heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

250 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
"girdle, on the approaching festival of the birth of our Lord. Witness,
"the King at Lichfield, 2ist day of November. By the King himself.'"
The recumbent figure of Brian Fitzalan, at Bedale church, shews a
loose belt, evidently of leather, embossed with lions' heads, from which
the sword hangs. The brass of John Gray, at Chinnor, Oxfordshire, shows
the "ceinture noble" as on the tomb of Prince William at York, with
the sword and dagger affixed
thereto.
Tennyson, in the Holy Grail, p. 42, thus idealizes such a belt :
" But she the wan sweet maiden shore away
Clean from her forehead all
that wealth of hair
Which made a silken net-work for her feet ;
And out of this she plaited broad and long
A strong sword belt, and wove, with silken thread
And crimson, in the belt a strange device,
A crimson grail within a silver beam,
And saw the bright boy knight and bound it on him."
It is not surprising then that an accoutrement so honourable, and
given sometimes under such honourable circumstances, should pass into
device, and be assumed by those who desired to exhibit and to perpetuate
in their descendants the distinction which they had received. Sometimes
they adopted the whole belt, sometimes only portions of the belt ;
so the
house of Pelham still carries a buckle as an armorial bearing, granted by
Edward III. to their ancestor John de Pelham, who assisted to take captive
John, King of France, at the battle of Poictiers, 1356. To Sir Denis de
Morbie, a knight of Artois, the King gave his glove to Sir Roger le Warr
;
and Sir John de Pelham he surrendered his sword ;
and in remembrance
of the exploit the former assumed the " crampet,"
scabbard, the latter
the buckle of the sword belt.
or termination of the
a
THE
CLIFFORDS.
The first shield bearing the fess which I shall notice, is that of
Clifford :
Chequy or and azure a fess gules, f
Under what circumstances the Cliffords obtained those arms I cannot
say, but there is much interesting significance in that chequered, or
chess-board field, about which I must first say a few words.
Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, says that "the Earls of Warenne
" and Surrey, in the reign of Edward IV., possessed the privilege of licensing
"houses of entertainment, and that thus they were called 'The Chequers,'
"or had the chequers marked upon them." I can find no reasonable
confirmation for this ;
though the three balls which hang over the pawn
* Hewitt's Ancient Armour. f See coloured illustration.