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Order of the Garter

During his lifetime, Izaak Walton was best known as the biographer of leading Anglican clergymen and writers.  His main profession was as a linen draper and his favorite pastime was angling.

But there was another, secretive and adventurous side to his character, about which he seems never to have written a word – at least none that has survived.

As a devout member of the Church of England, baptised at St Mary’s, Stafford, he sided during the Civil War with King Charles I.  Royalists were not all fanatical supporters of everything the King had done.  Many thought he had made serious mistakes – although they remained loyal, fearing that the alternative to royal authority was far worse.

After the king had been beheaded in January 1649 by sentence of a court which had no legal authority, Royalists regarded his eldest son as King Charles II by hereditary right.  In practice, Charles II would not rule as king for more than eleven years.

Charles landed in Scotland in 1651 and, having been crowned King of Scots at Scone,  led a Scottish army into England to reclaim his throne.  He was defeated at the Battle of Worcester on September 3^rd of that year and fled to the Continent.

The fugitive monarch found refuge in several parts of southern Staffordshire.  Most famously, he hid from the Parliamentarian troops searching for him in an oak tree in the ground of Boscobel House on the border with Shropshire.

Disguised as a manservant to a Miss Jane Lane, of Bentley, near Wolverhampton, he made his way to Bristol.  But first je had to rid himself of a magnificent jewel of the Order of the Garter, the premier English order of chivalry to this day.

The Lesser George, as this medallion is still known, is now worn from the kingfisher blue ribbon of the Garter which passes over the left shoulder of Knights or Ladies of the Garter, with the medallion hanging at the right hip.  

King Charles II himself introduced this style of wearing the insignia after his Restoration in 1660.  But at the time of his escape from the Parliamentarians, it more usually hung from a smaller ribbon on the breast.

Today, the Lesser George is usually a plain medallion of gold embossed with the figure of St George, the patron of the Order, on horseback and slaying the legendary dragon.  But previously, Knights of the Garter had been allowed to wear much more elaborate versions of the jewel.

The antiquarian Elias Ashmole, Windsor Herald and founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, was a friend of Walton.  This is how he describes what happened to King Charles II’s Lesser George in his History of the Order of the Garter, first published in 1672:

“The George King Charles I had at his martyrdom was curiously engraved on an onyx and set about with 21 large table diamonds in the fashion of a Garter/  On the reverse of the said George was the picture of the Queen set in a case of gold.

“…that of King Charles II (was) also set with fair diamonds and after the defeat of the Scotch forces at Worcester was strangely preserved by Colonel Blague, one of the king’s dispersed attendants, who resigned it for safety to the wife of Mr George Barlow of Blore Pipe House in Staffordshire.  Robert Milward Esquire received it and gave it into the hands of Mr Isaac Walton (all loyalists).  It came again into the possession of Colonel Blague, then a prisoner in the Tower, who making his escape, then restored it to King Charles II.”

Dr Robert Plot in his Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686 after Walton’s death, gives a slightly different version of the tale:

“The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Leviston, Colonel Blague, Mr Marmaduke Darcy and Mr Hugh May likewise found great fidelity in Blore Park whither they betook themselves by a by-way after they had quitted their horses and received refreshment at an obscure house of Mr George Barlow’s…only Colonel Blague remained at Mr Barlow’s house at Blore Pipe where with Mr Barlow’s privity and advice he hid His Majesty’s George under a heap of dust and chips, whence it was conveyed through the trust hands of Mr Robert Milward of Stafford who conveyed it to Mr Isaac Walton who conveyed it to London to Colonel Blague then in the Tower;  whence escaping not long after, he carried it with him overseas and restored it to His Majesty’s own hands.”

Elias Ashmole was a friend of Walton and is mentioned in The Compleat Angler.  Robert Milward was a lawyer who witnessed several of Walton’s property transactions and was rewarded with judicial office after the Restoration.

