Arms

An explanation of the heraldic terms used to describe the coat of arms.

Argent: Silver

Chief Combatant: Chief, meaning on top, combatant meaning to fight or facing each other.

Base Passant: Base meaning at the bottom, passant, a term used to describes beasts in a walking position.

Sable: Black

Quarterly: The shield is split into four.

Fess vert: Two vertical lines drawn across the shield, as the vertical lines are below the centre, this is abaisse.

Popinjays proper:  Parrots in their natural colour.

Impaled: United by impalement.

Azure: Blue

Cinquefoyle: Five leaved grass.

Pierced: When any ordinary or charge is perforated, the piercing is always understood to be circular, unless otherwise described. The term Pierced is also applied to animals when wounded with an arrow, spear.

Ermine: A white fur with black tufts.

Gules: Red

Bars: One of the sub-ordinaries containing a fifth of the shield, and may be borne in any part of it. Two or more bars are frequently borne on the same field, as two bar, three bars. 

Ordinairy: So called because they are the most ancient and common amongst the various cognizances used in Heraldry, are divided (although on this point the opinions of Heralds are greatly at variance) into the honourable and subordinaries, which are all subject to the accidental forms of the lines composing them, as engrailed, invecked, etc. The honourable ordinaries according to the present practice should always occupy one third of the field, and are the Bend, Bend Sinister, Chevron, Chief, Cross, Fesse, Pale, Quarter, and Saltier, which, with their diminutives, will be found under their proper heads. All ordinaries may be charged; i.e. have figures upon them, their diminutives should not, but in many shields they are charged with figures. 

Well, I think we have cleared up the mysteries of Heraldry there, I will be asking questions later.

The interesting thing about the coat of arms are the other names associated with it.

Astley, we can work out because his wife was an Astley.

Thweng

Thweng or as it is now called, Thwing, is a small village located about 8 miles inland from the coast at Bridlington.

Sir John Thwenge or Saint John of bridlington is associated with it, as is Marmaduke Thweng, 1st Baron Thweng.

From the Clay of England website we have:

1312. Feb. 8th. William del Clay priest. Induction to a moiety of the church of Thwing (Twenge.) Yorkshire.  (Ref.-  Archbishop's Register 8 f. 141 recto entry 3).

1312. Aug. 10th. William del Clay  priest was presented until 29th Jan. 1337/8 and Robert de Thweng chaplain was presented on the death of William del Clay. (Ref.- Yorkshire Archaeological Society).

Baron Thweng

Marmaduke Thweng was the son of a knight, Sir Marmaduke Thweng. In 1295 he fought for King Edward I in Gascony, along with a John de Thweng.  We also know that he was at the battle of Stirling bridge  1297, also under Edward I and at the equally disasterous battle of Bannockburn in 1314 under Edward II. He was summoned to Parliament in 1307, and became Baron Thweng. The Baron had three sons who all in turn inherited the title, they all died childless and the title slipped into abeyance.

There was a Marmaduke Thweng who served under Henry Percy in France in 1373, might he be a link to Sir John, who served under Henry Percy, grandson of the Henry who was in France in 1373.

Description of Thweng's arms 

on an argent field, a fess of gules between three popinjays.

We can see from this coat of arms, what two quarters of Sir Johns coat of arms may have looked like in colour. But what is his connection with Thweng?

What we do have from the National Archives is the seal of a John Clay.

John Clay

Seal Type: Personal: Armorial. Seal

PRO 23/4973

Seal Type: Personal: Armorial.

Owner of the seal: John de Clay.

Date of original seal: 1301-1304.

Color of the original seal: Red.

Physical format: Plaster mold cast from the original seal.

Additional information: Membrane 179.

For parent document, please see E 101/10/18

The National Archives, Kew

So we now have a seal belonging to a John Clay that has six popinjays on it.

And we can locate where the seal was used by going into the parent document.

Reference: E 101/10/18

Description: Subsidiary documents to the account of Richard de Bremesgrave,  merchant in Berwick. 30-32 Edw I. 1 file.

Date: 1301 November 20-1304 November 19

Held by: The National Archives, Kew

We have records of this John de Clay under the Miscellanious file on the Clay of England website.

1303 - 04. March 1st. John earl of Warenne acknowledges to Richard Bremesgrave that he has taken this day from the store of wine at Edinborough 5 iron hooped barrels by the hand of Jalke Cley. (Ref.- -- Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 2 page 382).

1304. March 5th. Sir Robert Hastings received at Berwick upon Tweed from John de Cley valet of Sir Richard Bremesgrave  20 quarters of salt. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 2 p. 444).

