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220 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
The Rev. James Graves, the writer of three articles in the Gentleman's
Afagazine for 1865, devotes several paragraphs to prove that this could not
have been the original figure, because it does not bear the three chevronels
of De Clare, but that it is a figure from a monument of the Earl of
Desmond, which was at Drogheda, removed here by Sir Henry Sydney,
Lord Deputy, in 1562, when the roof, south wall, and part of the body of
the church fell, demolishing Earl Richard's monument so completely that
another effigy had to be substituted for the original one. Papworth, however,
gives these arms to " Clare Pembroke,
i.e.
Strongbow, Gilbert and
"Richard de Clare, Earls of Pembroke, 1138-76."
His son Gilbert, who seems to have been alternately the friend and
the enemy of William Rufus, married Adeliza, daughter of the Earl of
Claremont ;
by which alliance, I conclude, he added the second house, and
possibly thereby acquired the arms, Argent a Canton gules,
which are
always known as "Old Clare," and which are in the nave, north side,
second window, west.* He seems to have been created Earl of Hertford,
and his brother Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, by King Stephen in 1138.
Sandford, in his Genealogical History, p. 220, speaking of Lionel, third
son of Edward III., Duke of Clarence, who had married Elizabeth de Burgh,
"having also with her the honour of Clare, in the county of Suffolk, as
" parcel of the inheritance of her grandmother, Elizabeth, the sister and
" co-heiress of the last Earl Gilbert de Clare," says he distinguished
" his
" arms by a label of three points argent, each charged with a canton
" gules
; argent a canton gules being a coat attributed to the Clares, and
" is
placed in the first quarter with three chevrons, as appeareth upon the
" covering of a tomb of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, in the abbey
" at Tewksbury."
Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, great-grandson of Richard, first
Earl, married Amicia, the second of the three daughters (co-heiress and
survivor) of William Earl of Gloucester, which would make the third house.
Several of the shields at Tewksbury carry three clarions, which are always
attributed to Robert Earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I., who
married Maud, the daughter of Fitz-Hamon, Lord of Gloucester, the
founder of the Abbey, and whose granddaughter
Robert de Clare, fourth Earl of Hertford.
and heiress married
These, then, would represent the three houses ;
and it is quite
possible that Gilbert de Clare, fifth Earl of Hertford, when on the death
of his two aunts, Isabel and Mabile, he became Earl of Gloucester, in right
of his mother Amicia, assumed this new coat in token of his having united
in
himself the three houses of Tonebruge, Clermont, and Gloucester.
See coloured illustration.