What we learn from these versions of the story, which do not conflict in any material point, is how far Royalists were prepared to risk their own lives to help the fugitive King Charles II.  The so-called Parliament had put a bounty of £1,000 ( a huge sum at the time) on the King’s head.  Anyone caught supporting him in even an indirect way could expect to be punished with imprisonment if not death.

One can only speculate what modern readers would make of a tale of part of the Crown Jewels being hidden in a remote Staffordshire farmyard under a pile of sawdust.  https://assets.tumblr.com/assets/html/like_iframe.html?_v=66c22ab5319d742bca5762b8d18f9d06#name=isaakwalton&post_id=138985910962&color=black&rk=UekM8c4n

The Life of Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton (1593-1683) is best known today as the author of The Compleat Angler, a book which defies accurate description but is usually regarded as a fishing manual.  In truth, Walton had a much more profound message to convey.

This message, hidden because of the turbulent times in which he lived, is all the more moving if one knows something of his life story.  Annoyingly, the founding father of English biography left us scant details of his own life.  They have to be gleaned from other sources.

Walton’s date of birth is not recorded.  Traditionally, it is celebrated with a dignified little wreath-laying ceremony at the Collegiate Church of St Mary on the Sunday nearest to August 9^th, the day on which he began writing his will in 1683 (“in the ninetieth year of my age”).

Read correctly, this phrase from the opening clause of his will means that he had not yet reached his 90^th birthday.  But the parish register of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Stafford, records that he was baptised on September 21^st, 1683.

So he must have been born during the six weeks between these two dates.

His place of birth is a complete mystery.  Tradition says he was born in a house in Eastgate Street where the police station now stands, bearing a bronze black to commemorate him.  However, no documentary evidence exists to support this tradition and other birthplaces (even more spurious) were being advanced by the late 19^th century.

His father, Jervis, was a “tippler” – an upmarket alehouse keeper.  The parish register of St Mary’s records that Jervis died in February 1597, when Izaak was three years old, and that his mother, Anne, married Henry Bourne, another innkeeper who took over the Swan Inn in 1610.

Nor do we know anything about young Izaak’s education, except that he must have had one.  Possibly he attended the grammar school which was then held in St Bertelin’s Chapel, west of St Mary’s Church.  Again, no written record survives.

By 1511, Walton was apprenticed to his brother-in-law Thomas Grinsell as a linen-draper in London.  This he was learning a luxury trade and the independent business he opened in 1624 on the corner of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane made him a modestly prosperous man.

In 1518, Walton was admitted as a member of the Ironmongers’ Company, one of the twelve major livery companies of London, and he later became a senior member and office-holder.  This explains why he has sometimes been erroneously described as an ironmonger by trade.

Fleet Street lay in the parish of St Dunstan’s-in-the-West, where the vicar was John Donne, poet and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.  Walton served as verger and churchwarden of St Dunstan’s and the two men became close friends.  Done was to be the subject of Walton’s first biography, published in 1640.

In 1626, Walton married Rachel Floud, great-great-niece of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and author of the Book of Common Prayer, who was burned at the stake under Queen Mary I.  They had seven children, all of whom died in infancy, and Rachel herself died in 1640

By 1644, Walton had retired from business and moved to Clerkenwell, just north of the City, until about 1655.  In 1647, he married Anne Ken, whose half-brother later became Bishop Thomas Ken of Bath and Wells, the author of several still popular hymns.

Anne bore him three more children, of whom a son, Isaac, became a canon of Salisbury Cathedral.  His daughter, Anne, married Dr William Hawkins, a prebendary canon of Winchester Cathedral and their son, John, married Anne Wettenhall.

She was the granddaughter of Captain Richard Sneyd, the owner of the High House in Stafford who entertained King Charles I when he visited Stafford in September 1642, early in the Civil War.  This may be the origin of the otherwise groundless 19^th century tradition that Izaak “resided many years” in the High House.  Another son died in childhood.

As a devout Anglican, the Civil War and Commonwealth were uncongenial years for Walton.  King Charles I was beheaded in January 1649 and Parliament banned the Prayer Book Walton loved.

