Willement’s roll of arms An armorial of nobles and gentry living in the reign of Richard II A preliminary edition by Steen Clemmensen from London, British Library, Ms. Egerton 3713 CONTENTS Foreword 2 The manuscript 2 Copies and extracts 3 Evaluation of entries – editorial principles 3 Composition, styling and date of collation 5 App. A: Chronology of the period 7 App. B: Knights of the shire mentioned in WIL 8 The Willement armorial 11 References 92 Index of names 98 Ordinary of arms 101 © November 2008, Steen Clemmensen, Farum, Denmark, www.armorial.dk Foreword The various reasons, not least the several german armorials which were suddenly available, the present work on the Willement Roll had to be suspended. As the german armorials turned out to demand more time than expected, I felt that my preliminary efforts on this english roll should be made available, though much of the analysis is still incomplete. Since the present draft were completed in November 2008, the older transcription of Thomas Willement from 1824 has been made available on www.archive.org . The manuscript The present manuscript, London, British Library, Ms.Egerton 3713, takes its common name the Willement Roll of Arms from its first publisher, the antiquarian and stained-glass artist Thomas Willement, F.S.A., who published a blazoned edition of it in 1834 as A Roll of Arms of the Reign of Richard II. Other names are Greenstreet 40, Papworth S, Clemmensen WIL and Surrey Roll (named by Joseph Foster). The manuscript is a 13 membrane roll of vellum, 290 mm x 910 cm (30 feet). Some of the membranes are cut or broken, but repasted on supports. The membranes are pasted on to the preceding with an overlap of 1 cm and sewn together, some only at the sides, others on the whole overlap. The layout of the shields are of two types: (A) on membranes 1-2 in rows of 2 shields enclosed by Garters for the founding Knights of the Garter; and (B) on membranes 3-13 in rows of 6 smaller shields of english nobles and gentry. The contents of part B was dated 1392-1395 by Willement, to which Wagner agreed. The legends are at present partly illegible and the colour is flaking. The top left-hand corner has been torn away, removing the arms of the original items 1 Edward III and 3 Henry D.Lancaster and severely damaging the original items 2 Edward ‘Black Prince’ and 4 E.Warwick. These 4 items have been reduced to the present items 1 Edward III and 2 E.Warwick, giving 605 items in the present edition. The shields are painted on the verso side of of a roll of escheats, inquisitions and writs relating to the forfeiture of John Montagu E.Salisbury (d.1400). This roll, from 1409, fills membranes 1-9, with 10-13 blank, possibly added when the armorial was painted. Two hands, one used up to row 16 on membrane 3 and one for the rest, are present and known from other works emanating from the studio of Thomas Wriothesly, Garter king-of-arms 1505-1534. The rows are marked with roman numerals, but have occational errors, and are not used for the present edition. For more details see BL cat. WIL, Dr. C.E. Wright in BM Qtly 1954, 19:49, and H.Stanford London, Coat of Arms, 1956-57, 4:153-154. This copy of an older collation is likely to have been painted in the Wriotesley studio in the early 16th century, as the row index numbers are found in a register in Wriothesleys own hand (BL Add.45133:99r-139v). From there the provenance is sketchy: probably owned by Thomas Monck (temp.Elizabeth I) and Henry Davy (17th century) before coming to John Newling (d.1838), who let Thomas Willement copy it. Most of the Newling library was acquired by William Noel-Hill B.Berwick of Attingham (d.1842) and then by Rowland Hill V.Hill (d.1875). By 1893 it was in the library of E.Derby at Knowsley Hall until 1954, when bought by the British Museum. It presence at 2 Knowsley Hall was not known to Anthony Wagner, when he published his summary in CEMRA 71, but he corrected this in Wagner RAH 270. The only published illustration in colour is of items 23-43 in plate 17 on BM Qtly 19:49 and in C.E. Wright ‘English Heraldic Manuscripts in the British Museum’, 1973, plate II opposite p.17. Copies and extracts The present edition is based on my transcription of Egerton 3713 during visits to the British Library in 2002 and 2005. About half the items are to be found in DBA: Dictionary of British Arms with two sets of numeration, the lower being comparable with the present numeration. It was not feasible to consult the following copies and extracts: • BL, Add. 45133:99r-139v, index to Egerton 3713, in the hand of Thomas Wriothesley, Garter king-of-arms 1505-1534; • BL, Add. 45133:90r-91v, 48 items as part of an ordinary, from Wriothesley’s studio; • Washington, Folger