The 'Dering Roll', decorated manuscript roll of arms on vellum

4 membranes, 2645mm. by c. 210mm. (each membrane approximately 660mm. long), complete, on recto: single column, 54 rows of armorial shields (6 shields per line) with accompanying names in an accomplished English cursive documentary script, sixteenth-century additions of marginal numbers every five lines, on verso: 'lot 24' in a nineteenth-century hand and '31146' in Sir Thomas Phillipps' hand; fading and wear to first membrane, slight wear and fading throughout with some loss of paint from a number of shields, slight loss to upper right-hand corner affecting the edge of only one shield (with professional modern repair, most probably that of  March 1948; receipt for work kept with item), very small losses from outer-edge of membranes in five places affecting text in only two (also with professional modern repairs), else in good and sturdy condition, in a small wooden box with brass insert in lid

The earliest extant English Roll-of-Arms, produced in the reign of Edward I, almost certainly for Stephen of Penchester, constable of Dover Castle (1268-99), and subsequently owned by the notable seventeenth-century antiquary, Sir Edward Dering (1598-1644)

provenance

1. Most probably commissioned by Stephen of Penchester, constable of Dover Castle, during the reign of Edward I (see below).

2. Perhaps owned by Hugh Fitzwilliam of Sprotborough in the mid-sixteenth century, and from which Oxford, Bodleian, MS. Ashmole 1120, fols. 170-1b, was copied by Ralph Brooke of York in 1563; inscription on Bodleian manuscript recording spurious tradition that the arms are those of the siege of Acon: A copie of an owldde Roule in ye kepinge of Mr. Fitz Williams of Sprotsburgh of Noblemen armes and Knyghtes as weare wt K. R. I. at ye asiege of Acon. Subsequent  sixteenth- and seventeenth-century copies from Hugh Fitzwilliam's roll are Oxford, Queen's College, MS. 158, British Library, MS. Harl. 6558, fols. 52b-3 and College of Arms, MS. Gybbon's Ordinary, pp. 71-87. See Wagner, Catalogue, pp. 14-15.

3. Perhaps owned by a 'Mr Knevett' c. 1590 (perhaps Thomas Knevett of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, c. 1539-1618, de jure Lord Berners; Wagner, Catalogue, pp. 14 & 147; and see D. Mckitterick, The Library of Sir Thomas Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe c. 1539-1618, 1981, for details of his collection).

4. Sir Edward Dering (1598-1644), first baronet and avid antiquary, most probably acquired during his years of service, from the late 1620s onwards, as lieutenant of Dover Castle, when he acquired a number of the treasures of the archive there: C. E. Wright, 'Sir Edward Dering: a seventeenth-century antiquary and his "Saxon" charters', The Early Cultures of North-West Europe, ed. C. Fox and B. Dickins, 1950, 369-93.

5. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), his MS. 31146; presumably acquired from Thorpe, his catalogue "1400 Mss", 1836, lot 556.

6. Sir Anthony Wagner (1908-1995), F.S.A., Garter Principal King of Arms, 1961-78,  bought on 6 February 1948; and by descent to the present owner.

