VI.

The Herring, Pilchard, and Sprat.

The Herring, a sea fish, derives its name from hairang, an old French word implying troop or army. The deep seas swarm with herrings, which usually appear together in large numbers, and in due season visit the coast of every region of the globe.

Herring fisheries were of importance in the eleventh century as a source of revenue. Hugh de Montefort's manors in Suffolk yielded numerous rents of herrings; the manor of Beccles in that county, in King Edward the Confessor's time, yielded thirty thousand herrings to the abbey of Saint Edmund, and in William the Conqueror's time this revenue was increased to sixty thousand herrings.⁕

Yarmouth has long been the great mart for herrings, and of the fishery the Barons of the Cinque Ports were the original

lords.

King John, the great patron of commerce in Norfolk, having granted the burgesses of Yarmouth a charter, they afterwards assumed the exclusive right of the fishery for herrings, and, as indicating this right, the old seal of the borough bears a fishing-boat, with the herrings in the sea beneath.

⁕ Introduction to Domesday Book, by Sir Henry Ellis,
Lyon's History of Dover.

Thomas Nash, a Suffolk poet of the time of Queen Elizabeth, quaintly assumes, in his "Herring's Tayle," that "this fishery brings more ships to Yarmouth than were assembled at Troy to fetch back Helen." The expert and persevering fishermen of this town are still unrivalled in the herring fishery, which now employs about two hundred fishing vessels; and the quantity of herrings cured, red or smoke-dried, is said to have sometimes amounted to one hundred thousand barrels in a year.

In 1352 the burgesses of Yarmouth granted the College of St. George at Windsor a last of red herrings, to be delivered annually; and in 1671, when King Charles II. visited this town, the Corporation presented his Majesty with four golden herrings and a gold chain.

The priory of the Black Friars at Yarmouth, founded about the year 1270, had some franchise or right of fishery conceded to the convent. The herrings appear upon the seal of the priory, which bears also the Virgin Mary, between Saint Dominic and Saint Nicholas, patrons of the convent and town.

At Heringflete, in Suffolk, was a priory of Austin canons, and also near Yarmouth was the hospital or college of Heringby, both very probably supported by the produce of the fishery.

Azure, three herrings naiant argent, were the original arms of the borough of Yarmouth: the Corporation at present bear for arms, party per pale gules and azure, three demi-lions passant guardant or, conjoined with as many demi-herrings argent.

An Italian, eating a capon on a fast-day, termed it " pesce d'una corte," a fish from a coop; but, reversing this expression, the herring, from its noted mart, is called a Yarmouth capon.

Lowestoft, a town situated on the most easterly point of land in England, partakes with Yarmouth the trade in the fishery and curing of herrings: a Lowestoft fisherman's toast, even during the progress of the Reformation, was,

Here's to his Holiness the Pope, with his triple crown,
With nine dollars each for every cask in the town;

the nine dollars having reference to the price at which it was hoped the herrings would sell per barrel on their arrival in Italy. The ancient town of Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, now ruined by the encroachments of the sea, had a considerable herring fishery; and the seal of Robert, Bailiff of Dunwich in the year 1218, bears the fish.⁕

The staple trade of the town of Southwold, in the same county, was greatly diminished in consequence of the Reformation; fast-days had ceased to be so frequently observed, and the demand for herrings had decreased. A token, struck at Southwold in 1667, bears the fish in allusion to the trade.

The royal burgh of Inverary, at the head of Loch Fyne, has a considerable herring fishery. It was incorporated by King Charles I; and the arms of the town are, the waves of the loch, in which is suspended a sean with five herrings entangled in it, typical of its chief produce.

The Royal Company of Fishing, established in Scotland by King Charles II, bore appropriately for arms, azure, two herrings in saltier, surmounted by an imperial crown or, with the motto, "Messis ab alto," Our harvest is from the deep. The great herring fishery in Scotland was, in reality, founded by the British Engraved in Gardner's History of Dunwich, 1754.

*

Fishery Society in 1786, for the express purpose of forming stations in the highlands and islands of North Britain.

The celebrated South Sea Company, established in 1711, for encouraging the fishery, bears for arms, azure, a globe, on which are depicted the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn; on a canton the arms of Great Britain; in the sinister chief point two herrings in saltier, crowned or: and the crest, a ship in full sail; supporters, on the dexter side, Britannia,⁕ and on the sinister, a fisherman holding in his hand a string of fish.

The colour and form of the herring are beautiful; the back is blue, with green and other reflexions when viewed in different lights; the side and belly of the fish are silvery white. As a charge in heraldry, the herring is borne in reference to the name by several families of antiquity.

On the seal of John Heringot of Westwell, in Kent, in the reign of Henry III. is a shield with a border charged with six herrings; azure, three herrings erect, between six cross crosslets fitchy or, the arms of Heringod of Elmstead, are sculptured on the ceiling of the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral;† azure, semee of cross crosslets, six herrings naiant in pale or, are the arms of Heringod of Icklesham, in Sussex, in the reign of Henry III.

The German family of Heringh, on the banks of the Rhine, bear for arms, argent, three herrings in bend azure.‡

The arms of the ancient family of Heringham also show the herrings, as a play upon the name.

Gules, three herrings hauriant argent, appear in stained glass amongst the quarterings in the arms of the first Earl of Bed*The earliest representation of Britannia, as a tutelar goddess, is to be found upon a medal of the Emperor Commodus.

+ Willement's Heraldic Notices.

+ Palliot.

ford, K.G. in the windows of the chapel at Chenies in Buckinghamshire, showing his descent from Sir John Russell, Speaker of the House of Commons, the son of Sir John Russell of Kingston, in Dorsetshire, and Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir John Heringham of Chaldon, in the same county, the descendant of a family seated at Chaldon in the reign of John. Langton Hering and Heringston, also in Dorsetshire, seem to have derived the name from the same family.

Gules, crusilly, three herrings hauriant argent, were the arms of Archbishop Herring.

Thomas Herring, the son of the Rev. John Herring, Rector of Walsoken, in Norfolk, was born in 1691: as chaplain to the King he attended his Majesty George II. to Cambridge in 1728, having previously preached against "The Beggar's Opera." He was made Bishop of Bangor in 1737, and Archbishop of York in 1743 being one of the preachers of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, his arms, as Archbishop of York, are in one of the stained glass windows of their Hall. In 1747 he was created Archbishop of Canterbury; and, residing chiefly at Croydon, his arms, impaling those of the archiepiscopal see, were placed in the Hall of that palace.