This herd of white harts has led us over a large tract of ground, but we will now return to other royal badges, and note the HAWK AND BUCKLE, which occurs in Wrenbury, Nantwich, Cheshire; Etwall, Derby; and various other places. This is simply a popular rendering of the Falcon and the Fetterlock, one of the badges of the house of York. The HAWK AND BUCK, which appears to be only another version of the last corruption, occurs at Pearsly Sutton Street, St Helens, Lancashire; the FALCON AND HORSE-SHOE, a sign in Poplar in the seventeenth century, (_see_ Trades’ Tokens,) may have had the same origin, whilst the BULL AND STIRRUP, in Upper Northgate, Chester, probably comes from the Bull and Fetterlock, another combination of badges of the house of York.
From this family are also derived the BLUE BOAR and the WHITE BOAR. One of the badges of Richard, Duke of York, father of Edward IV., was “a blewe Bore with his tuskis and his cleis and his membres of gold.”[143] The heraldic origin of this sign, of which there are still innumerable instances all over England, is now so completely lost sight of, that in many places it passes under the ignoble appellation of the BLUE PIG.
The WHITE BOAR was the popular sign in Richard the Third’s time, that king’s cognizance being a boar passant argent, whence the rhyme which cost William Collingborne his life:--
“The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our Dogge, Rulen all England vnder _an Hogge_.”[144]
The fondness of Richard for this badge appears from his wardrobe accounts for the year 1483, one of which contains a charge “for 8000 bores made and wrought upon fustian,” and 5000 more are mentioned shortly afterwards. He also established a herald of arms called Blanc Sanglier, and it was this trusty squire who carried his master’s mangled body from Bosworth battle-field to Leicester.
After Richard’s defeat and death the White Boars were changed into Blue Boars, this being the easiest and cheapest way of changing the sign; and so the Boar of Richard, now painted “true blue,” passed for the Boar of the Earl of Oxford, who had largely contributed to place Henry VII. on the throne. Even the White Boar Inn at Leicester, in which Richard passed the last night of his royalty and of his life, followed the general example, and became the Blue Boar Inn, under which sign it continued until taken down twenty-five or thirty years ago. The bed in which the king slept was preserved, and continued for many generations one of the curiosities shewn to strangers at Leicester. It was said that a large sum of money had been discovered in its double bottom, which the landlord himself quietly appropriated. The discovery, however, got wind, and his widow was killed and robbed by some of her guests, in connivance with a maid-servant. They carried away seven horse-loads of treasure. This murder was committed in 1605.[145]