King Charles II failed to defeat the Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Worcester in 1643 and fled the country.  His supporters had hidden the King’s Lesser George, a golden and diamond jewel of the Order of the Garter, at a farm in Blore Pipe on the banks of the River Sow beyond Eccleshall, in order to prevent its fugitive owner being identified.

Walton secretly received the jewel from its hiding place and delivered it to a Royalist prisoner in the Tower of London.  The prisoner duly escaped and returned it to the King in exile on the Continent.

Had Walton been discovered taking part in this adventure, he could easily have been imprisoned or put to death.

Walton spent much of the Commonwealth period staying with friends at country houses in Staffordshire, including Hilcote Hall, outside Eccleshall.  This was the home of Walter Noel, from whom he bought Halfhead Farm, near Shallowford, in 1655.

A fishing companion Walton mentioned in The Compleat Angler, Robert Roe, lived at nearby Worston and lent him the money to buy this property.  The mortgage deeds are now in the Staffordshire Record Office.

Shallowford, Halfhead and Worston all lie on the Meece Brook, a tributary of the River Sow, which was then known as Shawford Brook, Shawford being an alternative spelling of Shallowford.  

In a poem called The Angler’s Wish, first published in the third edition of The Compleat Angler in 1661, Walton refers to spending “long days by Shawford Brook” with his fishing rod.  It seems likely that he actually did this.

No evidence exists that Walton actually lived at Halfhead Farm.  He seems to have regarded the farm, one of several tenanted properties he owned, as an investment.  The theory that he was born there can be dismissed as nonsense, as can the equally far-fetched idea that he was born at the High House.

It was during the early years of the Commonwealth that Walton wrote The Compleat Angler, first published in 1653.  Revised five times during his lifetime, it was subtitled “a discourse on rivers, fishponds, fish and fishing.”

It was really a plea for tolerance and moderation in matters of conscience – virtues which were in short supply at the time.  Such a book could never have been published openly under the Puritan regime of Oliver Cromwell – hence the fishing manual disguise.

The Restoration of the monarchy in May 1660 greatly improved Walton’s fortunes.  His friend Dr George Morley was appointed Bishop of Worcester and he appointed Walton as his steward or business agent.  Walton moved to Worcester with his second wife who died there and was buried in the cathedral in 1662.

Also in that year, Morley was translated to Winchester, the fifth most senior bishopric in the Church of England, and the Book of Common Prayer was reinstated with minor amendments.

It was now that Walton wrote his Lives of distinguished clergymen, the works for which he was best known during his lifetime.  The biography of Richard Hooker, the earliest exponent of a distinctive Anglican theology, appeared in 1665.  That of the poet George Herbert appeared in 1670 and that of Bishop Robert Sanderson of Lincoln in 1678.

The Lives of John Donne and Sir Henry Wootton, provost of Eton College, had already been published in 1640 and 1651 respectively.  A collected book of Lives, without that of Bishop Sanderson, appeared in 1675.

Walton was one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, biographers in the English language.  Previously, biographies had been reserved for kings and saints.

Izaak Walton died aged 90 on December 15^th, 1683, at his daughter’s home in Winchester, during the Great Frost, probably the harshest winter in English recorded history.  He was buried in Prior Silkstead’s crypt chapel beneath Winchester Cathedral.

He had lived through the reigns of  four monarchs and a republic, the Gunpowder Plot, the beheadings of Archbishop William Laud and King Charles I, the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell and the restored King Charles II’s failed attempt to allow religious tolerance for Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters.

In his will, he left Halfhead Farm as a charitable bequest to the Corporation of Stafford, the town of his birth.  A cottage there is now an angling museum.

He also left us one of the world’s most popular works of literature.  He would be humbled to know that The Compleat Angler has been published in over 450 editions and many languages, second only to The Holy Bible.

Neil Thomas

Below is an illustration of the heraldic standard of Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, at the College of Arms.  Its date is around 1475.

The standard shows the cross of St George in the hoist, as was normal in the Middle Ages, the Stafford family livery colours of red and black, the Knot badge and the de Bohun swan badge, differenced with a red crescent, plus the motto humble and loyal.

