, that the Collar of SS. takes
its name from the initial letter of that word; and the introduction of
the portcullis into the collar, which was the device of the House of
Lancaster, is also considered by some as proof that the collar
originated with that king. In the effigies, however, of Henry IV. and
his queen, Joan of Navarre, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Becket,
Canterbury Cathedral, the collar which appears round the neck of the
queen (there is none upon that of the king) has no portcullis. And as to
the derivations of the name of the collar from "Soverayne," from St.
Simplicius, from the martyrs of Soissons (viz. St. Crespin and St.
Crespinian, upon whose anniversary the battle of Agincourt was fought),
from the Countess of Salisbury, of Garter notoriety, from the word
"Souvenez" and, lastly, from Seneschallus or Steward (which latter is
MR. NICHOLS' notion)--they may all be regarded as mere monkish or
heraldic gossip.
Nicholas Upton, one of our earliest heraldic writers, who was present at
the siege of Orleans in 1428, states,--"Rex etiam scoeie dare solebat
pro signo vel titulo suo unum COLLARIUM de gormettis fremalibus equorum
de auro vel argento;" whilst, in a wood-cut engraving of the arms of a
German, Herr Florian Waldauff, of about the time of Albert Durer, are
three collars, one of the letters SS. linkings into each other,
terminating in front with portcullises. Put these notices together and
they may be considered sufficient to demolish the Lancastrian origin
theory of the collar, on the one hand, and to unfold the true source of
the collar's nomenclature on the other, viz.
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