heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

4 8 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
And greatness worship. Every house became
An academy of honour, and those parts we see
Departed, in the practice, now,
Quite from the institution."
In the sixteenth century, indeed, Heralds' College had subsided into
an institution for the registering
or recording of the gentry allowed to
bear arms, thus providing archives invaluable for genealogical purposes,
and tracing the descent or relationship for those who were possessed of
or laid claim to property.
This sphere of duty had indeed not been altogether neglected in
earliest times ;
but it survived when the more aesthetic fell into disrepute.
That such investigations might be as extensive as possible, a visitation of
each county was decreed by the Earl Marshal, and confirmed by a warrant
under the privy seal.
The most ancient visitation of which any account is recorded was
made by Norroy King of Arms, temp. Henry IV., A.D. 1412 ; and others are
said to have been made in the reigns of Edward IV. and Henry VII.
But in 1528 a commission was granted and executed by Thomas
Benoilt, Clarenceux for the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Oxford,
Wiltshire, Berks, and Stafford; and from that period visitations were
regularly made every twenty-five or thirty years. "It is probable," says
Dallaway, " that by them the ordinance of parochial registers was suggested
"to Cromwell, Lord Essex, the Vicar-General, who in 1536 caused his
" mandate to be circulated for that purpose." In 1555 a similar commission
was issued; and in 1566 the freedom of a Pursuivant from arrest was contested
and proved.
In 1622 the Earl Marshal contested before the Star Chamber his right
to hold a "Court of Chivalry," and obtained a judgment in his favour.
Indeed, so pleased was the King (James that he issued a commission
I.),
the
under the great seal, renewing and confirming all his former privileges,
and the peculiar jurisdiction of his court.
During the Commonwealth the Court was, as I have said, not discontinued
;
but after the Restoration, the decline of the Court of Chivalry,
which had been gradual in former years, was hastened by the growing
dislike of the canon law, and the arbitrary decisions and penalties which
frequently occurred on very frivolous excuses. Mr. Hyde, afterwards Lord
Chancellor Clarendon, proposed its dissolution, saying "that a citizen of
" good quality, a merchant, was by that Court ruined in his estate, and his
" body imprisoned, for calling a swan a goose." It was suspected that he
thus alluded to a near relative, who had incurred the censure of the
Heralds in their visitation in 1623, and been branded as a usurper of
armorial distinctions.
*
New Inn, act i. ,
scene iii.