by Angus B. Reach.
Originally published in Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine (Punch) vol.4 #23 (1846).
Heraldry, I take to be the art of chivalric sign-painting. The Griffins, the Unicorns, the Dragons, the Hands and Daggers, the Bleeding Hearts, and so forth, which the forefathers of our infallible hereditary legislators were in the practice of adopting as signs and symbols of their families; were, I presume, in their day, very much analogous to the Magpies and Stumps, the Pigs and Whistles, the Swans with two Necks, and the Green Men and Stills, with which that respectable body, the licensed victuallers of this empire, are still in the habit of adorning their establishments. The "Bear and Ragged Staff" may be kept in countenance by the modern "Marquis of Granby's Head," and the ancient Black Boars and White Harts, which flourished on the baron's scutcheon, or waved in silken folds to the breeze over the square donjon of the baron's keep, still swing gratingly above the tavern door, the harbingers and heralds of "Good Entertainment for Man and Horse."
Now I confess having a very much greater respect for signs than for coats of arms. The one class of symbols, at all events, indicate the whereabouts of honest traffic, while the others, when they were in full force and glory, frequently flourished in places where lodgings for a year or so might be obtained in a cool, sequestered dungeon, at no higher rate than the whole of the worldly goods and chattels of the entertained. No doubt it was very pretty and romantic to blow your bugle at eventide before some Front-de-Bœuf's castle, and see the drawbridge falling, and the seneschals hurrying forth to receive the wildered guest. But then, when one comes to reflect that the worthy baron might take it into his head to get up a pleasant and inexpensive evening's amusement for his retainers, by rifling his guest's saddle-bags, and thereafter chopping off his head in the castle court, by way of a graceful finish to the festivities, I must say for my own part—the taste is horribly vulgar, no doubt—that I would prefer, on the whole, stopping, now-a-days, at the Castle Tavern, to putting up, a few odd hundred years ago, at the Castle: that I would gladly exchange a flourish of the bugle horn for a peal of the chamber-maid's bell—nay, that I would even give up the Seneschal, in favour of "Boots."
The feudal times were no doubt very nice times indeed to write novels about, but, on the whole, I think they are best admired at a distance. Ruined castles are very beautiful things—in ruins. I doubt much, however, whether their ten-feet-thick walls, garnished with
"Loop-hole grates where captives wept,"
were such agreeable objects of contemplation to the unprotected foot traveller, as now-a-days when we catch sight of their crumbling remnants from a speeding railway train. The truth is, that the baronial keeps of old were very much of the same nature with those establishments, which, in modern thieves' dialect, are denominated "kens," and "fences,"—in other words—refuges for robbers, and receptacles for stolen goods. "The man," said King James V. of Scotland, pointing to a Border Castle, "the man who built that tower, was a thief in his heart." Indeed it is a pretty patent fact, that not a few of the "great old families" of England would be, at this present moment, "great old families" in Norfolk Island, had an effective system of metropolitan and detective police existed in the times of their founders—the Burke-lamented-days of chivalry.
I have spoken of heraldry—of coats of arms—the Signs of the bold barons of yore. The actual device was frequently not remarkable for aught but mere senseless invention of impossible monsters—distorted into impossible attitudes. Sometimes, however, the nature of the composition gave a shrewd hint of the profession, tastes, and predilection of the exhibiter. Now we have a hand and dagger, indicating that the owner of the device was given to those practices, which, when they are now-a-days made the subject of a newspaper paragraph are generally headed "The knife again;"—occasionally the peculiarity in question was merely pictorially hinted at, by a bloody hand. Implements of war and dungeon furniture generally cut a conspicuous figure in the devices of our respectable ancestors, but you may wade through many a book of heraldry without finding a trace of the slightest penchant for enlightened generosity or honest industry.
The mottoes however were peculiarly significant. If the device did not let the cat out of the bag—+the legend did. The coolness indeed with which thievish mottoes were assumed, is quite delicious. We may be a nation of merchants—but so, in one respect, we always were. The feudal baron of old in his impregnable tower was a merchant, although not quite in the sense of the word as understood now-a-days. No doubt both the "House" and the Castle dealt, and still deal in monies and merchandise; the-difference simply is, that the former makes ventures with its own property—the latter, whenever it could, operated upon other people's. Thus the merchant, now-a-days, enters upon a speculation—the feudal gentleman rode a foray: He of the counting-house has dealings with other counting houses—He of the castle had dealings with other castles; but they were confined in most cases to the pillaging line of business. The man of the ledger collects his debts—the man of the lance gathered in his black mail. The one has his clerks, the other had his moss-troopers. The first has his correspondents, the other had his spies. The former rears cities—the taster burned villages.
Taking this view of the case, and looking at a good many of the founders of our ancient families as gentlemen well to do in the burglary and sheep-stealing lines of business, nothing can be more appropriate than the mottoes which they chose, to hint the nature of their callings. The old legend of the Scotts of Harden was "Reparabit cornua Phebe," in plain English, "There will soon be moonlight." The hint is most suggestive. You could no more misunderstand it than you can the "Country orders carefully attended to" of the tradesman in the next street. Moonlight!—Can we mistake the delicate insinuation. "Diana's foresters!—Gentlemen of the shade!—Minions of the moon!" The ancient motto of the Buceleugh family was similar—Best riding by moonlight." Yes—especially when one is burdened with his neighbours' goods, or is making off surreptitiously with his own.
But no,—they are gone—past recall. The workshop and the counting-house have put down the castle and the keep. The spirit and the symbols of the ancient age are outworn together. Burglary, highway robbery, and arson, would not, now-a-days, be accounted a brilliant foray, or killing, no murder; while the peaceful merchants who now hold the sway, once exercised but by titled robbers and gold-spurred burglars, would hardly think of conforming so far to the spirit of times gone by, as—in forming a company, or entering upon a commercial speculation—boldly to blazon such a device as a pair of loaded scales, graced with such a motto as "Success to Swindling."