St. Lucia, January, 1851.
Batail.Favine, in his Theatre of Honour (b. ii. c. 13), in speaking of a bell at Menda, says of the clapper of a bell, that "it is a Bataill in Armes." Was this word ever introduced into English heraldry? The only instances of bells in English arms that I can discover in the books to which I have access at present are in the coats of Bell, Porter, Osney, and Richbell.
H. N. E.The Knights of Malta.On the stone corbels which support the roof of one of the aisles of a church in my neighbourhood, there are carved the armorial badges of persons who are supposed to have contributed to the building of the church, which was erected in the thirteenth century. On one of the corbels (the nearest to the altar, and therefore in the most honourable place) there is a lamb bearing a flag. The lamb has a nimbus round its head, and the staff of the flag terminates in a cross like the head of a processional cross. The device, I have reason to think, was the badge of the knights of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who had a preceptory in this neighbourhood during the thirteenth century. In the history of these knights, first of Jerusalem, then of Rhodes, and afterwards of Malta, I find it stated, that in the year 1130 Pope Innocent II. commanded that the standard of the knights (at that time settled at Jerusalem) should be "gules, a full cross argent."
Will any of your correspondents be so kind as to inform me if the device on the corbel was the badge of the knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem? and if so, at what time they first assumed it?
S. S. S.General Pardons.Has any example of a general pardon under the great seal been ever printed at length? particularly any of those granted after the restoration of Charles II.?
J. G. N."Too wise to err."You will oblige many of your readers if you will inform them from whence the words
"Too wise to err, too good to be unkind,"
are quoted.
T. W. A.Replies
THOMAS MAY
(Vol. iii., p. 167.)Thomas May, famous amongst the busy characters of his age, both as a politician and a poet, was the eldest son of Sir Thos. May, Knt., of Mayfield, in Sussex, where he was born in 1595. At the usual period of life, he was admitted a fellow-commoner of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; and having taken the degree of B.A. he entered himself at Gray's Inn, with the intention of studying the law, which, however, it is uncertain whether he ever pursued as a profession. Whilst he was a student of the law, he made the acquaintance of Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon; and became the intimate associate of Ben Jonson, Selden, Cotton, Sir K. Digby, Thos. Carew1, "and some others of eminent faculties in their several ways."
"His parts of nature and art," writes Clarendon2, in describing his character, "were very good, as appears by his translation of Lucan (none of the easiest work of that kind), and more by his Supplement to Lucan, which being entirely his own, for the learning, the wit, and the language, may be well looked upon as one of the best epic poems in the English language."