during his life, in any of the royal forests, parks, or chases in the realm, have one shot with his bow, one course with his hounds, and one chase for his dog called "Bercelette." The following story is related of him by Pole, in his collections for

Devon-- :

Sir John Sully, renowned for his exploits in the Holy Land against the Saracens, in which he was weakened by several wounds, returned home after many years' absence: whereupon his officers bringing in the accounts of his rent, which amounted to a great mass of money, he caused his cloak, being of cloth of gold, to be spread on the ground, and commanding the money to be poured thereon, he cast himself into it, that it might be said for once he had tumbled in gold and silver; whereof he afterwards gave one part to his wife, a second to his officers and tenants, and a third part to the poor.'

Sir John Sully must have died about 1388, in his 108th year, as he is omitted in the records of the Garter after that year. This 'hero of a hundred fights' deposed that

' he had seen and known the arms of Sir Richard Scrope borne by Sir Henry Scrope, his father, at the battle of Halidon Hill, and afterwards at the siege of Berwick. He saw Sir William Scrope at the battle of Crecy so armed with a difference; Sir Richard armed in the same arms at the sea-fight of Espagnole-sur-mer, where King Edward commanded in person; and afterwards the said Sir William with the Black Prince at the battle of Poictiers; and the said Sir Richard so armed at the battle of Najara: that he had seen others of the name and lineage armed in the same arms in various journeys and expeditions; and in his time he had always heard that the said arms belonged to Sir Richard Scrope by descent, his ancestors having enjoyed them from beyond the time of memory, &c.'

Sir James Chudleigh, another of the heroes of Poictiers, follows; and is succeeded by Sir Guy Brian, of Tor Brian in Devon, who, as a venerable warrior, almost rivals Sir John Sully, and was still more distinguished as an historical personage. He first took arms at the coronation of Edward III. in 1327, being one of the king's 'valets.' Amongst other employments of weight, the Great Seal was intrusted to him for a short period in 1349; and in the same year he bore the king's banner on occasion of that most romantic expedition of Edward III., when, with the Prince of Wales and a few chosen knights, the stalwart monarch fought in person under the banner of Sir Walter Manny, and defeated an attempt made by the French to surprise Calais. In 1370 he was elected into the order of the garter as successor of the renowned Sir John Chandos, one of the founders, being the second person who filled that stall. He served a great variety of important offices after the accession of Richard II., when he was more than seventy years of age; among others, that of Admiral of the Fleet, and

gained new honours at that advanced age in several engagements. Lord Bryan died in 1390, aged about ninety, and was buried under a magnificent monument still remaining in Tewkesbury Abbey. His deposition was similar to those already given.

Another centenarian is then called forth to speak to the same purpose, in the person of Sir John Chydioke, first armed, with Sir Guy Brian, at the coronation of Edward III., and knighted the succeeding year. He built Chydioke Castle in Dorsetshire, and was an ancestor of the noble families of Arundel of Wardour and Stourton of Stourton. Then follow Sir William Bonville, Sir Robert Fitzpayne, Sir Ralph Cheney, Sir William de Lucy, Sir John Massy of Tatton, and many other barons, knights, and squires of renown-amongst them Sir William Brereton, a relative of Grosvenor's, who, for contumaciously refusing to answer the questions put to him by the Proctor of Scrope, was heavily fined.

copes,

Other depositions succeed, taken in Yorkshire. And first we have the mitred abbot of Selby, and the abbots of Rivaulx, Gervaulx, and St. Agatha, in Richmondshire, of Byland, of Roche, and of Coverham; the Priors of Gisburgh, Wartre, Lanercost, Newburgh, and the Sacristan of the Priory of Bridlington,—all of whom come forward to repay the munificence of former generations of the family of Scrope to their several monasteries, by testifying to the antiquity of their benefactor's race, and the existence of the disputed arms upon windows, tablets, buildings, and, above all, monuments, erected by or in commemoration of Sir Richard's ancestors, from a date immediately following the Conquest. They present likewise numerous charters, containing grants of lands from early members of the Scrope family, sealed with the arms so often alluded to, and a variety of stoles, corporasses, amices, frontores,' and other vestments or cloths, of silk or velvet, of great antiquity, on which the same arms are embroidered or embossed in every imaginable manner. The multitude of such evidences adduced from these and many other religious foundations creates a vivid impression of the vast wealth which the holy brotherhoods in those days contrived to extract from their devotees, either in direct gifts of land, money, jewels, and robes, or in the building and decoration of their monastic edifices. Old chronicles'-old in that day-were produced by some of these monks, tracing the family back for several generations, and corroborated by tombs with ancient inscriptions existing at the time in the churches of Wenceslas and St. Agatha. This evidence satisfactorily confirms the use of armorial insignia as architectural ornaments so far back as the twelfth century. The Prior of Lanercost, for instance, deposes to the existence in the windows of his church of the old arms of the kings

