Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A16308
|
The elements of armories
|
Bolton, Edmund, 1575?-1633?
|
1610
(1610)
|
STC 3220; ESTC S114354
|
76,668
|
212
|
THE ELEMENTS OF ARMORIES AT LONDON Printed by GEORGE ELD 1610. C. SALLVSTIVS CRISPVS Verumenimuerò is demùm mihi viuere et frui animâ videtur qui aliquo negotio intentus praeclari facinoris aut ARTIS BONAE famam quaerit TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE HENRIE EARLE OF NORTHAMPTON BARON HOWARD OF MARNHILL LORD PRIVIE SEALT LORD WARDEN OF THE CINQVE FORTS ONE OF THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS FOR THE EARLE-MARSHALSHIP OF ENGLAND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER VVORTHIE OF ALL THE HONORS DVE TO HIGH VVISDOME VIRTVE AND LEARNING HIS MOST HONORED GOOD LORD E. B. VVILLINGLIE HVMBLIE AND DESERVEDLIE DEDICATETH THESE HIS ELEMENTS OF ARMORIES The Opinions and Offices of sundry choyce and quallified Gentlemen friendes to the Author touching these his ELEMENTS of ARMORIES A Letter to the Author from the worthy WILLIAM SEGAR Esquire GARTER principall King of Armes SYR I haue viewed your Elementary Booke of Armories and in my poore iudgment doe approue the same no lesse singular for the deuice then generall for the matter and absolutely the best of any in that kind Your labours deserue encouragements by how much they are written freely and ingeniously and may be called as well the ALIMENTS as the ELEMENTS of ARMORIES for that they nourish the mind of the Reader with a profitable and pleasing satiety of excellent matter Finis coronat opus Your good Wine needs no Garland Yet because it was your pleasure I should deliuer you mine opinion thereof I haue aduentured to say thus much And with the same recommend my loue vnto you 14. April 1610. Your louing friend WILLIAM SEGAR GARTER A Letter to the Author from the excellently learned in our Antiquities and in all other humane literature WILLIAM CAMDEN Esquire CLARENCEVX King of Armes SYR whereas your desire is that I should deliuer my full opinion of your Booke which you lately sent and submitted to my censure I assure you if my iudgement be any which I acknowledge to bee very little you haue with that iudicious learning insight handled ARMORIE the subiect of my profession that I cannot but approue it as both learnedly and diligently discouered from his first cradle And could not but allow it if I were Censor librorum publicâ authoritate constitutus as you know I am not Pardon me that I am so breefe for neyther my head nor my hand can as yet performe that which they should and would vntill the Almighty shall restore me to former health to whose protection I commend you and yours resting 11. Iune 1609. Your louing friend WILLIAM CAMDEN CLARENCEVX A LETTER TO THE AVTHOR FROM HIS LATE DEARE FRIEND the Graue and Courtly THOMAS BEDINGFIELD Esquire late Maister of his Maiesties Tents and Toilz c. deceased SYR your ELEMENTS of ARMORIES I haue seene but censure them I dare not Blinde eyes can iudge no colours and ignorance may not meddle with excellent conceit This only I will admire your Work wish you to proceed If you permit these discourses to wander abroad they shall meet with more men to maruail then vnderstand them That is the worst I returned them in haste fearing to foule the paper or iniury the Inck. From Clerckenwel 27. Mar. 1609. Your very louing friend THOMAS BEDINGFIELD Postscr SYR if you adde or write more I pray you make me a partaker I say with PETRARK Stanco non satio mai A LETTER TO THE AVTHOR from the learned young Gentleman I. B. of Grace-dieu in the County of LEICESTER Esquier SYR I haue here with many thanks returned to you your profound discourse of the ELEMENTS of ARMORIES which I haue read ouer with great profit delight for I confesse that till now I neuer saw any thing in this kind worthy the entertainment of a studious mind wherin you haue most commendably shewed your skill finding out rare and vnknowne beauties in an Art whose highest perfection the meanest wits if they could blazon and repeat Pedigrees durst heretofore but shall not now challenge Our sight which of all senses wee hold y e dearest you haue made more precious vnto vs by teaching vs the excellent proportions of our visible obiects In performance wherof as you haue followed none so haue you left it at a rash and desperate aduenture for any to follow you For he that only considers your choice copie of matter without forcing will find it an hard talk to equall your Inuention not to speake of your iudiciall Method wherin you haue made your Workmanship excell your Subiect though it bee most worthy of all ingenuous industry Beleeue me SYR in a word I cannot but highly admire your attempt so wel performed and among many others will be an earnest furtherer of that benefit which this dull age of ours in this our country carelesse of al but gainful Arts claimeth at your hands In which hope I rest 29. Nouemb. 