literature

J. Greenstreet, 'The Dering Roll of Arms erroneously styled the "Acre" Roll', Notes and Queries 1874, pp. 283-5

A. R. Wagner, A Catalogue of English Rolls of Arms, 1950, pp. 14-16

N. Denholm-Young, History and Heraldry, 1254 to 1310, 1965, ch. iv: 'The Dering Roll' pp. 64-89

G. J. Brault, Rolls of Arms of Edward I (1272-1307), 1997

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

text

The earliest English coats-of-arms are intimately associated with the birth of medieval knighthood and that social group's conception of itself. The second half of the thirteenth century saw the rapid emergence of this group within English society. Within a few decades they had formed into a cohesive social layer between the upper aristocracy and the lower members of society, and had forged a completely new ethos and identity for themselves. Rolls of Arms, such as the present manuscript, are the most visual and tangible part of the conceptual aspect of that transformation, the creation of a new group social identity. The popularity of chivalric literature and the ideals of 'courtly love' in England in this period began to elevate the knight above his peers, equipping him with a moral code of almost superhuman purity and honour; and these developments were visually reinforced by artistic portrayals of knights and knighthood; see for example the mounted knight with the Holy Trinity on his shield and the names of virtues on his trappings and weapons, who precedes a treatise on vices in British Library, Harl. 3244, made c. 1240-55, and the depiction of St. Mercurius in the Lambeth Apocalypse, from a little later in the century, in which he receives his hauberk as he rises from his tomb surrounded by angels who present him with a sword, shield and pennon. However, perhaps the largest part in this social transformation was played by coats-of-arms. While the Norman knights on the Bayeux Tapestry bear shields, none of them has a coat-of-arms, and the earliest recorded on the Continent is that on the tomb of Count Geoffrey V of Anjou (d. 1151). In England they appear in the last years of the twelfth century, as a practical method to identify the combatants in tournaments and mêlées, and such emblems, covered in bright colours and patterns and filled with a whole range of animals, birds and symbols, were a rich and convenient emblem of knighthood, publicly conveying the difference of its members from the lower ranks of society, and allowing aristocratic families to advertise prestigious relationships between kin-groups and allies. As such they proliferated in the second half of the thirteenth century, not only appearing on banners, seals, manuscripts and wall paintings, but also on more everyday objects such as buildings, clothing, furniture, domestic plate and tiled floors. Coats-of-arms appeared in almost every corner of medieval life, and were visual advertisements of wealth, influence and nobility; in the late fourteenth century, the anonymous author of the alliterative poem Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, a brutal satirical attack on the monastic orders, described the opulent wealth of the Dominican house of Blackfriars in London by noting its

Wyde wyndowes y-wrought y-written full thikke,

Schynen with schapen sheldes to schewen aboute,

With merkes of marchaunts y-medled bytwene,

Mo than twenty and two twyes y-noumbered             (ie. 44: twice 20 and 2)

Ther is non heraud that hath swich a rolle ...

While examples of medieval coats-of-arms remain common today, large collections of arms on rolls - the grandest of medieval statements of power - are incredibly rare. In total only about seventeen survive from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (catalogued by Wagner, and more recently by Brault, Rolls of Arms), and while records of a few rolls from the mid-thirteenth century onwards do survive ('Glover's Roll', written in the late 1250s: Wagner, Catalogue, pp. 3-7; 'Walford's Roll', written c. 1275: ibid. pp. 7-9; and the 'Herald's Roll', written c. 1270-80: ibid. pp. 9-14) none of these is now extant in a manuscript which predates the fifteenth-century, and predominantly the extant records are of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century. The present manuscript is then the earliest recorded extant Roll of Arms for England, and after several decades of scholarship by Sir Anthony Wagner and the recent publication of a comprehensive catalogue by G. J. Brault it seems unlikely that any others will emerge in future. Furthermore, the vast majority of such manuscripts were gathered into the holdings of national collections by the end of the nineteenth century, and rarely emerge onto the market. To the best of our knowledge, only nine have been offered for sale in the last century, eight of which were sold in our rooms: a copy of the 'Herald's Roll', written 1520, on 30 November 1976, lot 889; a roll of arms, written c. 1475, on 25 November 1969, lot 475; another from much the same period, on 29 November 1966, lot 76 (all three of these ex Phillipps); a 'roll of arms of English families', written c. 1550, on 19 May 1958, lot 134; a roll of arms, written c. 1350, on 11 February 1913; another written c. 1450, on 31 May 1912, lot 508; another written c. 1350, on 26 February, 1900, lot 413; and a single example by Christie's: a roll of arms of the Egerton family, written 1598, on 30 May 1984, lot 207a. The present manuscript is older than the earliest of those by nearly a century, and is several centuries older than the majority of them.

