II
ON ARMOUR PRESERVED IN ENGLISH CHURCHES
By Francis Henry Cripps-Day
"Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed,
And hang thee o'er my tomb, when I am dead."
("King Henry VI," Pt. II, act iv, sc. 10.)
As the main purpose of this appendix does not call for any detailed discussion
of the questions as to how and why our churches became the
custodians of the armour and arms which are still to be seen hanging
over the monuments of many members of our old county families, little
is needed by way of introduction. A few early wills tell us of the wishes
expressed by testators that their helmets should be suspended in the churches where
they had worshipped, but gifts of armour as "mortuaries" were rare; moreover, there is
no reason why the mortuary gift should have been preserved. Mortuaries, or corse-presents,
were in the nature of an ecclesiastical heriot, and were generally limited to the
second best horse of the deceased; in the laws of Canute the mortuary was termed a
"soul-scot" (pecunia sepulchralis). By the Statute of 21 Hen. VIII, c. 6 (still in force!),
the value of a mortuary was not to exceed 10s. The property in the armour, hatchments,
etc., in churches descends to the heir like the monument or tombstone, and cannot be
removed by either heir or incumbent.
Perhaps the helmet and sword in the church originally signified in idea the restoration to the Church of those insignia of chivalry which the knight had received when he vowed to her his life in Her Service and "to maintain the rights of Holy Church during his whole life." As time wore on, although the romance of chivalry passed away, its spirit preserved and fostered, as it still preserves and fosters, the sense of honour, and the traditional hanging in the church of the achievement of arms—the sword, helmet, gauntlets, shield, spurs, and coat of arms—survived during the XVIth century as the recognized mark of respect due to the memory of an honourable life. As the century advanced and the XVIIth century dawned, the successful merchant, who had become landowner and local magnate, claimed the same tribute to his memory. Thus it was that when armour fell into disuse, and was seen chiefly in the pageantry of the decaying tournament, it was necessary at a herald's funeral to improvise the symbols of chivalry, and so at the end of the XVIth century and
