Lancaster (antiently Lun-ceastre), a lion couchant

before a castle.

Arundel, a swallow volant (Fr. hirondelle).

Beverley, a beaver, &c.

Lichfield (i. e. the field of corses), the bodies and

disjecta membra' of dead men, &c.

Oxford, an ox in a ford.

But the oddest local rebus with which I am acquainted is that of Saffron-Walden; three saffron sprigs surrounded by a fortified wall-Saffron walled-in!

Rebuses sometimes occur as signs of inns, as at the antique little village of Warbleton, co. Sussex, where the device is a battle-axe or war-bill thrust into the bunghole of a tun of foaming ale. In the neighbouring hamlet of Runtington, there was a similar rebus, namely, a runt, or young cow, and a tun. At Crowborough Gate, in the same county, a crow upon a gate does duty for a sign.

Quaint was the conceit of Robert LANGTON, who gave new windows to Queen's College, Oxford (where he received his education), and placed in each of them the letters ToN drawn out to a most extraordinary length, or rather breadth, for Lang- (that is Long-) tun; thus:

TON

"You may imagine," says Master Camden, "that Francis Cornfield did scratch his elbow when he had sweetly inuented to signifie his name, Saint Francis, with his Frierly kowle in a corne-field !"*

* Remaines, p. 145.

A hare upon a bottle, for HA REBOTTLE, forms one of the best of these speechless puns. a goat, for PIGOT, is very tolerable.

A mag-pie upon As for a hare in

a sheaf of rye, standing in the sun, for HARRISON, it is barely passable; but a chest surmounted with a star, for CHESTER, is the ne plus ultra of wretched punning.

Lionel Ducket gave as his rebus a Lion with an L upon his head, "whereas," says Camden, "it should have been in his taile."-" If the Lyon had beene eating a ducke it had beene a rare deuice worth a duckat or a ducke-egge !"

The rebus of Ralph HOGE or HOGGE (who in conjunction with Peter Baude, a Frenchman, was the first person who cast iron ordnance in England-at the village of Buxted, in Sussex) was a hog. On the front of his residence at that place this device remains carved on stone, with the date 1581; from which circumstance the dwelling is called the "Hog-house." The rebus of one MEDCALF was a calf inscribed with the letters M. E. D. Robert de Eglesfield, the munificent founder of Queen's Coll. Oxon. thought fit to perpetuate his name with what may be called a practical rebus. On Christmas-day, the great annual solemnity of the College, when the boar's head is placed on the hall table with various ceremonies, each of the senior fellows receives from the provost certain needlesful of purple and scarlet silk, with the admonition, Be thrifty: the French aiguilles et fil (needles and thread) being a play on Eglesfield. The donor's punning was as poor as his liberality was large.

Our old printers were as fond of name-devices in the sixteenth century, as the abbots and priors of the fifteenth had been. Thus William NORTON gave, on the title-pages of the books printed by him, a sweet-William

growing out of the bunghole of a tun, labelled with the syllable NOR; John OXENBRIDGE gave an ox with the letter N on his back, going over a bridge; Hewe GOES, the first printer in the city of York, a great and a goose! William MIDDLETON gave a capital M in the middle of a tun; Richard GRAFTON, the graft of an apple tree, issuing from a tun; and GARRET DEWS, two fellows in a garret playing at dice and casting deux! John DAY used the figure of a sleeping boy, whom another boy was awakening, as he pointed to the sun, exclaiming, "Arise, for it is day:"* a clumsy invention, scarcely deserving the name of a rebus. Perhaps the most farfetched device ever used was that of another printer, one Master JUGGE, who "took to express his name a nightingale sitting in a bush with a scrole in her mouth, wherein was written jugge, jugge, jugge !"'+

Some printers in recent times have imitated their typographical ancestors by the introduction of their rebus on title-pages. The late Mr. TALBOYS, of Oxford, ensigned all his publications with an axe struck into the stem of a tree, and the motto TAILLE BOIS! Some of Mr. Pickering's books have an antique device representing a pike and a ring.

I have reserved for the last, as being one of the

best I have seen, the celebrated rebus of ISLIP, Abbot of Westminster, which occurs in several forms in that chapel of the abbey which bears his name. Two copies of this rebus are now before the reader: a descrip

* Vide a plate in Ames's Typogr. Antiq., and in Fosbroke's Encyc. of Antiq.

Peacham ("Compleat Gentleman,") cited in Johnson's Dict. voc. REBUS.

tion of the one forming our tail-piece will suffice for both. It may be read three ways: first, a human EYE and a SLIP of a tree; second, a man sliding from the branches of a tree, and of course exclaiming, "I SLIP !" and third, a hand rending off one of the boughs of the same tree, and again re-echoing, "I slip!" Camden, who mentions this quaint device, gives a fourth reading of it, namely, the letter placed beside the slip, thus again producing the name-ISLIP. Reader, our Lettuce is exhausted!

A CHAPTER OF CANTING ARMS.

HEN Rebuses are borne by families as coats of arms, they are called, in the language of heraldry, ARMA CANTANTIA, ARMES PARLANTES, or CANTING ARMS. They seem to be in use in most countries where heraldry is

known; thus among the French, DU POIRIER bears 'Or, a pear tree, argent;' among the Italians, COLONNA bears Gules, a column, argent;' among the Germans, SCHILSTED bears 'Argent, a sledge, sable.'* The arms of the united houses of CASTILE and LEON are quarterly, a castle and a lion, and those of the province of DAUPHINY, a dolphin. Louis VII of France (or, as his name was then spelt, Loys) used for his signet a fleur-de-lys, evidently a play upon his name. This was, according to some authorities, the origin of the royal arms of that kingdom.

English Heraldry delights in these punning devices. The arms of ARUNDEL are six swallows, in allusion to the French word hirondelle; and those of CORBET, a raven, referring to the French corbeau, from which the surname is derived. The arms of TOWERS are 'Azure, a tower, Or;' those of DE LA CHAMBRE, 'Argent, a

* Porny's Heraldry, p. 12, note.