this motto,' Soveignez,' and the letter S, garnished with a great variety of valuable jewels."¹
   If Henry IV. bore such a decoration while he was Earl of Derby, he must have done so as the cognizance of his father; because in the list of King Richard's treasures it is distinctly stated to be of the livery of Mons. de Lancaster, a title which the Earl had not attained till after he was in exile; unless we imagine that the composers of that Inventory substituted the word Lancaster for Derby, a supposition in which we cannot indulge, inasmuch as if they made any complimentary alteration in the catalogue, it may be presumed that they would have described it as the livery of the "now King."
   Admitting, then, that the collar of SS was of the livery of the Lancastrian family both before and after Henry IV. became king, the next inquiry is, what persons were entitled to wear it. The hypothesis supported by several writers of eminence, that it belonged to the dignity and degree of a knight, seems to be contradicted by two facts. The first of these is, that of the numerous brasses which remain of those who held that degree, the great majority are undistinguished by the collar. The second is, that in the 'Acte for Reformacyon of Excesse in Appayrale,' 24 Henry VIII. c. 13, it is enacted, " that no man oneless he be a Knyght. . . weare any color of Gold named a color of S."  From this, though it may indicate that knights wore the collar at that time, it may be clearly inferred that it had been previously assumed by other persons; and as this is the first hint of any limitation of its use, nearly a century and a half after its introduction, it leaves us uninstructed as to those who were privileged to wear it in the intervening period.
   It appears by one of the charges against the Archbishop
   ¹ Devon's Issues of Exchequer, p. 305.