Some Remarks on the Armorial Tapestry of John Dynham at The Cloisters

Transcription

1 Some Remarks on the Armorial Tapestry of John Dynham at The Cloisters HELMUT NCKEL Curator of Arms and Armor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art FOR EDTH A. STANDEN ON HER EGHTETH BRTHDAY AMONG THE MLLEFLEURS TAPESTRES in the Museum's collections the tapestry with the arms of Sir John Dynham, first Lord Dynham of Hartland, is the only one that does not display figural scenes of hunting or shepherds, but is composed strictly of heraldic designs. This tapestry has been published in a comprehensive study by Bonnie Young in Al- though her essay offers much detailed information, a few points about the heraldry in this tapestry can be added. The tapestry's central motif is the full achievement of arms of Sir John, as first Lord Dynham and Knight of the Garter. His armorial shield, shaped as a tournament targe, is surmounted by a crested and mantled helmet with barred visor; the shield is surrounded by the Garter and flanked by two stags proper as supporters. Bonnie Young describes the armorial bearings on the shield as "four ermine loz- enges on a now-faded red field (or, in the language of heraldry, gules, a fess of four lozenges ermine)." The crest is composed as follows: on a chapeau gules, upturned ermine, an ermine statant between two lighted candles proper. The mantlings of the helmet are: gules, lined ermine, on the sinister side, but with colors counterchanged; ermine, lined gules, on the dexter. The shield's supporters, the two stags, actually hold the Garter between their forehooves like a frame for the shield (Figure 1). Two smaller shields appear in the upper corners of the tapestry. The one on the dexter side bears the Dynham arms of the four lozenges, while the one on the sinister shows the Dunham arms impaling those of the Arches family: gules, three arches argent, the two in chief conjoined (Figure 2). The maiden name of Sir John's mother was Arches; these two shields, therefore, must represent his father's and his mother's arms.2 The upper part of the millefleurs background is strewn with the device of the topcastle of a warship, eleven times repeated. Five javelins lean against its railing and a swallow-tailed pennant with the Cross of St. George flies from the mast. A strip across the bottom of the tapestry is heavily restored with patches of other millefleurs work, but part of one topcastle and a fragment of another pennant are preserved in the lower right corner. These show that the tapestry was once considerably longer, most likely-as already pointed out by Bonnie Young-containing two more shields in its lower corners, following the usual pattern of armorial tapestries. 1. Bonnie Young, "John Dynham and His Tapestry," MMAB n.s. 20 (June 1962) pp , ill. have drawn freely on Young's quotations from her sources, including contemporary chronicles. 2. Sir John's Garter stall-plate in the choir of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, uses an alternate form of his arms: Quarterly, 1 and 4 Dynham, 2 and 3 Arches, incorporating his mother's arms in his shield. The mantlings of the helmet are there gules, lined ermine; the stags are supporting the helmet rather than the shield. See Young, "John Dynham," fig ? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1986 METROPOLTAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 19/20 The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Metropolitan Museum Journal

2 ' i i i 1~?Yr ", Y' %W.,1 dfv,. i,.. * i '. $. i 1 i i 1. iit - ij LvV-.., : i; -' j 1 93g% 1 1. Tapestry with the armorial bearings and badges of John, Lord Dynham ( ), Flemish (Tournai), after Wool and silk threads, 12 ft. 8 in. x 12 ft. 1 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 6o n her study Bonnie Young traces John Dynham's colorful career as a dashing naval commander and a distinguished administrator in the service of "five successive kings without losing either his head or his land"-no mean accomplishment during the turbulent times of the Wars of the Roses. n 1458, as a loyal subject of the Lancastrian king Henry V, John Dynham inherited the family manors of Nutwell and 26

