Transcript

of

Courtenay Arms at the Devon and Exeter Institution

Devon & Cornwall Notes and Queries vol. VII, (1912-1913), Exeter: James G. Commin. 1913, illus. pp. 81-87.

by

Ethel Lega-Weekes

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Courtenay’s descend from two distinct noble families, both descending from Athon, who as the first lord of Courtenay (Seigneur de Courtenay), was himself apparently a descendant of the Counts of Sens and from Pharamond, reputed founder of the French monarchy in 420. Athon took advantage of the succession crisis in the Duchy of Burgundy between Otto-William, Duke of Burgundy and Robert II of France to capture a piece of land for himself, where he established his own seigneury (lordship), taking his surname from the town he founded and fortified. The original Coat of Arms of Courtenay are: Or, three torteaux. This was apparently adopted by Renaud de Courtenay before his death in 1190 and before the separation of the family into French and English branches, as the arms are used both in France and England. These are, therefore, very early arms as heraldry came into widespread use from about 1200–1215. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Note 60. COURTENAY ARMS AT THE DEVON AND EXETER INSTITUTION. - In the dining room of the Librarian's house at the back of the Devon and Exeter Institution, (1) the arches of the Elizabethan chimney-piece contain a pair of heraldic paintings on panels, both evidently the work of the same hand, though one commemorates the Episcopal rank of a Courtenay in the 15th century, and the other an alliance which took place in the 18th, namely, between Sir William Courtenay, Bart., M.P., 8th of the name, born 1710, created Viscount in May, 1762, died the same year, and Frances, daughter of Heneage Finch, 2nd Earl of Aylesford, died 1761, interred with her husband at Powderham.

This later coat, which is given the precedence, may, I think, be blazoned as Quarterly: - 1st and 4th or, three torteaux (Courtenay); 2nd and 3rd, or, a lion rampant (apparently sable but correctly azure) (Rivers); impaling: - or, a chevron between three griffins sable (Finch). Supporters: - dexter, a boar argent, sinister, a griffin sable, gorged or, both armed and langued of the last. Crest: - On a helmet, a dolphin, embowed argent, armed or; Motto, "Ubi Lapsus Quid feci."

The supporters definitely granted to Viscount Courtenay in 1702 were: - on either side a boar argent, tusked, crined and hoofed or," and the substitution of the griffin for one of these (no doubt intended as a supporter of the impaled arms) is incorrect.

The second coat I venture to blazon as gules, a sword in bend, blade argent, hilt in base or, interlacing two keys addorsed in bend sinister, the overlying {lower) one or, the underlying {higher) one argent, their bows interlocked in base (See of Winchester); impaling: - or, three torteaux with a label of three points, azure, each charged with three bezants (figured); in dexter chief a star or mullet (not pierced) (Courtenay), the whole encircled by the Royal Garter. Supporters: - Dexter a dolphin, sinister a boar, both argent, langued gules, armed or. Crest: - a mitre in threequarters view, enfiled by a crosier with crook turned to sinister side. Motto: - "Quod Verum Tutum."

This is evidently the achievement of Bishop PETER COURTENAY, who was promoted 5 Sept., 1473, to the vacant See of Exeter, consecrated 8 Nov. in the same year, translated to Winchester 29 Jan., 1486-7, died 20 Dec, 1491 or 1492 (2) and was buried either at Winchester or (more probably) at Powderham.

That the arms of Bishop Courtenay's latter See, and not those of Exeter, are conjoined with his own personal bearings in the Coat at the Institute, is attested by the encircling Garter - for all Bishops of Winchester were ex-officio Prelates of that Most Noble Order, and by the tincture of the keys, one being gold, the other silver, instead of both gold as for Exeter.

No authority can be found for giving the Bishop of Winchester supporters. Indeed, the only Prelate who has supporters recorded in the College of Arms, is Cardinal Wolsey, but many others assumed them, as is shown in Dr. Woodward's work.