1609. Your most louing friend IOHN BEAVMONT H. C. To the Gentleman Reader IF thou desire to knowe the reason why Thou doo'st in Sheild the Armes of honour bear This Booke will say that they by nature were The HIEROGLYPHICKS of Nobility It shewes beside how Art doth beautifie What Nature doth inspire and how each-where All Arts conion'd in this Art do appeare By structure of a choyce Phylosophie GEOMETRIE giues Lines in ordred Place Numbers ARITHMETICK and thou may'st see How all in OPTICK Colours honour thee But since that Virtue which adorn'd the race From whence thou did'st descend was ground of al Haue care to follow it or all will fall M r. HVGH HOLLAND To his learned friend M r. E. B. the Author vpon his ELEMENTS of ARMORIE'S MY maister CAMDEN sacred King of Armes Who bounds with heau'n aswell as sea our soile So prosed and so praised hath thy toyle As here no need is of my sorry charmes To boast it though my braines APOLLO warmes Where like in IOVE'S MINERVA keeps a coile Yet I a Drone shall but thy Hony spoile Thou art the Maister BE of all the swarmes Deepe is his iudgement spatious is his witte And high his fame that can in Armes enfold VVhat eyther Sea or Land or Heauen hold Philosophers are in a greeuous fitte To see whil'st Enuy doth with Reason Storme New ELEMENTS new MATTER and new FORM. Another of the same by Apostrophe to PHOEBVS finishing in a symbolicall allusion to the most noble Earle of NORTHHAMPTON ON bolt on PHOEBVS spend thy golden Shafts And guild these Papers with thy glorious rayes Crown euery leaf with leaues of flowring Bayes And crown the Author with thy laurell grafts They treat the mystical'st of generous Crafts That shewes what Arms were born in Antique daies By whom where why and how many wayes On Sheilds and blades not set in dugeon haftes Thou MINERVA grace them in the sight Of that great Lord whose iudgment they rely on For as no Eye dare face thy glorious light VVhen as Thou reignest in the golden Lion So dare no Curre
auoided 11. Armorie Queene of liberall knowledges 12. As incentiue to Vertue as Statues 13. Armes well read fittest bookes for the noble 14. Some Methods rather Mazes 15. Armories the onely remaining customarie euidences of honor 16. The Earle of NORTHAMPTONS pietie to our Souereigne Lord King IAMES at GREENEWICH Towr 17. Blazon the least and meanest part of Armorie CHAP. 15. EVSTACE THe mystical chain in which all foure are linckt together I cannot but acknowledge for it is as your selfe haue said most apparent But doe you not purpose good Sir AMIAS to handle all foure seuerally A. How else For if I did not you would take-in but small store of light at this casement and euen then also a flitting eye howsoeuer it may idlie sooth it selfe shall see little the more but all shall still be to him as it were Sub aenigmate Or as the very great Philosopher wrote in excuse or defence of him-selfe for publishing his workes they shall remaine as if they were not published though published LINES therefore are the first Element of the foure as taken in the vulgar sense not in the more Mathematical and penetrating they praecede colours in work as that kind of drawing before-said which the GREEKS called Monogrammos was before colouring as colouring it self was before light and shadow in artificial painting as also light and shadow were before those things which PLINIE saith the GRECIANS call'd Tonos and Harmoge the former being the heightning of light and the other the commissure slide or passing of colours into other colours or by what name soeuer our modern Artists know them by And all Painters wee see doe first make a rude draught with chalke coale lead or the like before they limn a Picture or lay a Colour E. Notwithstanding how I pray are Lines an Element of Armories or why A. Because a coat can bee no more without lines then without colour E. Lines then doe forme an Armes and giue them to bee A. Certainly E. Is there any knowne number or set fashion of lines required E. You know right wel Syr EVSTACE how in few words to demand enough Your question is perplex and cannot bee satisfide without some diligence First therfore of Armorial Lines in general E. I harken curiously therefore on I pray A. There is nothing infinite in the