CHAPTER XV

THE EMBLEM OF THE ROSE IN ENGLISH HISTORY
" Round every flower there gleams a glory, Bequeathed by antique song or story ; To each old legends give a name And its peculiar charm proclaim."
" The Rose doth deserve the chiefest and most principall place among all floures whatsoever ; being not only esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his fragrant smell, but also because it is the honour and ornament of our English Sceptre."
— Create Herball, ij6o. JOHN GERARDE.
that English classic, Alice in Wonderland^ Alice and her friends, the Mouse, the White Rabbit, the Dodo, and the Lory, all fall into the water. They emerge with difficulty, grievously bedraggled, and stand sadly desponding as to the means The Mouse bethinks him- self briskly: "I'll soon make you dry enough; I'll read you a page of English history ; 'tis the driest thing that I know," and he proceeds :-
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of drying themselves.
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"The English, who wanted leaders, had been much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morca, Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him; and even Stigand found it advisable — "
This regard of English history is common to most of us, but there is a long page of English
Gold of Ophir Roses.
history which is neither dry nor tedious, but is glowing with the richest color of romance; it might be summarized as the Rose in English History. I can but refer to it in a brief regard of the Rose as an Emblem. The "painfull" searcher after facts in regal heraldry finds an indelible record of the Rose in the many badges and devices, especially
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those of the royal family, which bear a figure of a Rose.
A badge or cognizance was a figure chosen by its owner either as openly significant of some exploit of honor or note of some member of his family ; or as alluding to his name or estate or office or calling. A badge was not bound by heralds' rules though it often became an heraldic bearing ; it might have been given as a token of the favor of a leader or sovereign, and it was worn openly as a token of allegiance. Each nobleman's badge was prominent in his dress, on sleeve or breast ; and it glittered on his standards, his warlike trappings.
Though both were emblems, the device differed from a badge in several ways, the most important being that the badge was an open declaration of the personality of the wearer and its chief object was to accomplish publicity ; while the device or im- prese had an inner, often a hidden meaning, and was sometimes assumed for the purpose of ingenious mystification. It should not be "so obscure as to require a sphinx to interpret it," Sir William Drummond said, " but should be somewhat retired from the capacity of the vulgar." It must have two parts, a picture and a motto, — a painted, carved, or embroidered metaphor, and also a motto, preferably in a foreign tongue; the "body' and the "spirit'' the Italians said. The Italian term impresa or imprese was used as frequently as the word device. We have a lingering bequest of the old mediaeval device in our modern book-plate, which should still ever have the "body" and the "spirit." Devices
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were far more popular on the Continent than in England, and those " curious " English folk who travelled or lived on the Continent - - as, for instance, Mary Queen of Scots - -were most learned in devices.
Roses at Gravetye Manor, Sussex, England ; Home of William Robinson, Author of the English Flower Garden.
A few family badges still linger in England, the Pelham buckle being one ; and in the history of the English throne we have the badges of the Sun of York, the Broom of the Plantagenets, and the Roses of York and Lancaster ; the history of English royal badges would be the feudal history of England.
King Edward I, irreverently called " Longshanks," was the first English sovereign who assumed " A Rose, or stalked proper," as his badge, a golden
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Rose in natural form. Many and important were the events of his reign which ended in 1307. It is therefore six centuries since there was a Royal Rose of England.
I shall not enter at any detail into that pro- longed story of battle and extinction of the House of Plantagenet, known as The War of the Roses. The first appearance in historic tradition of " the fatal colors of our striving houses" — those of York and of Lancaster — was about 1450. In the Temple Gardens, Somerset and the Earl of Warwick plucked, the former a red Rose, and the earl a white Rose, and called upon every man present to declare himself as to his cause and house. Shakespeare gives a spirited version of the scene in Act II,