Shakespeare Libray, Ms. 1199, a coloured facsimile by Thomas Willement, c.1834; • London, Society of Antiquaries, Ms. 346:115r-134r, trick by Thomas Willement, c.1834; • Thomas Willement: A Roll of Arms of the Reign of Richard II, William Pickering, London 1834 – several mistaken tinktures, 3 items omitted; • H. Stanford London, transcription and introduction, typewritten manus, 1955, London, Society of Antiquaries; Evaluation of entries – editorial principles Even with personal names and dated seals available there will always be a certain amount of assumption in assigning an entry to a specific person. Certain personal names tend to be hereditary to the eldest or second sons of a family either in each or alternating generations. A few years difference in the dating of an armorial might suggest different persons. The modern editor must also sift carefully through the sources looking for scribal or painter’s errors and omissions and supporting evidence. There is always the risk of overinterpretating, especially when little information is availabe on a certain coat of arms, but from knowledge of estates or affinity one might guesstimate the relation between the arms and a family or person known from non-armorial documentary sources. The guesstimating approach has been used extensively by Brault on the contents of armorials temp. Edward I and is also used for this paper. Apart from searching for evidence on the starting and finishing dates of collating material and minimizing contradictions by eliminating later additions and possible updating of entries, both editor and reader must critically assess the evidence put forward as well as consider unusual uses or attributions of arms. The reference to similar arms in other armorial manuscripts noted here is selective, but more references on most items are available in Clemmensen OM. The selection here emphasizes either the linage, measured as presence in armorials of c.1300, e.g. Parliamentary Roll (N), and nearly contemporary, e.g. William Jenyns’ Ordinary (WJ = WJO, c.1360), or the knowledge of them 3 among the french, e.g. in the armorials Urfé (URF, c.1380), Berry (BER, c.1455), and Toison d’or (ETO, 1397, revised until 1435). The french manuscript, BnF ms.fr.5256:83v-93v (ARS), containing one or more fragments of english armorials, might with caution be used to assign names to items with surname of title only, as the first five items are: Edward the Confessor (arms quartered by Richard II), ‘le roy d'engleterre’ (Henry IV, d.1413), Prince of Wales (Henry V), John (D.Bedford), Humphrey (D.Gloucester), Edward (D.York 1402, d.1415) and Richard (E.Cambridge, d.1415). Its composition appears to be 1-9 royal family; 10-137 most of ETO-en; 138-190 ETO-en with inserts; 191-299 fragment of an ordinary; 300-447 fragment of an unidentified general roll. The two latter segments might contain material from 1330-1360, e.g. similar to the Powell (PO = POW) and Carlisle (CA = CRL) armorials. Compiling detailed information on medieval persons and families is a cumbersome affair. But substantial information is readily available on members of the peerage (GEC, Burke PB), persons summoned in person to Parliament, here designated barons, but usualy titled lords or simply as knights in contemporary documents. For people living in the later part of the reign there is also available biographies of members of the Commons, the knights of the shire, here styled as MP’s, taken from the alphabetical entries in Roskell C, and lastly, a list of knights retained by Richard II and by Henry IV, taken from Given-Wilson RH 281-290. For the rest sporadic checking of contempory documents and modern works must suffice. If possible, seals and arms in other armorials are used as heraldic evidence (e.g. from DBA and Clemmensen OM), but in many cases notes culled from Burke’s General Armory and its derivative Papworth is the only information available, and is used if it contained supplementary details, e.g. crests or manors owned. The cardex part of the DBA on deposit at the Society of Antiquaries has not been available for consulting, so the DBA refers only to arms alphabetically including chevrons. For reasons of time, effort and expense, the references consulted are mainly those available in print at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. This includes most standard works and the calendared official documents, but excludes local histories, some collections of seals and most genealogical studies, which are in practice only available in major english libraries. Only a few of the Victoria County History volumes have been consulted, due to weighing the time needed against the return expected, and that is also the case for most of the calendared series.