of

of England, the arms of France, the arms of Scotland, and the arms of Scrope, azure a bend or, the which arms have been in the said windows since the building of their church in the reign of King Henry II.'

Following these we have the depositions of the whole host of northern chivalry. The nobles and knights of Yorkshire especially, in which county the Scropes had long resided, come forward in numbers to support their cause. The heads of the families of Hastings, Stapleton, Roos of Ingmanthorp, Grymston, Neville of Hornby, Bosvile of Chete, Constable, Mauleverer, Melton, Savill, Chauncy, Hotham, Reresby, Rokeby, Boynton, Plumpton, Warde, Eure, Pygot, Conyers, Midylton, Merkyngfeld, Fitzhenry, Mallory, Roos of Kendal, Aton, Roucliffe, Loudham, Marmion, Clifton, Spenser, Strelley, and Pierrepoint, with many others, are examined in turn, and depose to the antiquity of the line of Scrope, and their long hereditary use of the contested coat in all the battle-fields, sieges, expeditions, and chivalrous exploits of note of the past century and upwards-'at tournaments and feasts, as well as in the ornamenting of halls, windows, beds, furniture, and plate'in the presence of kings and princes, and before the dukes, earls, barons, and other lords of England,' without challenge on the part of Sir Robert Grosvenor or his ancestors. Many of these knights relate that they had heard from their fathers that Sir William Le Scrope, grandfather of the plaintiff, was, in the reign of Edward I., the most noble tourneyour of his time that could be found in any country, and always tourneyed in those arms, and had been, before he was knighted, (which was at Falkirk, under King Edward's banner,) a famous bohourdeor, and a good esquire and servant in arms. His second son, Sir Geoffry, (the eldest, Henry, was Chief Justice to Edward II.,) had been likewise a renowned tourneyour,' and 'performed right nobly at the tournaments of Northampton and Tournay, and at Dunstable, Cambridge, and Newmarket, before King Edward II., with other knights under his banner, which was azure a bend or, having a white label for a difference.' It appears from the interesting deposition of John Rither, Esquire, who relates his services at Crecy and Najara, and various expeditions in France, Brittany, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, interspersed with many curious particulars, that after the peace made by Edward III. with France, this gallant squire, with many others, went into Prussia, and there, at the siege of Wellon, in Lithuania, Sir Geoffry Scrope died, and was buried in the cathedral of Konigsberg, where the said arms were painted in a glass window, which the deponent himself caused to be set up, taking the blazon from the arms the deceased had on him when he fell.'

Of

Of the deponents who come forward from other parts of the kingdom, the most remarkable are John Thirlwalle, Esquire (of a very ancient house in Northumberland), who relates what he heard on the subject in dispute from his father, who died at the age of 145! and was, when he died, (as well he may have been,) the oldest esquire in the north, and had been dead forty-four years ;Sir Richard Waldegrave,* who was, against his will, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1381, on the occasion of the repeal, by Richard II., of the charters of enfranchisement of the villains, which he had granted for the sake of appeasing their revolt, and revoked as soon as he could venture to do so,-the revocation (to their shame be it spoken) being assented to with one voice by all the prelates, lords, knights, citizens, and burgesses in parliament assembled;-Sir Ralph Ferrers, the subject of a remarkable conspiracy detailed in the Rolls of Parliament (1880), intended to convict him, by forged documents, of a traitorous correspondence with the French ;-Sir Richard Adderbury;-Sir James Berners, one of the unfortunate favourites of Richard II., against whom the animosity of the Lords Appellants,' headed by the Duke of Gloucester, was so powerfully directed, and who was executed, with Burley, Beauchamp, and Salisbury, in 1388 ;-Sir Thomas Tryvet, another victim to the same party feuds, and whose deeds at arms are recorded in great detail by Froissart ;-Sir Lewis Clifford, likewise commemorated by the flowing pen of the same chronicler, as one of the ambassadors sent to Paris to negociate a peace with France in 1390, and one of the English combatants in the grand fait d'armes' which took place in that year in the Marches of Calais, when three French knights, chamberlains of the king, challenged and kept the field for thirty days against all comers who wished to be delivered from their vows by five courses with a sharp or blunt lance, according to their pleasure, or with both lances, if more agreeable ;' †-Sir Richard Le Zouche, who shared all the laurels of the campaigns of Edward III. and the Black Prince ;-Sir John Bourchier, another of Froissart's favourite English knights;-Lord Roos of Huulake; Lord Lovel of Titmersh; Lord Burnell, Keeper of the Privy Seal to Henry IV.; Sir Gerard Braybroke; Lord Darcy of Meinill; Sir Matthew Redman, to whose chivalrous encounter with Sir James Lindsay after the battle of Otterbourne, Froissart

