Page 17 - 3rdPub1

The Blaker Society © ‘preserved in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Queen’s

College, Oxford, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and
elsewhere’. The register that he produced, completed in 1898, was
acquired by the British Museum and became Additional MS. 37,147: it
was edited and published by the Harleian Society in 1915 (xlvi). Foster’s
primary source for Segar’s grants was Additional MS. 12,225, familiar to
us as Aspidora Segariana.
Foster gives the date of the Blaker of Salisbury grant as 12
February 1613/4, and that of the Blaker of Portslade grant as 19 February
1616/7. If these dates are correct, the first grant of arms was to William
Blaker of Salisbury, and it has two strange features. One is that it is a
differenced coat, with a chevron erminois, later described as pean; the
other is that he is referred to as William Blaker, whereas the Bla(c)kers
of Wiltshire were normally called Blacker.
The Blaker of Sussex coat of arms is generally referred to later as
having an ermine chevron, which would make it the model upon which
the Wiltshire coat was differenced; but it would seem that the grant of
46
arms is actually of a chevron ermines, i. e., another differenced coat.
The two coats (Blaker and Blacker) are varied in such a way as to
avoid any implication that either was the elder line: but nor was there a
pre-existing coat of arms for any family with pure ermine for the chevron
from the differences of ermines, erminois or pean might suggest a junior
status.
Grants of arms are registered in the grant books of the College of
Arms, but which only survive from 1637 onwards; nor may earlier grants
have been registered systematically. At the head of Foster’s Grantees of
47
Arms there is this quotation:

It is recorded by W. Segar, Somerset, afterwards Garter, that “Cooke, Clar.,
made many profitable Visitations, both by hymself and his deputyes, whoe,
notwithstanding they were well entertayned, feasted and richly rewarded by the
gent of ye cuntrey, hath left no memory of them in the Generall office. These
were upon deceasse attached by arrests, alienated and soald. Two Norroys Kinges
of Armes, two Windesors, Richmond, Lancaster, Somersett and Yorke, deceased,

46 Sir William Segar was of Dutch origin and introduced ermine, other furs, and colours such as purple
and brown, into an English heraldry which was very conservative compared with the Continent, and
mainly used primary colours and bold simple charges.
47 Harleian Society lxvi: Grantees of Arms named in Docquets and Patents to the End of the
Seventeenth Century, in the Manuscripts preserved in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, Queen’s College, Oxford, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Elsewhere,
Alphabetically Arranged by The Late Joseph Foster, Hon. M. A. Oxon. and Contained in the Additional
MS. No. 37,147, in the British Museum. Edited by W. Harry Rylands, F. S. A., 1915, London, 1. For
Blaker of Portslade, Foster gives two references: Aspidora and Guil. 251. And for Blaker of Salisbury
he gives Aspidora, College of Arms C22 and Guil. 248. ‘Guil.’ is John Guillim’s A Display of
Heraldrie &c. of 1724. We have never been able to check out the 1724 edition.