in the life of St. Egwin, who was created bishop of Worcester about the year 692. We are told that, before he set sail for Rome, he caused a smith to make him a heavy ring of iron, which he locked about his bare legs by way of penance, and then threw the key into the river Avon. When he arrived on the shores of the Tiber, he fell on his knees to return thanks to God for his safe voyage, and his attendants began to fish in the river. They soon caught a salmon, in the stomach of which they found the key they had seen cast into the Avon before they quitted England. When the bishop related the miracle to the pope, his holiness ordered the ring to be removed, and sent him back to Worcester with high marks of honour.1 St. Egwin's fetter probably did not differ from the fetter-lock, which was in use for some centuries, and which consisted of a curved bar, attached at one end, by a hinge, to a cylindrical body containing the bolt, and having, at the other extremity, the asp,-the keyhole being at the end of the cylinder. Through the kindness of our associate, the rev. Mr. Hugo, who consented to omit its description and figure from his paper, that I might introduce them here, we are enabled to inspect a very ancient iron fetter-lock, which was discovered at Cuerdale, near Preston, in Lancashire, three hundred yards from the spot where the famous hoard of Saxon coins of the ninth and tenth centuries were exhumed in May 1840. (See plate 21, figs. 1, 2, 3, two-thirds of the actual size.) Without insisting upon the Teutonic origin of this specimen (and it may be even so old as that), it is, nevertheless, probably the earliest example of a fetterlock which has yet been brought to light, and is therefore deserving of the greatest attention on account of its high antiquity. Plate 22, fig. 3, represents a fetter-lock of much later date, which was dredged up from the Thames in March 1848. It is in a fair state of preservation, and stamped on the bar with the initials Ew, the fashion of which letters forbids our assigning the specimen to an earlier period than the close of the sixteenth century.

It was this formed fetter-lock, with a falcon standing within it, which was assumed as a badge by the house of

1 The above story, given more in detail, will be found in the Journal, vol. iv, p. 300.

2 On the Field of Cuerdale (Journal, vol. viii, pp. 330-35).

York. In the Meyrick collection is a curious little seal bearing this cognizance, of which I exhibit an impression (see plate 22, fig. 1). The fetter-lock occurs as a mintmark upon the gold coins of Philip and Mary; and we also meet with it as an armorial bearing of a few families. Guillim, in his Display of Heraldry (ed. 1724, p. 352), says, after speaking of "trophies and tokens of martial victory", "Unto these before-mentioned remunerations of joyful victory, I will add such artificial things wherewith the victorious martial man doth commonly deprive of liberty those whom the fortune of the wars has given him as captives and prisoners: such be prisoners' gyves, fetters, and shackles, or prison-bolts, which are all notes of subjection and captivity." Guillim gives as examples of these bearings, the arms of Nuthall, Lockart of Lee, Lockhart of Barr, and Anderton; and remarks, "these kind of arms may also well be given to such a brave spirit, who, by his prowess can fetch off with strength, or by his charity redeem, any of his fellow-soldiers in captivity." We may also mention that one of the ancient badges of the Percys was a pair of manacles within a crescent; and that the Company of Ironmongers bear three pairs of golden manacles in their arms.

Although the medieval fetters were generally forged of iron, the old chroniclers speak of silver ones being sometimes made for kings and princes. We learn from William of Malmesbury (iv, 2), that when the Crusader Boamund was captured by Danisman the Turk, in 1100, he was confined in silver fetters, which he afterwards carried away with him into France, and offered up in honour of St. Leonard. And Ralph de Diceto says, in his Imagines Historiarum, that when Richard I conquered Cyprus, in 1191, he threw the Greek prince, Isaac Comnene, into prison, loaded with irons; but he, complaining of the little regard with which he was treated, Richard ordered silver fetters to be made for him, and for which the prince was very grateful.

8

To the ring-fetter and fetter-lock must be added the pedana, a chain with which the feet were secured; and chains are frequently mentioned as shackles by the early

1 For some interesting remarks upon this badge, by Mr. Planché, see Journal, vol. vi, p. 391.

2 Sec Gent. Mag., Dec. 1825, p. 598.

3 See Decem Scriptor., 660, by T. Gale. 4 Du Cange, sub vocc pedana.