IV.—The Swan Badge and the Swan Knight

Abstract

The scribe of these and the following lines, which lament the English disasters France about 1449, had the kindness to insert the names of the noblemen, thus denoted by their badges. The Root, he tells us, for example, is Bedforde, the swan Gloucetter, and the cresset Excetter. This swan badge of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who died in 1447, is familiar, but he was by no means the only bearer of a swan in his time. It had been the badge of the great house of Bohun, earls of Hereford and Essex (pls. XXXVI, g; XXXVII, g; XL), and is assumed to have come to Humphrey through the marriage of his father the earl of Derby, later King Henry IV (pls. XXXVI, f; XXXVII, g; XL), with Mary de Bohun the younger daughter and coheir of Humphrey, earl of Hereford. But even among Mary's own descendants Duke Humphrey was not alone in using it, for Henry V (pls. XXXIV, a, b; XL), Henry VI, and the latter's son Edward did so too. Mary's elder sister Eleanor (pls. XXXVII, f; XL) used it also, as did her husband, Thomas of Woodstock (pls. XXXIV, c, d, e; XL), duke of Gloucester, and the Staffords, dukes of Buckingham (pls. XXXVI, a, c; XL), descended from their daughter Anne. Nor was this all, for in 1325 Margaret de Bohun (pls. XXXIX, b; XL), the daughter of an earlier Humphrey, earl of Hereford and Essex, had married Hugh de Courtenay, earl of Devon, and many of their descendants, Courtenays (pls. XXXIV, f, j; XXXVII, h; XL), Luttrells (pls. XXXVII, a, b, c, e, i, j; XL) and others (pl. XXXIX, a) used swans as badges, or as crests or supporters in their arms.