The jewel adorned Mitre which above the Arms of a Bishop replaces the helmet of a warrior, is wrongly posed in the Institute example, as also in Bishop Cotton's tablet in the Close: for instead of showing the full front, as on the Palace Mantelpiece, it is turned in three-quarters-view, a position which in true Heraldry, in England as in France, distinguished the mitre of an Abbot or Prior from that of a Bishop.

The personal Arms borne by Bishop Peter Courtenay are generally stated to have been the same as his father's, viz.: - or, three torteaux, a label of three points or pendants  (or as Cleaveland words it: - "a file in chief, of three labels") each point charged with three plates. But the personal half of his achievement on the panel at the Institute differs from the above in two respects. Firstly, in dexter chief (not in a canton, as for an aggrandisement), appears a star or unpierced mullet, which I have never seen mentioned in any account of his arms, but which, being the cadency-mark either of the third son, or of a house descended from a third son, would here have been appropriately employed either to commemorate the fact that Bishop Peter was the third son of Sir Philip Courtenay, of Powderham, Kt., who married a daughter of Lord Hungerford, and died 1463, or as referring back to his ancestor Philip Courtenay, the founder of the house of Powderham, who was a younger son of Hugh, second Earl of Devon, and would seem to have been the third son,(3) if it be true that he bore "mullets" for difference. (Vide Pole's Devon, pp. 444, 475).

Secondly, the label is charged not with plates (roundles argent), but with figured bezants (roundles or).

The late Mr. Charles Worthy (4) believed that the primitive arms of the Courtenays before settlement in England were: - gules, three bezants, and were allusive to the connection of that ancient house with Constantinople - old Byzantium - Peter Courtenay, in 1217, and his sons Robert and Baldwin having been successively Emperors of Constantinople.

The label or file, which is the mark of cadency in the first degree, is generally asserted to have distinguished the family of Courtenay in England from those in France, but the earliest known example of arms of a Courtenay in this country to display the label, is said to be that of Hugh, Baron of Okehampton, created Earl of Devon, 1335, as carved and tinctured on the family tomb in Exeter Cathedral, erected in 1381, where it is preceded by the coats of several earlier generations of English Courtenays all displaying simply the three torteaux without any label.

As Hugh's father died while he was only a youth of 16, it cannot be supposed that he assumed the mark to dis- tinguish himself from his father on the field of battle. From this time on, the label was borne so continually as to pass virtually into a charge, so that it became incumbent on the younger branches to introduce subordinate marks of difference or brisures. These generally took the form of minute charges upon the pendants of the label, and the striking diversity of such marks as we find assigned not only to different branches, but to certain individuals of the Courtenay family, would seem to bear out Dr. Wood- ward's statement in respect to "the old systems of differentiation that prevailed down to the 16th century," that "the choice of these brisures . . . was left to the persons concerned, and that there is consequently a great variety of these ancient modes of difference."

Yet, strictly speaking, the assignment of differences was the province of the Kings of Arms.

As to the arms of Churchmen, Dr. Woodward further remarks (Treat, on Her., II. 53): - "Although before the Reformation it was not compulsory on Ecclesiastics who were vowed to celibacy to difference their arms, we yet find that as a matter of fact many did so," and among examples he mentions that "William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1 381 -1396, . . . charged each point of his label with a mitre proper."(5).

Blomfield, referring to the seal of Richard Courtenay (Bishop of Norwich, 1413-15), who, like Bishop Peter, was of the Powderham line, gives him on his three-pointed label "nine torteaux," while Dr. Woodward describes the seal of the same Prelate in the British Museum (No. 2050), as having on each point three besants for difference. As neither tinctures nor figuring are indicated in the wax, it would have been more accurate in each case to have employed the term "Roundles."

Dr. Oliver, in his History of Exeter Cathedral, describing the famous mantelpiece in the Episcopal Palace, goes so far as to declare that in the arms of Bishop Peter Courtenay, impaled with those of the See, the three points of the label are charged each "with three annulets argent, and not * plates ' as Cleaveland asserts."

