on Marks by Mr. J. B. Williams. Among other points, the writer refers to and gives illustrations of the systematic differencing of the mark of a German family, the number of additional lines to be noticed in these examples being occasioned by the junior members of the family varying and increasing the lines in the mark in order to distinguish themselves from others of the same name. The illustrations to this paper include sixteen English marks dating from 1309 to 1602, and three others from English houses, one of them being that of Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor of London, 1537, from his house at Intwood in Norfolk (Fig. 30). In the Gresham mark we have distinct evidence of its hereditary use, for Sir Richard's son, Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), the founder of the Royal Exchange, sealed with the same mark with the addition of his initials (Fig. 31). Sir Thomas may perhaps have used two marks, for a ring, found during the construction of the approaches to new London Bridge, which it has been suggested belonged to him, is engraved with the letters T. and G. at the sides of a merchant's mark composed of an upright mast or pole with a bifid base interlaced with a V, the top of the mast being a figure 4 finishing at the sinister side as a cross pattée.3

Another example of a differenced mark is seen in the marks of a father and son at Stamford in Lincolnshire, copied by my brother. John Browne, of Stamford, merchant of the Staple of Calais, who died in 1442, is remembered by a brass which bears his

3

1 No. 232, vol. xxxix.

2 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, new series, vol. iv. p. 256. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, vol. xv. p. 239.

mark (Fig. 84). William Browne, who died in 1489, restored All Saints' Church at Stamford, and was also the founder of Browne's Hospital, also known as the Bedehouse. He was six times Mayor of Stamford between 1435 and 1470, and thrice Sheriff of Rutland. His mark, which is differenced by a crescent (Fig. 85), may be seen in a window of the Bedehouse. Again, in the marks of the Gee family of Chester (Figs. 13, 14, 18, 19, and 20) there are lines added to the same mark which have the appearance of differences for the purpose of distinction. Three distinct varieties of the same mark of the Spring family may be seen at the base of the tower of Lavenham Church, Suffolk.1

3

3

In 1580 two brothers, James and John Master, of the county of Kent, sealed with two different seals each bearing the same mark.2

This suggests that this device came to them by descent. The very slight variation shown in these

1 The Visitation of Suffolk, 1561, edited by Joseph Jackson Howard, 1866, vol. i. p. 190.

2 Some Notices of the Family of Master, by the Rev. George Streynsham Master, 1874, p. 60.

two marks seems to be too inconspicuous for a difference. Among English merchants' marks, however, so far as it is possible to judge from the limited number of examples under observation, there is no evidence of such a systematic mode of differencing as the German method mentioned in the Strand Magazine, although in many English marks certain little lines are observable, which may well have been additions made by relations to difference their family mark.

In some families the different members used quite distinct marks. An example of this may be seen in the Church of St. Nicholas, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where a tomb displays three totally different marks for three members of a family named Anderson, who were buried in the same place in 1582, 1605, and 1606.1 In this church there is the tomb of Thomas Bowes, Merchant Adventurer, and Jane, his wife, 1624, who both used the same mark, except that the wife substituted the initial I for T.

A very pretty symmetrical mark (Fig. 72) may be seen in High Street, Totnes, on the woodwork of a picturesque old house now occupied by the Naval Bank. The mark is between the initials N B, with the date 1585. Inside the house the same mark occurs in plaster-work at the ends of two beams, with the initials M E, entwined by an interlaced cord, at the other ends of the beams in the principal room on the first floor, which has a particularly fine Elizabethan plaster-work ceiling, once coloured and gilded but now whitewashed. Mr. Edward Windeatt, formerly the town-clerk of Totnes, has kindly communicated the following information regarding this mark :

Nicholas Ball was M.P. for Totnes in 1584, and Mayor in 1585; his burial is recorded in the register

1

1 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne, vol. viii., 1899.

of Totnes on the 30th March 1586 as "Mr. Nyco. Ball, Maior of Totnes." The book of Constitutions of the Merchants' Company in Totnes, about the year 1579, contains the name of "Mr. Nics. Ball" as one of the merchants and as one of the officers, and the records of the Proceedings of the Merchant Venturers of Exeter, 11th June 1583, when there was a conference with the other merchants, contains the name of Mr. Nicholas Ball as one of those summoned from Totnes. The Balls appear to have been an Exeter family, and were of Chudleigh and Mamhead, near Exeter. Mr. Windeatt finds among a list of merchants of Totnes the name of Matthew Everie or Every, who was made a freeman on the 22nd October 1593, and belonged to a leading family in the town, four of whom were Mayors of Totnes between 1559 and 1611; but no evidence is forthcoming to connect the Balls and the Everys. The use of the same mark by N.B. and M.E. suggests that the latter may perhaps have been the successor in business of the former.

Some marks were evidently designed to give the appearance of coats of arms, without being actually heraldic in character. Examples of such marks are Figs. 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 21, 27, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 54, 57, 58, 68, 76, 80, and 83. This was quite contrary to the strict heraldic rule, and Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald, writing in 1605, on the duty and office of a herald,' enjoins heralds "to prohibit any merchant or any other to put their names, marks, or devices in escutcheons on shields, which belong and only appertain to gentlemen bearing arms and to none other." Probably,

1 A Discourse of the Dutye and Office of an Heraulde of Arms, written by Francis Thynne, Lancaster Heraulde, 3rd Mar. 1605 (Lansdowne MSS. 254), printed in Hearne's Collection of Curious Discourses, 1775, vol. i. p. 153.

however, this rule was a growth of the early part of the sixteenth century. Many of the early marks, as we have seen, were placed upon shields.

Andrew Favine, Parisian and Advocate in the High Court of Parliament, in his Theatre of Honour, 1620, translated and printed in London in 1623, refers to marks as follows:

1

The honour of bearing shields, that is to say, armes, belongeth to none but noblemen by extraction, or by calling or creation. And it is not yet an 100 years since such as were not of noble condition were punished with great fines & amercements if they but attempted to bear any. It was permitted to them to have only markes or notes of those trades & professions which they used: as a tailor to have his sheares, a cutler a knife, a shearman his cloth sheares, a mason his trowell & the compasse or squire, and so of other. Merchants (for their more honour) might beare the first letters of their names & surnames enterlaced with a crosse: as is to be seene in many ancient epitaphes, and as yet to this day, upon their packes or burthens of merchandises. All these were called but markes: they were not permitted to have shields but only targets, hollow at the chiefe and flankes, like them which are given to villages at the feast of the saint their patron, to manifest that they were not shieldes."

The importance attained by merchants' marks is illustrated by the fact that, in numerous cases where a German family who were possessed of a mark subsequently obtained armorial bearings, their old family mark was made the basis of, or was introduced into, their new coat of arms; and the arms and mark were sometimes used concurrently. This appears from the paper by Mr. Williams already mentioned,1 and also from a curious and interesting work by M. Arnold van Gennep, entitled 1 Archæologia, vol. xxxvii. p. 385.