172 THE ANCESTOR fixes his death as happening ' before the great pestilence ' of 1349. He was buried at Budworth church, with arms upon his tombstone, his shield and cotearmure hanging close by upon the wall, where many of the deponents saw them. Emma, his wife, was living some twenty years before, as John de Holcroft and Sir Richard de Bold relate. He, if any direct ancestor of the defendant (supposing this part of the pedigree to be correct), would be the Robert son of Robert le Grosvenor who granted lands in Coton near Chester, and in Owescroft (Oscroft, in Tarvin), as Hugh de Cotoun the younger adds, to William de Coton, or Cotton, by a charter, then in possession of John de Etoun, one of the deponents ; granting him also the Grosvenor arms, to bear with due difference, as might be seen on his shield hanging in Cristleton Church.-^ This then is the history of the arms of Cotton, silver with a bend between three roundels sable. The evidence is specially worth noting, not merely as giving us the origin of a well known coat, but as an instance of four- teenth century differencing. It also throws light upon the meaning of ' arms of affection,' and the manner in which they were conferred. According to Ormerod, Cotton's mother was a Grosvenor.^ Rauf, the defendant's father, died when on the point of starting for Picardy, and was buried at the chapel of Nether Peover, where his arms were engraved on a cross in the churchyard, besides being painted in the chapel.^ We learn that the arms were to be seen also in the abbeys of Vale Royal and Combermere, in the parish churches of Lymm, Stockport, Wharton, Middlewich, Davenham, Tarvin and Aldford ; the chapels of Witton, Hulme in Sandbach,^ Nantwich, Goostrey and Bouthes, and in the manor houses or chapels of Over Peover {steynes sur le docer en la sale)^ Shipbrook, Dutton, Utkington, Baddiley, and Bold in Lancashire, as well as upon 1 Dep. Massie of Podington, Sir Hugh de Browe, John Mainwaring. 2 Ormerod, iii. 145. Compare Meoles of Meoles, who held under Grosvenor : arms, silver with a bend between two lions' heads erased sable (Ibid. ii. 494, 498). ^ Dep. Sir Richard de Bold, Robert de Toft, etc. Randle Mainwaring speaks of a churchyard cross at Over Peover too, but this looks like a clerk's error.
- Perhaps a mistake for the other Hulme. Dep. Randle Mainwaring, John
Mainwaring, Piers de Wetenhall.