I think that the word "annulets" used thus in contradistinction, may have been a lapsus calami for "besants," for I have satisfied myself by inspection of the actual object, that the little charges upon the label are not annulets; they are not pierced, but upon the surface of many of them are discernible to the eye and to the touch, raised points that might possibly, when fresher from the chisel, have simulated designs upon coins.

On the Palace chimney-piece, the shield of Bishop Peter Courtenay's arms is encircled by three Dolphins; two support his coat in Winchester Cathedral,(6) and on the Institute panel, the same fish serves as one of his supporters.

Moule (Her. of Fish, p. 17) refers to the dolphin borne by the Courtenays, as being allusive to the members of that illustrious house who "sustained the honours of the Purple as Emperors of Constantinople"; and Miss Halliday, slightly misinterpreting Moule's somewhat ambiguous text, informs us that "The dolphin, as one of the ensigns of the Greek Empire on the Byzantine coins, was assumed by the Courtenays" (with the same allusion). Unfortunately for the consistency of this explanation, it appears on investigation in the Coin Department of the British Museum, that neither the so- called 4 Bezant ' nor any other money of the Greek, alias Byzantine, alias Eastern Empire, was ever stamped with the device of a dolphin; nor did any known golden coin ever bear it. There were, it is true, some bronze pieces, minted in the city of Byzantium, on which the dolphin appears between two tunny fishes {circa 178-182 B.C.), and twined about a trident (1st cent. B.C.), but these were all of a period long prior to even the foundation of the so-called Greek and Byzantine Empire (305 A.D.), and are not likely to have come within the knowledge of the Courtenays.

By the Greeks of the classic era the dolphin was regarded as a sacred fish. In heraldry it is the "King of Fish" as the lion is the "King of Beasts"; and the idea has occurred to me that since a fish was a symbol adopted by the early Christians, the dolphin, as the highest type of fish, might have been chosen as a heraldic emblem by Churchmen on that account; as, for instance, in the arms assigned by Izacke (MS. Meml., p, 1 15), and so tricked and tinctured by Hooker (MS., Hist. Exon., f. 48), to Bishop Bartholomew Iscanus, 11 59- 11 84, "party per pale gules and sable, six dolphins neyant, argent."

Thomas (I) Courtenay bore in 1449 "the badge of the Boore" (Boyle, Off. Bar.), and this, of course, is to be referred back to the boar serving as dexter supporter to the arms of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, whose daughter married Sir John de Courtney, Baron of Okehampton (ob. 1273).

Over the south porch entrance of Alphington Church whose advowson has been the property of the Courtenays at Powderham since 5 Ric. II. (Polwele, p. 104), there is a stone tablet with a most quaintly treated coat of the family - the design curiously outlined with punctures - in which the dexter supporter is a boar, the sinister a dolphin, thus reversing their respective positions in the Coat at the Institute.                 ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

Footnotes

1.    The Institution was at one time a town house of the Courtenays.

2.    Thus Oliver, Hist. Exon. 1821, p. 64. In Oliver and Pitman Jones' Pedigree the date of his death is given as 1492, and so in Woodward; Miss Halliday says, "20 or 22 Sep., 1492," and Godwin 20 Dec, 1491.

3    According to Vivian's pedigree he would have been, at least between 1372 and 1374, the third living son.

4.    See his correspondence with the late P. O. Hutchinson in D, and C. Notes and Gleanings, May, et seq., 1889.

5.    W. K. R. Bedford, in his Blazon of Episcopacy, p, 122, must, I think, be confounding Bishop Peter Courtenay with other Bishops of the family, when he ascribes to him (p. 122): - Or, three torteaux, a label azure, charged with three mitres (seal); also with nine mitres, nine plates, nine annulets.

6.    Woodw, Eccl. Her., p, 461.