Cheshire Heraldry Society 50th Anniversary Celebration

Come and join us in the celebration of 50 years.

April 16th 2011.

The Annual General Meeting of the Cheshire Heraldry Society is to be a celebration of the Society's 50th Anniversary. There is to be an open exhibition to celebrate the 50 years along with a luncheon all to commence at 11.30 am and all are cordially invited to join Society Members in their day of celebration. The exhibition and luncheon is to be held at Sheila's Restaurant, Leek. Tickets for the meal are to be £20 and can be obtained from John Titterton.

Why not come and celebrate the day with us?

Churchill Garter Stall Plate for sale.

Image courtesy of Bonhams.

The auction house Bonhams is to sell Churchill's original Garter Stall Plate at its sale to be held on 29th March 2011. Listed as a part of Roy David's collection the details are given as:

CHURCHILL, Sir WINSTON (1874-1965, statesman, Prime Minister, war leader, and author)
THE ORIGINAL GARTER STALL PLATE USED AT THE INSTALLATION OF CHURCHILL AS A KNIGHT OF THE GARTER AT ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL AT WINDSOR IN 1953, bronze, gilt and enamel, bearing the Spencer-Churchill fully marshalled coat of arms in their right colours, with the Garter encircling the shield carrying the motto of the Order 'Honi soit qui mal y pense', and surmounted by helmets, one crowned and both mantled with crest, above: the family motto in Spanish 'Fiel pero desdichado' ('Faithful though Unfortunate') and below in three lines: 'Winston Leonard / Spencer-Churchill / MCMLIII', in extremely fine condition, the plate 7¼ x 4½ inches (18 x 11.5 cm), mounted on hardwood and framed and glazed in a good ebony frame, overall size c.13 x 11½ inches (33 x 29 cm), for St. George's Chapel, 1953

Estimate: £10,000 - 12,000, € 12,000 - 14,000
Footnote:
The Garter Stall Plate for the highest honour accepted by arguably the greatest Englishman of the twentieth century, the Most Noble Order of the Garter. A unique and extraordinary item of Churchilliana.

The stall plate was made by the firm William Soper and Son. Due to the shortness of time prior to the Installation, Soper had been unable to finish enamelling the plate to the standard they would have wished, so after it had been temporarily placed in Sir Winston's stall (or seat) in St. George's Chapel for the ceremony of his installation it was returned to Soper for the finishing touches to be made. It is understood that Sir Winston was approached to finance the finishing but declined to do so. A plate of more modest manufacture now marks the stall once occupied by the present plate and Sir Winston.

The Order of the Garter, England's highest order of knighthood, consists of only twenty-four Knights at any one time, other than the sovereign and the Prince of Wales. Each Knight has his seat or stall in St. George's Chapel at Windsor on which his stall plate is mounted.

http://www.bonhams.com/eur/auction/19386/lot/46/

Sir William Brereton

Back in November last year I commented on the arms of Brereton of Ashley and find myself, because of an enquiry from a good friend of Cheshire Heraldry, with an excuse to publish a little more of my research. I have been asked if I have identified the quarterings in the arms of the Brereton Memorial. I have indeed:



These are impaled arms.

Dexter:
1 Argent, two bars Sable [Brereton]
2 Argent, an inescutcheon within a double tressure counter flory Gules [Scotland]
3 Or, three piles in point Gules [Scot Earl of Chester]
4 Quarterly; 1 & 4 (Kevelioc and Lupus) 2 & 3 Azure, three garbs Or (Kevelioc Earl of Chester)
5 Gules, three pheons Argent [pro Egerton inherited from Belward, Baron of Malpas]
6 Azure, three garbs Or [Kevelioc Earl of Chester]
7 Azure, a wolf’s head erased Argent [Lupus Earl of Chester]
8 Argent a cross flory Azure [pro Egerton inherited from Malpas, baron of Malpas]
9 Argent, a lion rampant Gules between three (sometimes as here six) pheons Sable [Egerton of Egerton]
10 Or, two ravens in pale Sable [Corbet of Leighton]
11 Ermine, five chevronels Gules, on a canton of the second a lion passant Or [Orreby]
12 Gules, two lions pasant Argent, a label of three points Or [Strange of Dalby]
13 Quarterly Argent and Gules, over all on a bend Sable three mullets of the first [Ashley]
14 Gules, three cross-crosslets fitchee Or, a chief of the second charged with a crescent for difference [Arderne]
15 Argent, on a bend engrailed Sable, an annulet Or [Radcliffe]
16 Argent, a griffin segreant Gules [Chaderton]
17 Quarterly, Argent and Gules, a bend Azure [Timperley]
18 Gules, a lion rampant Argent [unidentified]

It is believed that there is no real evidence to substantiate the descent bringing in the quarterings of the earls of Chester line.

Sinister:
Warburton, of Arley
1 Quarterly Argent and Gules, in the second and third quarters a fret Or (a crescent for difference) [Dutton]
2 Argent, four bars Gules
3 Argent, a chevron between three cormorants Sable [Warburton]
4 Argent, three chevrons Gules, on a canton of the last a mullet Or [Warburton Ancient, or Orreby]
5 Argent, a shield voided Sable, an orle of martlets of the last [Winnington]
6 Azure, a garb Or, between two bezants in fess [Grosvenor]
7 Sable, a cross patonce Argent [Pulford] [this coat is also recorded elsewhere as that of Eaton]
8 Azure, three pheasants Or [Fesant]*
9 Quarterly Argent and Gules, in the second and third quarters a fret Or (a crescent for difference) [Dutton]

* The charges on this quarter on the Brereton tomb do not admittedly look very much like pheasants, indeed they look more like cocks however quarters 6, 7 and 8 are brought into this family by an alleged alliance with Grosvenor of Caton and therefore this shield is undoubtedly that of Fesant.

Wanted. Facsimilie edition.

If anyone knows of a copy of "The Vale-Royall of England, or, The County Palatine of Chester Illustrated (publ. D. King, 1656; facsimile reprint 1972)" which is offered for sale I would be most grateful to hear of it. I have a pdf scanned copy of the original which otherwise would be way out of my pocket* but would very much like to have this facsimilie not least because it has notes and comments upon the life of the publisher, Daniel King.

I'm not interested in the copy of this offered by Amazon as it is simply an OCR scanned print on demand book and as such it contains no images and includes all sorts of marks on the original which the OCR has interpreted as wierd and wonderful characters.  The OCR can't distinguish between a letter and a smudge!

I once made the mistake of ordering Charles Norton Elvin's "A Dictionary of Heraldry : With Upwards of Two Thousand Five Hundred Illustrations" from General Books via Amazon. I caution all would be buyers of this book not to fall into the same trap I did. I naively thought that it would be a facsimile reprint of the original and do what it says on the cover i.e. "With upwards of two thousand five hundred illustrations". When you get the book, you find that it is a print on demand item and the small print inside tells you that it is a scan of an original using OCR software which can not interpret images. In short, it has none!

Perhaps I missed it on the Amazon page but I was tempted to report this to Trading Standards ... after all, the cover states that the book has upwards of two thousand five hundred illustrations. It's only when you get it that you find it doesn't have any at all! 

*According to the introduction in the 1972 reprint an original copy of the book sold at auction in 1975 for £255 which, according to the financial calculator provided by this is money dot com, would be £1953 in today's money!