It was normal for families who used a badge to have a standard too, as a flag to which their supporters would rally when called.

A Knotty Puzzle

A Visitor’s Guide to the Stafford Knot

Any visitor to Stafford or Staffordshire will soon become familiar with the Stafford Knot.

The knot appears on public buildings, traffic bollards, stationery and almost everywhere.

Often erroneously called the Staffordshire Knot, this simplest of all knots has become the widely recognised badge of Staffordshire.

In fact, it was and remains the heraldic badge of the barons Stafford from at least the fifteenth century and probably earlier.  

Badges were adopted by prominent families in the Middle Ages to be worn by their servants and retainers who would not be permitted to use the family coat of arms.

The sixth earl of Stafford, created duke of Buckingham in 1444, is known to have used the knot as his badge but there is good reason to believe it was adopted by his grandfather, the second earl, who died in 1386.

The duke of Buckingham’s mother, Lady Anne Plantaganet, Countess of Buckingham, was the daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and youngest son of King Edward III, and of Lady Eleanor de Bohun, daughter and co-heiress of the seventh earl of Hereford.

Lady Anne married the fifth earl in 1398.  A clerical vestment now in the Victoria and Albert Museum bearing the coat of arms of the Stafford family (a red chevron on a gold shield) and the royal arms of England and France within a silver border, borne by Thomas of Woodstock, is believed to have been worn by the priest who solemnised this marriage.

The vestment, a chasuble worn by a priest to celebrate the Eucharist (Mass or Holy Communion), also depicts the swan badge of the de Bohun family and the Stafford knot.  If the chasuble was indeed worn by the priest who performed the marriage rites of the fifth earl and Lady Anne, the knot muct have been the badge of the Stafford family half a century or more before they were promoted to their dukedom.

The second duke of Buckingham, Henry Stafford, helped King Richard III to usurp the throne of his nephew, King Edward V.  When they arrived in London escorted by thousands of Buckingham’s retainers in 1483, it was said the capital had never seen so many men all wearing the same badge – the Stafford knot.

The first proven use of the Stafford Knot by anyone other than the Stafford family as an heraldic device was by the Borough of Stafford in the late sixteenth century.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that the borough or burh of Stafford was founded by Aetheflaed, Lady of the Mercians, in AD 913 as part of a campaign to reconquer England from the Danes.  Stafford was one of three Staffordshire boroughs listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 and received its earliest surviving royal charter in 1206 from King John.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, heralds from the College of Arms toured the counties of England recording the coats of arms actually in use and checking on the right of those bearing them to do so.  These heralds’ visitations remain some of the most important sources of heraldic history.

No arms for the borough of Stafford were recorded in the first visitation of Staffordshire in 1583, although a seal was then in use depicting a four-towered castle between five lions.  King William the Conqueror had built a royal castle in the town near Broad Eye but this was described as “now destroyed” in Domesday, 20 years later, and was superseded by the Stafford family’s castle outside the town, to the south-west.

By the second heraldic visitation of 1614, a coat of arms was recorded depicting a silver four-towered castle with two gold Stafford Knots above and a gold lion below, all on a red shield.  The heraldic blazon for this is: “Gules, a quadrangular castle in perspective the towers domed argent, each surmounted by a pennon or, between two Stafford Knots in chief and a lion passant guardant in base all or”.

These arms remained in use for 360 years until local government reorganisation in 1974.  However, a sizable body of evidence exists to show that another armorial shield, never authenticated by the heralds, also existed from at least late the 16^th century until the middle of the 17^th century.

In 1588 William Smith published A Particular Description of England which includes the coats of arms of noblemen and bishops in each county.  The entry for Staffordshire also attributes to the borough of Stafford a coat the same as that borne by the Stafford family with the addition of a silver Stafford Knot at the apex of the chevron.

