heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

2O2
THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
To return, however, to Joan Waller.
The history of her family, as indicated in
their armorial bearings, is very interesting.
The shield is sable, between two cotises or,
three walnut leaves argent. This demonstrates
the foreign extraction of the founder
of the family, for Wai is another form of
Walshe or Welche, which simply means a
foreigner,
i.e. one who was not of the Teutonic
race.
The walnut is a native of Persia and
China, and when first introduced into England
it was called " nut," or the nut par excellence. But in the fourteenth century
it had acquired the name of the ban-nut, from its hardness, and is so
mentioned in
a metrical vocabulary of that date:
"Appel-tree, peere-tree, hazel-nute, banne-nute, fygge."
At the same time it had also acquired the name of walnut. " Haec
"Avelana; Anglice, walnut-tree" (vocabulary, fourteenth century).
Lyte says that the tree is called " the wal-nut and walshe-nut tree." *
And so
Probably, therefore, Alured le Waller, who died in 1 1 83 (temp. Hen. II.),
or one of his progenitors, was a retainer in the train of some Norman
knight, and was known as Alured the Foreigner, or Alured le Waller,
which in due time became the family name of his descendants ;
and when
the arms were granted, such a device was chosen (according to the practice
of "canting heraldry," to which I have already alluded)
the name.
as would express
However, Alured's son was Master of the Rolls to Edward III. for
thirty years and from his only brother, Henry, sprang John Waller, who
;
added to the large estates which the family had already acquired in Kent
and Sussex, by purchasing from the Clintons the estate of Groombridge,
which had once been the property of a younger branch of the ancient
family of Cobham, of Cobham in Kent.
His son, Richard, was a soldier in the army of Henry V. when, on
St. Crispin's
day, 1415, was fought the famous battle of Agincourt.
Fabyan, who lived at the latter end of the same century, in his
Chronicles shews the wonderful disparity of the forces engaged, men slain,
and prisoners taken, on that eventful day. He speaks of King Henry V.
as " hauynge in his companye of noble men yt myght fyght, not passynge
" the nombr of vii M (7,000). But at those dayes the yomen
had their
" lymmes at lybertie, for their hosen were then fastened w* one poynt, and
* Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare. Rev. H. Ellacombe.