The Sun in all its Splendour
King Richard III, 1483
If the King is the great sun in the midst of his nobles, what are we to make of those ladies and gentlemen who associate with the sun in their armorial bearings? Two such arms are found in the Dering Roll, one of the oldest original armorials, stemming from 1270-1280 (British Library, London, Add Roll 77720). It contains 324 shields, mainly representing knights of Kent and Sussex.
The arms of Thomas de Aldham and John de la Haye each show the sun with twelve long straight rays but can we be sure that these show the sun and not just stars with a lot of points? John Guillim mentions the arms of ‘de la Hay’ in his first edition of 1610 as a ‘Star of sixteen points’. In later editions the description was amended to a sun.
d'argent od un ray de soleil de gules (Argent with a sun in splendour gules)
John de la Haye, Lord of Burwell in Lincolnshire, lived c. 1224 - c. 1274. He was probably related to Nicholaa de la Haye, a staunch supporter of King John who held Lincoln Castle against all-comers. She was the first woman to be appointed Sheriff in her own right. John was the son of Ralph de la Haye. Sometime before November 1257, Ralph’s widow Isabel, daughter of William de Montague, married Thomas de Aldham of West Aldham in Kent. The two arms with suns in the Dering Roll are therefore connected.
Sir Thomas de Aldham was survived by three daughters, the youngest of whom, Isolda, was the wife of John St Clere. On the division of the inheritance the manor of West Aldham fell to the share of John and Isolda, who renamed it St. Clere. A seal in the British Museum dated 1370 in the name of John Seynclere depicts a sun and a memorial, c. 1430 to Peter Hall, who married the granddaughter of Sir John Seynclere has quartered arms that include a “sun drawn throughout with 20 rays no face.” Aldham’s Azure a sun Or appear in several sources linked to the name St Clere, apparently inherited through Aldham’s youngest daughter.
The St. Clere estate was purchased by Sir Thomas Bullen of Hever, the father of Queen Anne Boleyn. A tradition says that King Henry VIII rode from Eltham and Greenwich to Hever and St. Clere when he was courting Anne.
The sun is often depicted with a face, as in the crest of Sir Roger Kynaston (c.1433-1495). Crossing the face of Kynaston’s sun is an arm in armour holding a sword. It makes for interesting symbolism when related to the Yorkist badge of King Edward IV (1442-1483). A few days after his father Richard of York died in the battle of Wakefield, the future Edward IV saw in the sky two bright suns and assumed it as a signal of victory. The White Rose en Soleil was adopted as Edward’s personal badge.
On the morning of the 14th April 1471 the Earl of Oxford brought his army to join his ally Warwick the Kingmaker, fighting for the House of Lancaster against Edward IV. In the morning mists the de Vere star on the Earl’s standard was mistaken for Edward’s. In the confusion, Warwick charged against his ally and was killed. The Earl of Oxford fled. The Battle of Barnet was lost before it even began.
Rose en Soleil Badge of King Edward IV (Wikipedia: Sodacan)
The Wars of the Roses obliterated the male lines of descent from the Lancastrian kings. The blood line survived in a female line. Elizabeth Grey, referred to in some circles as a ‘gateway ancestress’, was the great granddaughter of King Henry IV. Her mother Antigone of Gloucester, who married Henry Grey, 2nd Earl of Tankerville, 7th Earl of Powis (1419–1450), was the illegitimate daughter of Humphrey of Lancaster (1390-1447), Duke of Gloucester, “son, brother and uncle of kings”. Shakespeare depicts his murder in Henry VI, Part 2 as a key moment in the outbreak of the War of the Roses. Antigone’s are the only known descendants of King Henry IV (c.1367-1413) still living in England after 1471.