3 Hartland in Devonshire; but in 1459 after the disastrous battle of Ludlow, a failed attempt by the duke of York to seize the crown, he helped Warwick the Kingmaker and the earl of March (York's son and the future Edward V) to escape to Calais. They crossed the Channel in a small ship bought by Dynham for "vj score nobles," presumably the bulk of the family fortune. Having joined the Yorkist side "out of love of the Earl of March," Dynham led two successful raids from Calais on the seaport of Sandwich, one in mid- January and the other in late June of n both enterprises he managed to capture not only most of the assembled royal fleets but also their commanders. As a result of the second raid a bridgehead was established, launching the Yorkist campaign that eventually succeeded in unseating Henry V. n this second raid Dynham was "sore hurte and maymed on his legge, by reason whereof, he ever after halted and somewhat limped." n spite of this handicap, in March 1461, as one of the commanders of the Yorkist rear guard at the battle of Towton, he arrived in the nick of time to save the day for York. A few days after Edward's coronation on June 28, the grateful new king raised John Dynham to the peerage as Lord Dynham "ffor his manhood." Ten years later, in , Henry V-now supported by Warwick-was restored briefly to the throne. Lord Dynham, who had apparently kept wisely out of sight in Devon, was pardoned for his actions against the Lancastrians, but as soon as the Yorkists returned from exile, he rallied to the White Rose standard again. During the following years, in 1472 and particularly in 1475, when he kept the "narrow sea" safe as the line of supply and communications for the invasion of France, he held several important naval com- mands; later he became deputy to the Captain of Calais, Lord Hastings. His long and loyal service to the House of York notwithstanding, Dynham did not enjoy the full trust of King Richard. Although he was left in command of Calais after the execution of Hastings in June 1483, he was removed from this post in March 1485, and-adding insult to injury-replaced by the king's bastard son, John of Gloucester, who was still a minor.3 After Henry V's victory at the battle of Bosworth Field, August 22, 1485, Dyn- ham was reinstalled as Captain of Calais. The Tudor king, who recognized a useful man when he saw one, made Dynham Lord Treasurer in 1486 and a Knight of the Garter in Bonnie Young's essay shows that Henry V bought tapestries on at least two occasions, in 1486 and 1488, from the Grenier family, the leading weavers and dealers of the famed tapestry center at Tournai, to which this tapestry is attributed. n 1488 the king instructed his customs officials and the Treasurer that his tapestries should be imported free of duty. The Treasurer was Lord Dynham, who could easily have ordered tapestries of his own at the same time; in any case, this tapestry must have been made after Dynham's elevation to Knight of the Garter. Membership of this exclusive order of chivalry was limited to twenty-five knights, the "bravest in the land," in imitation of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. To fill a vacancy members nominated nine worthy candidates each, and then proposed the knight with the most nominations to the king, who, as the 2. Shield with the Dynham arms impaling Arches, detail of Figure 1 3. Paul Murray Kendall, Richard the Third (New York, 1955) pp. 392, 482; Charles Ross, Richard (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1981) p i~*1

4 2- tlm zezw - & sovereign of the order, had the final word of approval. John Dynham had been proposed at least four times during Edward V's reign, but in spite of his many merits the king chose not to elect him. Richard quite pointedly ignored him too, but Henry V awarded him this supreme accolade at the earliest opportunity. The rather unusual display of Garters in the tapestry, not only in Lord Dynham's full achievement of arms but also surrounding the two smaller shields representing his parental arms, makes it likely that the two missing lower shields were simi- larly encircled by Garters. Whether these hypothetical shields were repetitions of the upper two, other ancestral arms, or perhaps the arms of Lord Dynham impaling those of his two wives, we shall never know. n speculating about this peculiar arrangement one might conjecture that Lord Dynham wanted to show that his election to the Garter was actually achieved on his fifth attempt. Heraldry is fraught with symbolic meaning often too obscure to be recognizable from a twentiethcentury standpoint, except in cases of canting arms, where the charges of the shield or the crest illustrate a play upon words, usually the name of the bearer of the arms. The three arches in the shield of the Arches family are a classic example of canting arms. The stags in Lord Dynham's full achievement, on the other hand, represent the much rarer case of canting supporters. As "harts" they refer to the Dynhams' ancestral estate of Hartland in Devonshire. Some relationship between crest and shield charges 3. Standard of Sir John Carew, Knight. English, early 16th century (drawing: Nickel, after de Walden, Banners, Standards and Badges) is highly desirable; the Dynham arms display this in several ways. The ermine in the crest is obviously connected with the tincture of the "fess of lozenges ermine" on the shield, but the two lighted candles flanking the animal figure are such an extraordinary element that they have been misinterpreted as spears or unicorn horns in earlier descriptions.4 However, these candles also, in a roundabout way, derive from the shield charges, because an alternative term for "lozenge" is "fusil." A fusil was the piece of steel used to strike sparks from the flint in a medieval strike-alight, the instrument needed to light a candle. Shield and crest, as the inherited family arms, were considered too personal to the bearer to be displayed as tokens of allegiance by common soldiers or household retainers. Followers of a particular family wore its badge, either cast in metal and pinned to the hat, or embroidered and sewn on clothing (thus "to wear one's heart on one's sleeve").5 Badges, although also 4. Joseph Foster, A Tudor Book of Arms, Being Harleian Manuscript No. 663, The De Walden Library (London, n. d.) p Entry folio 119, 4: "Lord Denam (Dynham). Gules, four lozenges conjoined in fess ermine. CREST. On a chapeau gules turned up ermine, a hound argent between two spears." 5. n one of the best-known examples Richard ordered 13,000 costume badges of his White Boar for the investiture of his son, Edward, as Prince of Wales on Aug. 31, 1483 (BM Harleian MS 433, f. 126). The only surviving White Boar badge, 28

