BY J. TAVENOR-PERRY

“Is this a dagger that I see before me?” Macbeth.

Argent, a cross gules, in the first quarter a sword in pale, point upwards, of the last. Crest; a dragon’s sinister wing, argent, charged with a cross, gules. Supporters; on either side a dragon with wings elevated and addorsed, argent, and charged on the wing with a cross, gules. Motto: “Domine dirige nos.” THE CITY.

Gules, two swords in saltire, argent, the hilts in base,
or. THE SEE.

The origin of the City of London is almost as unknown as that of Rome itself, and all its earliest history is lost in the misty traditions of the Middle Ages, and to this may be due the fact that the arms it blazons on its shield, and the weird supporters it claims to use, have but little to warrant them but custom and age. Other cities, less ancient and much less important, can give the full authority for the armorials which they have assumed, and even the great guilds associated with the Corporation are able to quote the reign and year many of them dating back to the time of Queen Elizabeth when they received the grant of arms which they still enjoy. But for the arms of the City of London itself no authority can be adduced, and in the opinion of many none is required, “seeing,” as an old writer on the subject says, “that of things armorial the very essence is undefinable antiquity; a sort of perpetual old age, without record of childhood.” That the arms which the Corporation now use differ from those it first employed is freely admitted, but comparatively few are aware of the modifications they have undergone, or of the recentness of the date when they first assumed their present form; and to those who are interested in the City itself, or in heraldry generally, a short sketch of the history of the subject will be welcome.

It was only in the year 1224, the ninth of Henry III., that permission was granted to the commonalty of London to have a Common Seal; and the seal which was then made continued in use until 1380, the fourth of Richard II., when, to quote Stow, “it was by common consent agreed and ordained that the old seal being very small, old, unapt and uncomely for the honour of the city, should be broken up, and one other new should be had.” Of this first seal no copy seems to have survived, and we are left to conjecture what arms, if any, it displayed. From the first, the simple cross of St. George appears to have been the only bearing adopted by the citizens for their shield, but they sometimes varied it by an augmentation in the dexter chief symbolizing their patron saint, St. Paul, but they appear to have used these two shields quite indifferently. Thus, when they rebuilt their Guildhall, in 1411, they carved both of these shields on the bosses of the groined crypt, where they can be seen to this day, those down the centre aisle having only the cross of St. George without the sword. On the screen to the chantry chapel of Bishop Roger de Walden, in the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, erected in 1386, the arms of London appear as a simple cross, and a much later example occurred in the windows of Notre Dame at Antwerp. In the north transept windows of that church were portraits of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, which survived the damage wrought by the Gueux; and a traveller, one William Smith, who was Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, in 1597, says he saw with them the arms of many English towns, including London, which had in the dexter chief a capital L, and not a sword.

In the year 1380, as we have seen, a new seal was made, on which were the effigies of the Blessed Virgin and SS. Peter and Paul, and in the base on a shield the arms of the City, a cross with a sword in the dexter chief, and on either side of it a demi-lion as a supporter. As to the origin of the sword, there is a very old story, very generally credited, which only requires retelling to show how inconsistent it is with historical truth. About the part played by the Lord Mayor, Sir William Walworth, in slaying Wat Tyler at Smithfield, there need be little doubt, and at the hall of the Fishmongers’ Company is preserved the veritable dagger with which, it is asserted, the deed was done; and as the addition was made to the City arms about the time of this occurrence, popular fancy connected the two events, and ascribed the advent of the dagger on the shield to its use in Smithfield. Since, however, the new seal was made in 1380, and Wat Tyler was slain and Sir William Walworth was knighted a year later, we have to look elsewhere for the origin of the augmentation.