N. Denholm-Young (History and Heraldry, p. 64) declared that the present manuscript "is the finest of the extant Edwardian rolls and in every respect a document of great historical interest". It contains 324 coats-of-arms, approximately one quarter of the entire English baronage, beginning with two of King John's illegitimate children, Richard fitz Roy (Gules two lions passant or) and William de Say (Quarterly or and gules). Closer examination reveals that it is a document local to the south-east of England, and the partial words Ke(nt) and (Su)ssexe in the left margin announce a roll-call of 78 names of aristocrats from those two counties alone. Moreover, a number of sheriffs of Kent are present, as are four constables of Dover Castle. Detailed comparison by Denholm-Young of the present manuscript with records of the feudal dependencies of Dover Castle has revealed that the roll is actually a decorative list of the knights who owed feudal service to the constable of Dover Castle. The date of the document allows us to see that it was made during Stephen of Penchester's term of office there (1268-99; his own arms are no. 6 here: Gules a cross argent), and it must have been commissioned by him. Stephen emerges in the historical record as one of Edward I's closest associates and most trusted aides, and he may have supported Edward during his difficult and turbulent rise to power. Edward appears not to have had a good relationship with his father, Henry III, and in 1258 he supported the barons who forced Henry to agree to the 'Provisions of Oxford', effectively abolishing the absolutist Anglo-Norman monarchy and transferring power into the hands of a council of fifteen barons and a thrice-yearly meeting of an early form of parliament (this act eventually resulted, of course, in the Magna Carta entering English law in 1297, and more specifically in the document which will be sold in our New York rooms in December this year; see the notice at the end of this catalogue). After a rebellion by the barons under the leadership of the charismatic Simon de Montfort, both Edward and his father were imprisoned, until Edward's escape and rallying of the royalists in 1265. As part of that campaign he captured the crucial strategic point of Dover Castle and granted authority over it to Stephen of Penchester. In such a tense political climate Stephen had to muster as many propaganda-tools as possible, and the present manuscript must have played a role in giving a sense of unity to Stephen's feudal followers. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how it can have been used as a practical tool of the machinery of government (that role seems to have been filled instead by Stephen's 'charter-book', a collection of all the records, writings, and instruments of government relevant to the castle collected by his order into a single volume) and its function instead must have been to cement relations between the various factions of local noblemen who appear in its columns, by placing their emblems of office and individual symbols of kin-identity side-by-side in a single monumental work of art. It clearly had a role to play beyond that of private contemplation by Stephen himself, and was perhaps exhibited at important local meetings.

Presumably, it then entered the archives of Dover Castle, where it remained until Sir Edward Dering (1598-1644) took up the office of lieutenant of the castle. Dering was an energetic antiquary who began his career as an aspiring courtier under the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham. He used the duke's influence to obtain offices and get access to manuscripts and archives; and in 1627 obtained a warrant from the duke authorizing him to consult public records without paying any fees. This relationship was cut short by the duke's assassination in 1628, but it did not end Dering's antiquarian interests, and on 1 May 1638 he re-appears as one of four notable 'Students of Antiquity', alongside the manuscript collector Sir Christopher Hatton (whose collection was bought by the Bodleian in September 1671), the collector Sir Thomas Shirley, and the renowned antiquary and manuscript scholar Sir William Dugdale, who co-founded a society named Antiquitas Rediviva, dedicated to the collection and preservation of armorial manuscripts. There was a clear division of labour, and Dering was placed in charge of the edition of an Ordinary of English arms, and this appears to have given him the perfect excuse to search the archives of Dover Castle for any useful material. Dering's antiquarian interests, like many of his contemporaries, were in theory indulged in order to underpin Protestant beliefs, but there is also a personal motive evident, and on a number of occasions Dering turned to wanton forgery, adjusting names on documents in his collection in order to support his claims for the antiquity and importance of his family. The present manuscript offers an excellent example. The statutes of Antiquitas Rediviva specify that any "booke, roll, treatise, deede, etc" brought to the society's meetings should be marked with an individual armorial symbol of ownership (a saltire sable within a shield for Dering, a wheatsheaf for Hatton, a small coat of arms with a bordure for Shirley, and a cross for Dugdale; the symbols are given by Wagner, Catalogue, p. xxii), but with the present manuscript Dering went a step further, and did not add his symbol to a discreet area of the border or dorse as elsewhere, but erased shield no. 61 in the present list (previously the arms of Nic. De Crioll), and inserted his own arms with the legend of a spurious ancestor, Ric fiz Dering, instead.

Thus, the present manuscript is not only the earliest extant example of a Roll of Arms for England, but also a beautiful relic of an important moment in English history: the inception of Edward I's government when Britain took crucial steps towards a parliamentary process while retaining a reigning monarch. Throughout much of its history it appears to have been a document associated with power, prestige and propaganda; most probably representing the efforts of one of Edward's trusted aides to forge alliances between the barons under his jurisdiction, and some three centuries later being adapted by one the most fascinating antiquaries of the early modern period for his own ends.