One of the characteristic traits of the times occurs in the engagement in which this knight was bound to the king, (in the year in which he gave his evidence,) in one thousand marks, to maintain Elizabeth, one of the cousins and heirs of Sir Philip Bryan, for one year,-to keep her " ab omni virili corrupcióne mundam et immaculatam;" to furnish her with food and raiment; and at the expiration of that time to deliver her to John Lovell, to whom his majesty had given her in marriage.' + Froissart, Johnes, vol. x. p. 35. has

has devoted a chapter;* Lord Clifford, one of the most illustrious individuals of that illustrious house ;-Lord Neville; the unfortunate Sir Simon Burley; Lord Grey de Ruthyn; Lord Adam de Everingham; Lord Andrew de Luttrell; the Duke of Warwick; and the Earl of Arundel,—all of whom we must pass without more particular notice to arrive at three still more illustrious deponents,the Earl of Northumberland,-his son, Sir Henry Percy, gallant Hotspur' himself—and last, not least in fame if in rank, Geoffrey Chaucer, Esquire.

The Earl of Northumberland, whose brother, the Earl of Worcester, we have seen previously examined, deposed that at the battle of Durham (in 1346) there were three banners in the vanguard of the army,-the banner of Lord Percy, that of Lord Neville, and that of Sir Henry Scrope, viz., azure a bend or with a white label; at which battle Sir Richard Scrope bore the said arms entire, as head of the family; and that he had heard from his father, the Lord Percy, and all the old knights, and squires, and gentry of the north, that these arms were the right arms of the Scropes from times beyond memory.'

6

Sir Henry Percy, of the age of twenty, first armed at the taking of Berwick,' depones to a similar statement, so far as his youth will allow him, and appeals to the authority of John Rither, a veteran squire, previously examined, who had told both him and his father, that during fifty years' constant service he had never seen the said arms borne by any but the Scropes. There is nothing characteristic of Hotspur's fiery temper in his answers to the interrogatories of Scrope's Proctors, which had roused the impatience of more than one of the preceding deponents. In

*Redman was then Captain of Berwick, and after fighting valiantly on that unfortunate day, and seeing that the defeat of the English was conclusive, he mounted his horse and fled, but was closely pursued for three leagues by Sir James Lindsay, a Scottish knight. On the Scot's calling on him to turn, saying there was no other person with him, and that he was Sir James Lindsay, Redman stopped and prepared to defend himself. They fought for some time, and during a temporary cessation of the combat, Lindsay asked who he was, and being told his name, exclaimed, "Then I will conquer you, or you shall me," when the contest recommenced, both being on horseback, the one armed only with his sword, the other with his axe: but Redman accidentally dropping his sword, he was compelled to yield, exclaiming, "Lindsay, you will prove a good companion."-" By St. George, you say truly," replied the generous Scot; "and to begin, though you are my prisoner, what do you wish me to do?"-"I desire you to permit me to return to Newcastle," said Red man, "and by Michaelmas-day I will be at Dunbar or Edinburgh, or at any other part in Scotland you choose.""I am content," rejoined Lindsay; "be at Edinburgh by the day you have named." They then separated, but the Scot missing his road in the dark, and during a thick fog, fell into the hands of the Bishop of Durham, who was on his way to Newcastle from the field of Otterbourne, where he arrived too late to afford Hotspur any assistance. The prelate, having made Lindsay prisoner, conveyed him to Newcastle, where he found Redman. By my faith," said the latter, "I little expected to have found my master, Sir James Lindsay, here already."-FROISSART.

Chaucer's