workes of Art or Nature but there must of necessity bee limits termes extremities or bounds E. Vndoubtedly A. Which limits or extremities are eyther vnderstood by imagination cōprehended or made subiect to the eye by lines Those lines are that in Armories which place is in the Physicks Armories then and the figures portions or proportions in them being artificiall bodies or semblants of bodies must needes haue limits bounds or circumscriptions E. The necessity is apparent A. Nor can those limits rightly put bee transpassed or exceeded but the limited thing it selfe must be monstrous and deformed and as those ductures or draughts of lines are shapen so are the figures which they circumscribe and limit well or ill E. Nothing is more euident A. The painters of Armes do call these lines as I think the purfle or perfil which also the SPANIARDS blaze as a seueral part of the Armories and soundes as if it were per filum which word filum LVCRETIVS doth use for the outermost bounds or ductures of lines in figures or for the figures themselues Debent nimirùm non omnibus omnia prorsùm Esse pari filo similique affecta figurâ They also call it quartering when they put the last hand to the work drawing the blacke lines which giue the shape and lastly they some-time call it a Trick and Armorists in other cases cal them Vmbratures E. Of how many sorts are Armoriall lines A. The doctrine of lines in armories distinguisheth first of their forme and secondly of their number E. What saith it concerning their forme A. Armorial Lines are in their first diuision Straight or Crooked Againe the Straight are either Direct or Oblique Direct as in the first example Oblique as More-ouer the Oblique are either straight or crooked The Crooked are sub-diuided infinitely but the more vsual and vniuersall may bee reduced to these heads that is circular angular wauing and mixt and briefly are all such as are not straight But before you proceed any farther my charity cannot forbeare to giue you here a cautel for preuention of straying from my sense and one error not met-with in the beginning multiplies it selfe into innumerable Therefore when we speake of Armorial Lines eyther here or any where I do not meane of them otherwise then as of terminations or common limits of Armorial bodies and when we say lines are straight or crooked of this or that forme I pray vnderstand that I meane the Armorial bodies which they terminate are such For though Lines are the inseperable circumscriptions of formes or figures in sheilds as of sheilds themselues giuing them at least-wise to our sight to Bee yet it is the body or space comprehended which casts them out into the extremities wherby they become their visible limits which albeit we are enforced in flat pictures and plaine tables to expresse by lines yet in carued or embossed obiects of armes no other lines are drawne then such as the body it selfe so cut embost or carued terminates our sight with which lines shift with our station Doubtlesse in the Idaea or mentall shape before it come as it were into act by beeing painted cut or carued those terminating and truly Mathematical lines abstractedly considered are manifest adhering or inhering rather without any possibility of separation from the conceaued Image Whereas also the lines drawne in the former coats for they are coats of Armes very faire and good as well as examples of Lines seem to apportion the said coats yet are they I meane the parted and diuers-colour'd moities of the seuerall sheilds but seuerall solid peeces or faces of differently colour'd bodies meeting in such a seam of separation in my conceit of them as necessarily produce and present vnto vs such or such a line Neuerthelesse for more familiar perspicuity in teaching I am to retain to speake as the vulgar without daring to vse the more penetrating point of spirit it being also not in the skil of man to draw a line how admirably smal soeuer without any latitude such as the subtility of the Mathematicks doth require E. I am well satisfied A. You shall be else for the honour of so Gentlemanly science which iust Antiquity would haue enstiled Mistresse and Queene of liberal knowledges For that in it all the faire Arts seeme to assemble and euery Grace or as the LATINS speake euery VENVS of inuention not blurred with obscuring commentaries glitters there in open manner with much significancy ornament and vtility For albeit the sense be som-what abstruse and hidden yet who specially with any interest in them can behold the renowned Armories of HOVVARD TALBOT or the like great Worthies who presently