The same arms are depicted in John Speed’s map of Staffordshire in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, published in 1612.  They also appear on the fly-sheet of an order book of the borough council beginning in 1648 and can still be seen on the bowl of the mayor’s silver-gilt great mace, which was altered in 1655.

One can only speculate why these arms remained in use for at least 67 years but were not recorded in the heralds’ visitations of 1583 or 1614.  

Perhaps the heralds were reluctant to recognise the borough’s right to use a coat of arms identical to that of the Stafford family, except for the addition of that family’s own badge as a difference.

In contrast, the council could demonstrate long use of its seal depicting the castle and lions.  Ancient usage was then recognised as establishing a right to a coat of arms.

Some people, however, seem to have regarded the earlier coat of arms as being the proper arms of the borough of Stafford for many years after the College of Arms approved those which remained the only authentic coat until 1974.

Whatever the explanation, it is clear that the borough of Stafford had adopted the Stafford Knot as one of its armorial bearings at least by 1614 and probably by 1588.  This was to have profound consequences for the knot as an emblem of Staffordshire as a whole.

In 1794 a regiment of volunteer soldiers was raised at the Swan Hotel in Stafford which was later named the Staffordshire Yeomanry.  The Stafford knot was soon adopted as its badge.

At some time during the Napoleonic Wars, the South Staffordshire Regiment also adopted the knot surmounted by a crown as its badge.  Later in the 19^th century, the North Staffordshire Regiment also adopted the knot, with the addition of the three ostrich feathers of the heir apparent, as its badge.

By the middle of the 19^th century, the knot was being used widely by commercial enterprises based in Staffordshire.  The North Staffordshire Railway Company (commonly known as the Knotty Line) used the arms of the Borough of Stafford (quite improperly) from soon after its foundation in 1845.

Many pottery firms based in North Staffordshire also used the knot as their trade marks, often with the addition of a set of initials in the three loops of the knot.

By the early 20^th century, several local authorities in Staffordshire had the knot incorporated into their coats of arms granted by the College of Arms.

When Staffordshire County Council was created under the Local Government Act of 1888, the need for its own common seal immediately arose.  At its first meeting on April 1^st, 1889, the task of designing a seal and ordering it to be made was entrusted to three members – the chairman, the Earl of Harrowby, the vice chairman and Lord Wrottesely.

The design they chose incorporated the arms assumed by the Borough of Stafford in the late 16^th century, but never approved by the College of Arms, within an octofoil.  Four of the eight lobes of this figure contained Stafford Knots linking roundels bearing emblems representing the four principal industries of Staffordshire – a wheatsheaf for agriculture, the alchemical symbol of iron for iron-founding, a lozenge for coalmining and a jug for pottery manufacturing.

The Latin legend around the rim read: “SIG: COM: CONCILII COMITATUS STAFFORDIENSIS” meaning “common seal of the council of the county of Stafford”.

A coloured representation of this seal appeared at the top of certificates issued to special constables during the First World War.  At the bottom appeared a Stafford Knot with the initials SCC within its loops – rather like the makers’ marks used by minor pottery manufacturers in North Staffordshire at the time.

The county council did not apply for its own coat of arm until 1930 when a member offered to pay the fee for a grant by the College of Arms and a committee was set up to consider various designs.  Some complicated proposals involving devices used by long established county families were quickly discarded and the arms used on the common seal advanced with the addition of a red chief (a broad stripe across the top of the shield) bearing a golden lion passant guardant, taken from the arms of the Borough of Stafford approved in 1614.  The heralds later insisted that the chief should be blue rather than red, probably to avoid too close a resemblance to the royal arms of England.  The blue chief also gives a more pleasing overall effect.

The crest above the shield was quickly agreed on as a Stafford Knot arising out of a mural crown, indicating a civic authority.  Supporting the shield were a red lion and a golden gryphons, two of the Stafford family’s many other badges.

The motto selected was: “The Knot Unites”, demonstrating how deeply ingrained in the consciousness of Staffordshire folk the emblem had become.  This achievement was approved by the College of Arms in January 1931 and is still used on the county council’s common seal, in place of the earlier unapproved shield.