metal only, the letters were still kept distinct
and upright. On John of Ghent's collar, in the window of old St. Paul's
(which I have already mentioned in p. 330.), there are only five,

S S S S S,

at considerable intervals. On the collar of the poet Gower the letters
occur thus,--

SSSSS SSSSS.

On that of Queen Joan of Navarre, at Canterbury, thus,--

S | S | S | S | S | S |

There is then, I think, little doubt that this device was the _symbolum_ or
_nota_ of some word of which S was the initial letter; whether _Societas_,
or _Silentium_, or _Souvenance_, or _Soveraigne_, or _Seneschallus_, or
whatever else ingenuity or fancy may suggest, this is the question,--a
question which it is scarcely possible to settle authoritatively without
the testimony of some unequivocal contemporary statement. But I flatter
myself that I have now clearly shown that the esses were neither the _links
of a chain_ nor yet (as suggested in a former paper) identical with the
_gormetti fremales_, or horse-bridles, which are said to have formed the
livery collar of the King of Scots.

JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS.

"Christus purpureum gemmati textus in auro
Signabat Labarum, Clypeorum insignia Christus
Scripserat; ardebat summis crux addita cristis."

By the same sort of reasoning--viz. conjecture--that MR. JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS
adheres to the opinion that the Collar of SS. takes its name from the word
_Seneschallus_, it might be contended that the initial letters of the lines
above quoted mystically stand for "Collar, S. S." Enough, however, has
already been written on this unmeaning point to show that some of us are
"great gowks," or, in other words, stupid guffs, to waste so much pen, ink,
and paper on the subject.

There are other topics, however, connected with the Collar of SS. which are
of real interest to a {363} numerous section of the titled aristocracy in
the United Kingdom; and it is with these, as bearing upon the heraldic and
gentilitial rights of the subject, that I am desirous to grapple. MR.
NICHOLS, and those who pin faith upon his _dicta_, hold that the Collar of
SS. was a livery ensign bestowed by our kings upon certain of their
retainers, in much the same sense and fashion as Cedric the Saxon is said
to have given a collar to Wamba, the son of Witless. For myself, and all
those entitled to carry armorial bearings in the kingdom, I repudiate the
notion that the knightly golden Colla