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XIV.

Shellfish.

Amongst the various productions of nature, shellfish claim attention on account of their great variety; the regularity and delicacy of the shells, and the beauty of their colours, are strikingly curious. Each sea has its own kind, and every part of the ocean is inhabited by its peculiar tribe of shellfish, which decrease in size and beauty with their distance from the equator; those of the southern region are distinguished by essential characters from the analogous species in the northern seas. Very few have been assumed in heraldry, and amongst those few the escallop holds pre-eminence.

Gules, six escallop shells argent, are the punning arms of the baronial family of Scales, or de Eschales, of Middleton Castle, near Lynn in Norfolk: their crest is also an escallop shell. The seal of Robert Lord Scales is affixed to the Barons' letter in 1301; the banner of the same person is described in the heraldic poem of the Siege of Carlaverock, "the handsome and amiable Robert de Scales bore red, with shells of silver."

The barony of Scales was inherited by the male descendants of this Lord until the reign of Edward IV. when Anthony Woodvile, son of Earl Rivers, having married the daughter and heiress of Thomas, seventh Baron, was summoned to parliament as Lord Scales. He assumed as a cognizance a star charged with an escallop, to show his affinity to the house of Baux; and also

instituted Scales Pursuivant of arms, a kind of heraldic messenger attached to his household. At the death of Anthony Lord Scales without issue, the barony fell into abeyance between the daughters of Roger fourth Lord Scales, in which state it still continues.

Azure, three escallops or, were borne by the baronial family of Malet of Eye, on the river Waveney, in Suffolk, after the marriage of Sir Baldwin Malet with the heiress of Sir Hamelyn Deandon. At an earlier period Robert Malet held the office of Chamberlain of England, and founded a Priory at Eye, dedicated in honour of Saint Peter the Apostle. Besides one hundred and twenty manors in Suffolk which were comprised in the honour of Eye, he held many lordships in Essex, and granted the manor of Goldingham to his good knight, Sir Hugh.

The arms of Goldingham are, argent, a bend wavy gules, and their badge is an oyster dredge.⁕

Sir Alan de Goldingham was Sheriff of Essex in 1308, and the estate continued in the possession of his descendants till Christopher Goldingham sold it to Sir Stephen Soame, Lord Mayor of London in 1559.

The Corporation of Colchester now holds the royalty of the river Colne, and grants licences for dredging its bed. The pearls which are used in heraldry to denote the gradations of rank in the coronets of peers are the produce of the pinna marina, the large pearl-oyster of the East Indies.

The escallop is termed the shell of Saint James, as being his especial cognizance. A stupendous metamorphosis was performed in the ninth century, (to use the language of Gibbon,) when from a peaceful fisherman of the Lake Gennesareth the apostle Saint James was transformed into a valorous knight, who charged at the head of the Spanish chivalry in battles against the Moors. The gravest historians have celebrated his exploits; the miraculous shrine of Compostella displayed his power; and the sword

* Harl. MS. 4632.

of a military order, assisted by the terrors of the Inquisition, was suffered to remove every objection of profane criticism.*

The great Spanish military order of Santiago de la Espada is said to have been instituted in memory of the battle of Clavijo, in which no less than sixty thousand Moors were killed. At this battle Saint James appeared on a white horse, the housings charged with escallops, his own particular cognizance, fighting for the Christians under Ramira King of Leon, in the year 844. The saint was thus represented in his military character on the standard of the order used in the army of Ferdinand and Isabella at the conquest of Granada: the bandera de Santiago now preserved in the armoury at Madrid is of the time of Charles V, and, in addition to the figure of the saint, bears the Emperor's arms; also Saint Andrew and the cross of Burgundy.

Saint James is here copied from the banner,† where he is shown as he appeared on the day of battle, and above him, on the banner, is the Deity, pointing out the proper victims of Saint James's wrath.

The city of Compostella, in Gallicia, became the seat of the

*Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Engraved in the Armeria Real de Madrid, 1841.

order of Saint James, from the legend of the real body of the saint having been discovered there in the eighth century, and which became almost immediately an object of pilgrimage. Ships were loaded every year with devotees to his shrine, who carried out large sums to defray the expences of their journey, and it appears that the pilgrims, in many instances, united trade with their devotion.⁕ The peculiar badge of the order of Saint James is a red cross like a sword, charged with a white escallop shell; and the motto of the order, "Rubet ensis sanguine Arabum," red is the sword with the blood of the Moors.

The escallop shell, a beautiful ornament, is used in the enrichments of other orders of knighthood; that of Saint James, in Holland, while it existed, consisted of a badge and collar formed of escallop shells. An order of knighthood, denominated the Ship and Escallop shell, was instituted by Saint Louis, to induce the nobility of France to accompany him in his expedition to the Holy Land, and particularly to engage their assistance in the works at Aigue Mortes in Languedoc, where the king and his sons had embarked. The order soon became extinct in France, but existed for three centuries in Naples and Sicily. The collar of the order of Saint Michael, founded by Louis XI. in 1476, was also richly garnished with golden escallops, and bore pendent the figure of that saint trampling on the dragon.

Argent, three escallops sable, were the arms of Buckenham Priory, in Norfolk, founded about 1146, by William de Albini Earl of Arundel, and Queen Adeliza his wife, the widow of King Henry I. The seal of this ancient Priory bears the figure of Saint James, as a pilgrim, with the escallop shell in his hat, a pilgrim's staff in one hand and a scrip in the other.

* Original Letters, edited by Sir Henry Ellis.

Gules, three escallops argent, are the arms of the baronial family of Dacre, a name said to have been assumed by an ancestor who had served at the siege of Acre in Palestine.

The arms of Thomas Lord Dacre of Gillsland, who died in 1525, sculptured on his monument in Lanercost Priory Church,* are supported by the dolphins of Greystoke. The barony of Dacre of Gillsland, now held by the Earl of Carlisle, K. G., was originally in the family of Vaux, and descended to the Multons, the heiress of which married Sir Ralph Dacre, who built Naworth Castle in the reign of Edward III, where the dolphin badge of Greystoke is carved in the hall. The well-known badge of the family of Dacre, an escallop, united by a knot to a ragged staff, is an heraldic composition indicative of the office of hereditary forester of Cumberland.

From the Multons of Cockermouth the Lucy family was paternally descended, and hence Percy's Cross, as it is called, an ancient pillar near Wooler, sculptured with luces and other heraldic devices of the Percy and Lucy families, is supposed to be a boundary stone of part of the great Lucy estate, which devolved to the Earl of Northumberland, and not the record of a battle, as generally surmised.

Dr. Fuller, in his History of the Crusades,{ describes the several additions to the heraldry of noble families derived from a devoted service in Palestine, particularly the introduction of escallop shells, palmers' scrips, and pilgrims' staves; and instances, amongst others, the gallant Sir Nicholas de Villiers, ancestor of

* Engraved in the Border Antiquities.

The dolphin also appears in the heraldic enrichments of Greystoke Castle, the seat of Henry Howard Molyneux, Esq.

Fifth Book, Chapter xxiv.

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