before his accession to the throne used the silver swan;
afterwards the fire-beacon appears to have been his cognisance.
Over his tomb in Westminster Abbey is a representation
of an antelope and a swan, chained to a beacon.—
Montagu's Heraldry.
In the twenty-second year of the reign of Edward IV.
(1483), it was ordered that no person, except the king’s
sons, should have a swan-mark, or £game’ of swans, unless he
possessed a freehold of the clear yearly value of five marks.
Sometimes, though rarely, the crown, instead of granting
a swan-mark, conferred the greater privilege of enjoying
the prerogative right (within a certain district) of seizing
White Swans not marked. Thus the Abbot of Abbotsbury,
in Dorsetshire, had a £game’ of swans in the estuary formed
by the Isle of Portland and the Chesil Bank.
In the eleventh year of the reign of Henry VII. (1496),
it was ordered that stealing or taking a Swan’s egg should
have a year’s imprisonment, and make fine at the king’s
will. Stealing, setting nets or snares for, or driving Grey
or White Swans, was punished still more severely.
The king had formerly a swanlierd (Magister deductus
cygnorum), not only on the Thames, but in several other
parts of the kingdom. We find persons exercising the office
of ££ Master of the King’s Swans,” sometimes called the
swanship, within the counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge,
Northampton, and Lincoln. Richard Cecil, the father of
Lord Burleigh, was bailiff of Whittlesey Mere, and had the
custody of the Swans in the time of Henry VIII. Anciently
the crown had an extensive swannery annexed to the royal
palace or manor of Clarendon in Wiltshire. It had also a
swannery in the Isle of Purbeck.
In the £ Archseologia,’ published by the Society of Antiquaries
of London, vol. xvi. 1812, ordinances respecting
Swans on the river Witham, Lincolnshire, together with an
original roll of ninety-seven swan-marks appertaining to the
proprietors on the said stream, were communicated by the
late Sir Joseph Banks. A true copy of the Parchment Roll
being too long, only the following particulars are here inserted.
No persons having Swans could appoint a new swanherd
without the king’s swanlierd’s licence. Every swanherd on
the stream was bound to attend upon the king’s swanherd
upon warning, or suffer fine. The king’s swanherd was
bound to keep a book of swan-marks, and no new marks
were permitted to interfere with old ones. Owners of Swans
and their swanherds were registered in the king’s swan-
herd’s book.
The marking of the cygnets was generally performed in
the presence of all the swanherds on that stream, and on
a particular day or days, of which all had notice. Cygnets
received the mark found on the parent birds, but if the old
Swans bore no mark, the whole were seized for the king, and
marked accordingly. No swanherd to affix a mark but in
the presence of the king’s swanherd or his deputy.
Formerly, when a Swan made her nest on the banks of
the river, rather than on the islands, one young biid was
given to the owner of the soil, who protected the nest, and
this was called £ the ground bird.’ A money consideration,
instead of a young bird, is still given. When, as it sometimes
happened, the male bird of one owner mated with a
female bird belonging to another, the brood was divided
between the owners of the parent birds ", the odd cygnet, when
there was one, being allotted to the owner of the male bird.
The swan-mark, called by Sir Edward Coke cigninotn,
was cut in the skin on the beak of the Swan with a sharp
knife or other instrument. These marks consisted of annulets,
chevrons, crescents, crosses, initial letters, and other
devices, some of which had reference to the heialdic aims
of, or the office borne by, the Swan owner.
The representations on the next page are swan-marks
supposed to be cut on the upper surface of the upper
mandible.
Nos. 1 and 2 were the royal swan-marks of Henry VIII.
and Edward VI. No. 3 was the swan-mark of the Abbey
of Swinstede, on the Witham ; and the Author may remark
that the crosier, or crook, is borne by the divine, the cowherd,
the shepherd, the goatherd, the swanherd, and the