heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

100 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
staunch adherent to him in his family difficulties ;
(4) a saltire, possibly
John, Lord Nevill, son of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, by whose treachery
the Archbishop was captured, but as he married Lady Elizabeth Holland,
daughter of Thomas, Earl of Kent, he would be brother-in-law to Sir Henry
Scrope, and thus drawn into the same political intrigue ; (5)
a fesse
dancette, Vavasour repeated, the fesse highly ornamented, doubtless because
he allowed the sto^e necessary for the building to be quarried on his land,
and therefore his shield is thus appropriately placed at the completion
of the Choir.
On the south side we commence with the shield of Archbishop Scrope,
with the augmentation of honour, the bordure of mitres, immediately above
the altar. Next to him his colleague and helpmeet, Bishop Skirlaw, who
had the moral courage to acknowledge that his father was a basket-maker,
and carry three osiers crossed. Then the shields of the three principal
actors in the great drama. Scrope, where the label denotes, I think, not
only Masham, but
primogeniture, and marks, therefore, the Earl of Wilts,
slain at Bristol ; then a shield having quarterly Percy and Lucy, the
arms of the great Earl of Northumberland, father of the gallant Hotspur,
and chief of the rising in the north ;
and then the lion rampant of Mowbray,
who was beheaded at the same time as the Archbishop. The remaining
shields are, I think, official, or royal. First the lioncels and horn, which, as
I have already pointed out (page 36), may be the cognizance of the Lord
Mayor of the time here, or the initial quartering of Plantagenet. Next to
it the shield of the house of Mortimer, for which so much was dared and
suffered, and representing the senior claim of the house of York. Then
the three crowns of Edwin of Northumbria, the arms of the ancient kingdom
in which York is situated, and therefore the token of sovereignty over
it. Next to it the cross and martlets of Edward the Confessor, which had
been specially adopted by Richard II. and impaled with his own arms.
And finally the last shield, bearing a cross, probably or a cross gules. The
arms of De Burgh, quartered by Edward IV. from his grandmother, Anne
Mortimer, whose grandmother, Philippa Plantagenet, wife of Edmund
Mortimer, was the daughter of Elizabeth de Burgh, only daughter and
heiress
of William de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, by Lionel, Duke of Clarence.
Edmund Mortimer quartered these arms on his seal, viz., i and 4,
Mortimer ;
2 and 3, De Burgh.
On the capital of the pillar just outside, at the entrance of the Choir,
and also high up above it on the capital of the pillar supporting the south
tower arch, may be seen the white hart couched, to which I have already
alluded (page 56) as the badge of Richard II., and which was adopted by
Edward IV. Sandford tells us " Generally with a scroll inscribed ' Rege
" '
Richardo,' i.e. ' In honour of Richard II.,' whose device it was, and who