Elizabeth married the Yorkist Sir Roger Kynaston of Myddle Castle (c.1433-1495), Hordley in 1465. Kynaston had fought in the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459, killing the Lancastrian commander Lord Audley. The question of which arms he himself bore on the battlefield is unanswered. As the fourth son of Griffin Kynaston, who was the direct descendant of Gruffydd Fychan ap Iorwerth, his arms were likely a variant of Argent, a chevron engrailed between three mullets Sable, however, he does not appear to have used these arms at all after the battle. Two major changes occurred in English and Welsh heraldry during the late 15th century: Crests become more common and heraldry started to be regulated by the College of Arms. Later Visitations amended the arms of his descendants to also include the Kynaston family arms as well as those of his Powys ancestors (Owain Brogyntyn) in a grand-quartering (1634). Sir Roger Kynaston adopted his own coat of arms, based upon the arms of Audley, the man he had killed (arms of assumption), quartered with his wife’s Grey arms, even though she was by no means a heraldic heiress. King Edward IV, after seizing the crown, used his authority to allow Kynaston’s claims to both.
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Gloucester
The ill-fated King Charles I, whose reign was marked by political and religious strife, carefully cultivated royal imagery and honours to reinforce his belief in the divine right of kings. In 1631 William Kerr (1605-1675) became the Earl of Lothian by special grant, following his marriage to the Countess of Lothian. As a mark of royal favour, he received a coat of augmentation featuring the sun-in-splendour in the arms and crest. These arms were quartered with his existing Kerr of Jedburgh arms, the sun taking precedence in the first quarter and as the primary crest. His arms have descended to the present Marquess of Lothian, Chief of Clan Kerr, and the sun-in-splendour crest is the recognised crest badge of Clan Kerr.
If we are looking for a celestial connection rather than referencing Kings of England and Scotland, we should turn to France. No, not the Sun King but a mathematician, geometrician and astronomer: Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). Laplace’s mathematical achievements have profoundly shaped modern science and technology, including in geodesy, where his work laid the foundation for understanding the Earth’s shape and gravity field. Building on Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, Laplace explored the implications of gravitational force at extreme scales. He proposed that if a celestial body were dense enough, its gravitational pull could prevent even light from escaping. Stephen Hawking stated that “Laplace essentially predicted the existence of black holes”. Laplace prudently withdrew from Paris during the most violent part of the Revolution and after the Bourbon Restoration was made a Marquis.
D’azur aux deux planètes de Jupiter et de Saturne avec leurs satellites et anneaux d'argent, placés en ordre naturel vers le bas de l'écu ; en chef à dextre un soleil d'or, et à sénestre une fleur à cinq branches du même (fr.wikipedia.com)
Azure, two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, with their satellites and rings, Argent, arranged in natural order toward the base of the shield; in chief, to dexter a sun Or, and to sinister a five-branched flower of the sameThe sun, however, was added in 1817 when Laplace was made a Marquis - it is again a mark of Royal favour. Prior to this, his arms consisted only of the planets and flower. From existing depictions of the arms, the blazon of the planets is interpreted as ‘with respectively their satellites and rings’. Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons, had been discovered by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) in 1655 but the moons of Saturn are not shown. For the satellites of Jupiter, the emblazonment needs to consider the history of discoveries. Today there are 95 known satellite moons of Jupiter. The current count for Saturn is 274, after 128 newly identified moons were announced on 11th March 2025. In 1808 only four moons of Jupiter were known: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all discovered by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius in 1610. As for Saturn’s rings, Laplace proposed that Saturn had a large number of solid rings, in contrast to Christiaan Huygens’ earlier idea of a single, unbroken ring. The blazon has sometimes mistakenly been recorded with the singular ‘anneau’. In September 2023, researchers suggested that these rings may have resulted from the collision of two moons “a few hundred million years ago”. As identifiers of these planets in heraldic art, the simplified depiction of the ring or rings and a limited number of moons, each enlarged nearly tenfold, ensures their recognisability.
In German heraldry, a sun in dexter chief, as in the Laplace arms, is rising (im rechten Obereck, top right from the point of view of the shield holder, rather than the observer). In the sinister chief (im linken Obereck) it is a setting sun. The coat of arms of the State of New York has in a landscape, the sun in fess, rising in splendour and typically, where the sun is partially obscured by the horizon, it is rising, bringing light rather than setting into darkness. The same applies to clouds, the sunburst issuing from clouds, as in the Royal Badge of King Edward III (1312-1377), Rays Or issuing from a bank of white cloud, which survives as the heraldic badge of Windsor Herald of Arms in Ordinary.
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
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