as is the Syon cope, for while looking at it in admiration of the art-work shown in such a splendid church vestment, he finds, where he never thought of coming on, a curious record of our ancient national manners.
Besides all that has been said in reference to this cope, at pp. 289-90 of the Catalogue, we would remind our reader that at easy distances from Coventry might be found such lordly castles as those of Warwick, Kenilworth, Chartley, Minster Lovel, Tamworth. The holding of a tournament within their spacious walls, or in the fields beside them, was, we may be certain, of frequent occurrence at some one or other of them. The tilting was followed by the banquet and the "vow;" and the vow by its fulfilment from those barons bold, who bore in their own day the stirring names of Beauchamp, Warwick, Ferrers, Geneville, or Mortimer. Of one or other of them might be said:—
At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.
Ful often time he hadde the bord begonne
No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene
In listes thries, and ay slain his fo.[1]
At Warwick itself, and again at Temple Balsall, not far off, the Knights Templars held a preceptory, and, as it is likely, aggregated to the Coventry gild, had their badge—the Holy Lamb—figured on its vestment. Proud of all its brotherhood, proud of those high lords who had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, figured by the Star of Bethlehem, and had done battle with the Moslem, according to the vow signified by the swan and peacock, the Coventry gild caused to be embroidered on the orphrey of their fine old cope, the several armorial bearings of those among their brotherhood who had swelled the fame of England abroad; and by putting those symbols—the swan and the peacock, the star and crescent—close by their blazons, meant to remind the world of those festive doings which led each of them to work such deeds of hardihood.
In the fourteenth century a fashion grew up here in England of figuring symbolism—heraldic and religious—upon the articles of dress, as we gather from specimens here, as well as from other sources. The ostrich feather, first assumed by our Black Prince, was a favourite device with his son Richard II. for his flags and personal garments. This is well shown in the illumination given, p. 31, of the "Deposition of
- ↑ Chaucer, The Prologue, vv. 51, &c.
