The king of dark old England Stood up before them all,— "Choose ye this day, my people Ealdorman, priest and thrall. "We have bowed our necks to the Thunder! Shall we lift them anew and say That the Christ-child reigns in England? Silence covered the council! They mused for a little space, For the light on the face of the pilgrim And ever the roaring night-wind And stirred the purple banners Suddenly, out of the darkness, Swift thro' the crimson fire-light, "King, O King of England, Since the old gray world began, "O King, if this God can bring us They looked on the face of the pilgrim! As the Maker, for love of His making, And a shout went up on the night-wind "We have broken the yoke of the Thunder, VIII. Lay in his hand the Sceptre with the Dove! The mighty months have run their course again! And Peace imparadise his golden reign? O, silent Minster of our dead, Hear'st thou the wings of Peace upon the wind, O, silent Minster of our hallowed dead, Here, where his fathers laid their glory down See'st thou what great new splendor waits to crown his crown? That more than mightiest thunder-word, In a little word of love? The mighty months have run their course again! THE QUEEN'S ARMS. Many readers must have seen recently in the public press a design described as the Queen's standard, and many must have marvelled at the rich complication of that medley of armory. Many of those who saw it passed it by, it is safe to say, with little more than a glance at what seemed to them a mysterious jumble of strange beasts which nevertheless had in it some touch of the familiar. And yet the Queen's standard, or, as it would have been called in the old days, the banner of the Queen's arms, is no meaningless thing. It is, as every piece of heraldry must be, a symbol weighty with memories and, for those who have the wit to read it, eloquent of history, setting forth in every shred of it the tale of the union of great kingdoms, the matches of august houses, and the sway that is wielded by the rulers of England. It is the aim of these notes to explain something of what is implied in the heraldry of the Queen's banner, to show that it is history in shorthand, and to make intelligible the processes by which it came inevitably to assume its form. To state the matter, then, in its simplest terms, Queen Mary's banner is a marshalling by impalement of the arms of the king with those of his Consort. in accordance with the practice which has prevailed in English armory since the days of King Edward III; or, to put it less technically, the banner divided perpendicularly into two equal halves has its dexter side (that is, the half nearest to the staff) filled with the arms of the king, while the sinister side (the fly of the flag) is occupied by those of the queen. The arms of his Majesty are familiar enough. Every child can recognize that stately mass of red and gold and blue and silver, the ordered grouping of the English leopards with the red lion of the kingdom of Scotland and the golden harp of Ireland, that was assumed by Queen Victoria as her arms of dominion. The Queen's half of the banner is a more complex matter. Her Majesty bears the arms of the dukedom of Cambridge quartering those of the dukedom of Teck, placing her mother's arms of Cambridge in the first and fourth quarters and her father's arms of Teck in the second and third, therein following a very ancient custom of English heraldry that where the lady is of higher rank than her husband her arms shall have precedence of his. We English may be glad to realize too that this arrangement happily emphasizes the fact that our queen is an English prin. cess. The quarters of Cambridge in this achievement are occupied by the arms borne by her Majesty's maternal grandfather, Adolphus Frederick, seventh son of King George III, who was created Duke of Cambridge in 1801, and had assigned to him the arms of the king his father, with due difference. His arms were: Quarterly, 1 and 4, Gules three leopards gold, for England; 2, Gold a lion gules in a double tressure counterflowered gules, for Scotland; 3, Azure a harp gold with its strings silver, for Ireland; with a scutcheon of pretence parted palewise and chevron wise: 1, Gules, two leop ards gold, for Brunswick; 2, Gold powdered with hearts gules and a lion azure, for Lüneburg: 3, Gules a galloping horse silver, for Westphalia, which is the shield of the king of Hanover differenced by the omission of the little scutcheon, Gules the crown of Charlemagne gold, for the electorate of Hanover, and the royal crown of Hanover. Over all was placed the silver label of the duke, having as its middle pendant the red cross of St. George, and on each of its outer pendants two red hearts. Until 1801, King George III had borne Quarterly: 1, England impaling Scotland; 2, France; 3, Ireland; 4, Hanover; but in that year the arms of France ceased to be displayed by the sovereigns of England, the English leopards were given their present position in the first and fourth quarters, Scotland occupied the second quarter, and the crowned arms of Hanover were placed on a scutcheon over all. This shield was borne by him and his descendants until at the accession of Queen Victoria, whom the Salic law precluded from the throne of Hanover, the bearing of the arms of that kingdom was discontinued, and the shield of English sovereigns took its present form. In her second and third quarters Queen Mary bears the ensigns of her father, the Duke of Teck, which are the arms of the kingdom of Würtemberg differenced with a scutcheon of the ancient counts and princes of Teck. The search for the origin of the Queen's quarters of Teck takes us back a very long way in European history. Some historians have named as founder of the illustrious house of the princes of Würtemberg one Emeric, who is said to have been a kinsman of Clovis, King of France. Whether that is true or not, we are on firmer ground with Albert, lord of Würtemberg, Beutelsbach and Löwenstein. He is named as the father of Conrad, whom the Emperor Henry V is said to have created Count of Würtemberg in 1110. From Conrad sprang that proud and capable ruling house which throughout its long history has never ceased to better its fortunes and never failed to reach its aims. He was ancestor of Eberhard who died in 1253, having added the county of