5 used in France, Spain, and taly, were particularly abundant in England. Most were freely chosen personal symbols, though some, such as the three ostrich feathers of the Prince of Wales and the half-moon of the Percys, became associated with certain offices and families. Others were the badges of political parties, like the red rose of Lancaster, the white rose of York, and later the Tudor rose. The family badge of the Dynhams was a stag's head, in allusion to the manor of Hartland.6 The armed topcastle-pars pro toto for an entire warship-so liberally displayed in this tapestry would have been Lord Dynham's personal badge, one that was appropriate for a renowned naval commander. Whether the five javelins leaning against the topcastle's railing have special significance is an intriguing question. Perhaps they indicate the five important commands in Lord Dynham's naval career; on the other hand, they might have been just regulation armament. The pennants with the Cross of St. George in the fore section and their red and white streamers, in the same tinctures as Lord Dynham's shield, conform to the English military pattern. n the intricate grading system of military heraldry two different types of flags were employed, the square banner and the triangular, often swallow-tailed, stan- dard. A knight banneret had the privilege of bearing a banner charged with his family's arms; in addition to this banner he had one or more standards to display his badges. Lower-ranking knights had their family arms limited to their shields and surcoats (hence "coat of arms"), and carried only one standard. English military standards all had the Cross of St. George (red on white) as signum commune at their head next to the staff; the fly was in the livery colors of the knight and bore his badges. The standard shown here is that of Sir John Carew, from an early sixteenth-century roll of arms (Figure 3). Sir John's coat of arms was: "Quarterly, 1. Or, three lions passant Sable, armed and langued Gules; 2. Gules, four fusils in fess Ermine; 3. Gules, three arches (the upper two conjoined) Ar- gent; 4. Azure, a bend Or, a label of three points Gules; in the fess point of the shield a crescent Ar- gent for difference."7 Since the first field shows the family arms of Carew, the second those of Dynham, and the third those of Arches, it is clear that Sir John Carew was a descendant of one of John Dynham's four sisters.8 Many Carews had naval careers, and Sir John presumably adopted his badge of the armed topcastle, modified by adding the black lion from the Carew crest, in honor of his famous relative, Lord Dynham. now in the Yorkshire Museum, York, seems to be from this group. Pamela Tudor-Craig, Richard, exh. cat. (London, 1973) no H. G. Str6hl, "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Badges," Jahrbuch der k. k. Heraldischen Gesellschaft "Adler" n.s. 12 (1902) pp The Dynham badge is mentioned on p Lord Howard de Walden, Banners, Standards and Badges from a Tudor Manuscript in the College of Arms [MS 12], The De Walden Library (London, 1904) p. 67. Note the interchangeable use of "fusil" and "lozenge" in describing the Dynham charge in the second field. 8. John Dynham's two children predeceased him and he was survived only by his second wife. His sisters' children were his eventual heirs. 29