Until the episcopate of Ralph de Stratford, the seals of the bishops of London had borne the effigy only of St. Paul, and that bishop’s seal was the first on which the arms of the See of London were placed. An impress of this seal is preserved in the Stowe collection at the British Museum, attached to a deed of 1348, which, although in a somewhat broken condition, clearly shows St. Paul seated in a niche, holding the sword and a book, and beneath, in the base, the bishop kneeling, having on the dexter side the arms of the See, and on the sinister side the bishop’s personal arms. The arms of the See show two swords placed in saltire, but the field, instead of being plain, is frettee, with a dot placed in the centre of each mesh, and in this particular only differs from the present shield, and this may be due merely to a desire for ornament, and not intended to have any heraldic significance.

Although St. Paul, as represented both on the seals of the City and the See, bore a sword, this seal of Bishop Ralph’s was the first which represented the symbol apart from the saint. No doubt, with this example before them, the Corporation, when making their new seal in 1380, added to their arms the symbol of the patron saint of their city.

The arms of the See underwent no change from the time of their earliest appearance to the present day, and were reproduced in many parts of the new cathedral at its rebuilding, and may be seen exquisitely carved by Grinling Gibbons over the entrance to St. Dunstan’s Chapel; but with the arms of the City it was very different, and, in fact, they do not appear even now to have reached finality. When, early in the seventeenth century, the seal of 1380 became too worn for further use, a new one was made, which reproduced on the obverse all the essential features of the earlier one, the details being somewhat classicised, the shield in the base was repeated, and the lions on each side crowned; but the reverse showed a new departure, of which no record exists in the College of Arms. This was the addition of a crest, which consisted of a cross set between two dragons’ wings displayed, placed on a peer’s helmet. It will be seen by reference to the example preserved in the British Museum, taken from a deed of 1670, that the shield, which is placed couchee, bears the present arms, and is surrounded by a tasselled mantling and a motto, which reads, “Londini defende tuos deus optime cives” . No such use of a peer’s helmet has ever been officially allowed to any town or city, and it can only be presumed that as the mayors of London were always addressed as “My Lord,” the assumption of a peer’s helmet might be permitted. But it may be remarked that, at least in recent years, the helmet is sometimes displaced by a fur cap, the headgear of the sword-bearer to his lordship, for which there does not appear to be the shadow of a warranty. For instance, the official invitation card to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet of 1882 has the fur cap hovering in the air between the shield and the crest, whilst the card of 1896 reproduces the helmet with its crest and mantling arranged in the earlier fashion.

The crest which shows on this seal of 1670 introduces the dragon for the first time to the City arms. The association of St. George with the dragon is, of course, obvious, and this may have suggested its wings as an appropriate crest to surmount his cross upon the shield, and from this it was naturally an easy transition to the dragon supporters. They are not known to occur before they were represented by Wallis in his London’s Armory, published in 1677, a work dedicated to Charles II., who, in accepting it, said of its author that he “hath with much Pains and Charge endeavoured to attain a perfect and general collection of the Arms proper to every Society and Corporation within our City, and hath at length finished the same in a most exact and curious manner.” Whether this royal imprimatur can be held to override the absence of any grant from the College of Arms may seem doubtful to many, but the fact remains from that day to this, dragons, or some fabulous monsters akin to them or to griffins, have appeared as the supporters of the City arms. Another point to notice in Wallis’s representation, is that although he retains the peer’s helmet over the shield, he shows the fur cap, together with the mace, sword and other official symbols, grouped as ornamental accessories at the base of his device. The crest also has been modified, and consists of only one dragon’s wing, upon which the cross has been charged, as well as upon the wings of the supporters, which, if descendants of the original dragon of St. George, show thereby that they have become “Christen” beasts.

Such is the history, shortly, of the arms now used by the City of London to decorate its buildings and seal its documents, and which Wallis, their inventor, in the true meaning of that word, pronounces correct, “having by just examinations and curious disquisitions now cleared them from many gross absurdities contracted by ignorance and continued along by implicit tradition committed contrary to Art, Nature and Order, and repugnant to the very principles of Heraldry.”