No, really!
I'd photographed this armorial stained glass window in Westminster Abbey while back, and am finally getting around to trying to identify it.
Turns out, it's somewhat more complicated than it appeared at first blush. I mean, simple arms should require a minimum of research, right? Field and a single charge. So simple to blazon:
Gules a cross patty vair. Thus, quick and easy. No sweat. Right?
Well, not always.
Papworth's
Ordinary of British Armorials tells us that these arms belong to Le Cont de Almarle/de Albemarle. Now this is not the current creation of von Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, in 1697, whose arms are:
Gules three escallops argent.
As Burke's Peerage and Baronetage inform us: The names Aubemarle, Aumale, and Aurmarle, as well as the more familiar and modern Albemarle, are of the same origin. Aumale is a Norman town after which a county, or area under a count, was named. The first person known to have held a countly title associated with Aumale is in fact a woman, William I the Conqueror’s sister Adelaide or Adelize.
Okay, interesting, but not especially helpful.
Fortunately, I have a copy of Ralph Brooke's A Catalogue and succession of the Kings, Princes, Dukes, Marquesses, Earles, and Viscounts of this Realme of England, since the Norman Conquest, to this present yeere 1622.
And in that fine and ancient volume, pages 58 through 62, we find eight different coats of arms associated with no less than eleven various "Earles of Albemarle". None of whom are William the Conqueror's sister.
No, Brooke's "catalogue" of the Earles of Albemarle begin with Stephen, son of Endo; and Stephen's son, William le Gros. Both of whom bore the arms seen in this window, Gules a cross patty vair.
The succeeding Earls of Albemarle are given as:
William Magnauile, Quarterly or and gules;
William de Fortibus, Argent a chief gules;
Baldwn de Betun, Bendy of six argent and gules a chief or;
William de Fortibus, Argent a chief gules;
William de Fortibus, Argent a chief gules;
Thomas of Woodstock, Quarterly France and England, a bordure argent;
Edward Plantagenet, Quarterly France and England, a label of three points per pale gules and argent charged with six castles or and six lions rampant gules;
Thomas, second son of King Henry IV, Quarterly France and England, a label of three points ermine charged with three cantons gules; and finally,
Richard Beauchamp, Gules a fess between six crosses crosslet or.
My goodness, what a lot of history is tied up in this little "catalogue and succession" of the Earls of Albemarle. (Many of whom also held higher ranking titles.)
I had no idea when I started out to identify this simple coat of arms that it would take me into such a lot of English history!