Aurach to his dominions. His grandson, Eberhard II, surnamed the Quarrelsome, passed nearly the whole of his life in war. He saw his castle of Würtemberg destroyed by the Emperor Henry VII, against whom he had taken up arms; but before he died in 1323 he had made his peace with the next emperor, Louis of Bavaria, and had gained the county of Kalbe. His son Ulric acquired the county of Groningen, and the county and castle of Tübingen, and was made Standardbearer of the Empire. His son, Eberhard III, surnamed the Graybeard, purchased the duchy of Teck, and was made landvogt of the four-and-twenty free towns of Swabia by Charles IV of Luxembourg as a reward for the services that he had rendered in the war which the emperor waged against Gunther of Schwarzburg. This Eberhard was a tyrannical prince whose subjects rose in revolt against him, but before the end of his life he had come to his own again, and was more powerful than he had ever been. He died childless, for at the battle of Willen in 1375, when at the lowest ebb of his fortunes, he had lost his only son. Το him succeeded his nephew Eberhard IV, surnamed the Peacemaker, a great ruler whose court, men said, was as great as those of kings. He married Antonietta, daughter of Bernabo Visconti, lord of Milan, and widow of Frederick of Aragon, King of Sicily. Their son, Eberhard V, made a great match with Henrica, daughter of Henry Count of Montbeliard, whereby the lands of that French lord were added to his already vast estates, and in 1494 Count Eberhard was made duke of Würtemberg and Teck by the Emperor Maximilian I. Eberhard, the second duke of Würtemberg, was his grandson, and he dying childless in 1498, was followed in the ducal chair by his nephew Ulric, whose line became extinct at the death of his grandson Louis the Pious in 1593. After him came Duke Frederick, who was son of George, the younger brother of Ulric, the third duke, and from him descend the kings of Würtemberg and the dukes of Teck. John Frederick, his son and heir, who succeeded as seventh duke in 1608, took the Protestant side in the Thirty Years' War, and dying in 1628, was followed by his elder son Eberhard III. His grandson Eberhard Louis, tenth duke, served under our King William III in Ireland, and supported the English armies on the Continent. Later still, the ducal house became more closely allied with England, when Frederick II, fifteenth duke, married as his second wife Charlotte, Princess Royal, daughter of King George III. Frederick I, fourteenth duke, who died in 1797, had two sons, Frederick II, his heir, and Duke Louis of Würtemberg. Duke Frederick II became king of Würtemberg in 1806, and dying in 1816, left by his first wife, Augusta of Brunswick, two sons, William I, who succeeded him on the throne and reigned until 1864, and Prince Paul of Würtemberg. King William's son Charles was the third king. He, who was born in 1823, reigned for twenty seven years. He died without issue in 1891, when his second cousin, William, grandson of Prince Paul, became the fourth and present king of Würtemberg. Louis of Würtemberg, brother of the first king, married Henrietta of Nassau. Their son, Duke Alexander, who was born September 9, 1804, and died July 4, 1885, married May 2, 1835, Countess Claudine Rhédey, daughter of Ladislas, Count Rhédey of Kis Rhédey. She, who had been created Countess of Hohenstein, died October 1, 1841, leaving an only son, Francis Paul Louis Alexander, who was born at Vienna August 27, 1837. He was created Prince of Teck, December 1, 1863, and Duke of Teck, September 16, 1871, and married at Kew, June 12, 1866, the Princess Mary of Cambridge, whose eldest child and only daughter is our gracious Queen. The ancient armorial bearings of the counts of Würtemberg were: Gold three stags' horns sable lying fessewise, and were so borne by Eberhard the Graybeard. The dukes of Würtemberg carried the arm that the counts had borne, quartered with 2, Lozengy bend wise gold and sable, for the duchy of Teck, which Count Eberhard III acquired in 1385; 3, Azure the golden banner of the Empire charged with an eagle sable having two heads, for the dignity of Standard-bearer, which the Emperor Louis V gave in 1336 to Count Ulric; 4, Gules two trout gold placed upright and back to back, for the county of Montbeliard, which Count Eberhard V had in marriage with his wife Countess Henrica of Montbeliard. A more elaborate shield displayed by the dukes of Würtemberg was QuarThe Oxford and Cambridge Review. terly of eight: 1, Teck; 2, Gold a church banner gules, for Tübingen; 3, Silver a mitre or with its lining gules, for Ellwangen; 4, Montbeliard; 5, the official arms of the Standard-bearer; 6, Azure a ragged bend silver, for Justingen; 7, Silver a chief indented gules, for Franconia; quartered with Azure five clubs silver, for Limpurg, impaling Gold a paynim's head, for Heidenheim; 8, Gules a crescent silver, for Böningheim, impaling quarterly: 1, Gules a cross gold with its ends cut off; 2, Silver an eagle sable holding a sword and a mound; 3, Gold a hand gules; 4, Party fessewise azure and silver: over all a scutcheon of Würtemberg impaling Swabia. The significant part of this complicated design is the scutcheon placed over all; for ten years after the duchy had become the kingdom of Würtemberg William I abandoned the use of all the quarters enumerated above and assumed as his royal arms the ancient golden shield of the duchy with the three black stags' horns impaling Gold three passant lions of sable for the dukedom of Swabia. This parted shield differenced with a scutcheon of the black and gold lozenges of Teck was granted September 16, 1871, to Francis Duke of Teck, and becomes, therefore, by inheritance a part of the Queen's arms. E. E. Dorling. CHAPTER VII. FANCY FARM. BY NEIL Munro. Curling weather had come, and lasted long enough to make the unslacking outer world of Commerce wonder what was wrong with Scotland, whose business correspondence was gone all ajee, whose English cheques for days incredibly remained uncashed, whose in dustry seemed mysteriously suspended. "What's the matter? Is it drink?" impatient city houses asked by telegram, and got their first prompt answer at a cost of sixpence "No, it's curling; nothing doing till a thaw." A noble frost! The weathercocks were faithful to the North for weeks; |