1311 - 12. April last. Johannis del Cley - is listed as a soldier in a list clarifying horses lost, his was not and it describes his horse as black & almond. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 3 page 422).

EDW. II. to the king's baillis in the fortifications of the castle of Edenburgh, taking for xij d., for his baills Alan de Walingford, Robert de Walingford, 1311-12. Bartholomew de Fletwyke, Roger de Sutton, Richard de Eyton, William Broun, Alexander Braconer, Walter de Eynho, William de Chilton, Hugh de Abercorne, William de Abercorne, William de Disceford, Thomas de Wouburne, John de Belton, John de Salvaterra, John de Disceford, John de Hibernia de Bayhirst, Julian de Salvaterra, Nicholas de Paris, Matthew the Constable, William de Montealto the younger, Henry de Kenle, William Harop, Thomas de Disceford, and John del Clay, squires, men at arms  for ccclxvj days, cccclxxv 1. xvj š.  (Cal. Docs. Scotland vol. 3 p 410).

1312. May 1st. Wm. de Bevercote, Wm. son of Hugh de Hawyk both listed with John de Clay esq at Christmas. Listed under Protections. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 5 page 459).

1312. John del Clay esq at Edinburgh Castle. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 3 page 473).

1314. Sept. 25th. John de Clay and 2 others listed under Protections going to Scotland to free Walter de Bello imprisoned there. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland vol. 5).

1316. Sept. 28th. John atte Clay listed as being under Protection along with 80 others. (Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland. TNA Ref.- C71/9 membrane 8).

So this does put a John Clay in Scotland at the same time as Marmaduke Thweng.

Could this John Clay be an ancestor of Sir John, there were certainly enough Clays in the area of Alnwick and the North East of England and as The History of Parliament, L.Clark suggests he may have been a retainer of Henry Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland.

However, if we take a look back into history and we look at Marmudukes daughter Cecilia, she had a daughter, more probably a grand daughter Editha Constable who married a Sir Thomas Astley.

Harcourt

The Harcourt family are recorded in Normandy, where they were Lords of Harcort, they came to England with the conqueror. There were successful lines of Harcourts in both England and France.

A  daughter, Elizabeth of Sir Richard Harcourt of Ellenhall, Staffordshire, married a Sir Thomas Astley of Patshull. According to the pedigree, which we believe to be wrong, they produced John KG, Sir Thomas and Joan who was to marry John Clay. In some pedigrees Joan is listed as Elizabeth but always married to John Clay.

The part of Sir Johns coat of arms that contains Harcourt is the red  Fess that splits the popinjays, although the Thweng coat of arms already had it.

THE VISITATION OF SHROPSHIRE, 1623.

Astley of Pateshull and Aston.

Harl. 1996, fo. 13. Harl. 1241, fo. 145. S., et seq. 14, 15.

Arms: Harl. 1396.-Quarterly: 1, azure, an ermine cinquefoil; 2, gules, two bars or [HARCOURT); 3. Argent with a distrustful buttock gules enclosed in a border sable bezanté [WOLVEY?]; 4, Gules, with a lion rampant within a border engraved with gold, with a crescent for the difference (TALBOTT); on all cantonments a crescent for the difference.

Astley

Descended from the noble house of Astley Castle in Warwickshire, and traced to Philip de Estlega in the 12th of Henry II., and in the female line from the Constables of Melton-Constable, which estate came into the family by the second marriage of Thomas Lord Astley with Edith, third sister and coheir of Geffrey de Constable, in the time of Henry III. Astley Castle, the original seat, descended by an heiress to the Greys of Ruthin, afterwards Marquesses of Dorset, and Dukes of Suffolk. Hill-Morton in Warwickshire was also the seat of this family from the reign of Henry III.

The Astleys formerly of Patishull in Staffordshire were the elder branch, sprung from the first marriage of Thomas Lord Astley, who was killed in the Barons' Wars at Evesham, (the 49th of Henry III.,) extinct 1771.

The Noble and gentlemen of England, E. P. Shirley Esq

In the illustration of the arms above, we can see the Harcourt bars and the cinquefoyle with  pierced ermine, however looking at Sir Johns coat of arms we do not have a cinquefoyle with pierced ermine illustrated, unless the squiggles on the bars are supposed to be them.

What we do have though, unless there is a connection with the Thweng family is a coat of arms bearing three parts of his wifes family history. Was Sir John using the connections of his wife because he had no other great connections himself?

The above coat of arms was taken from the History of Parliament 1439-1509. Would we be right in assuming that these were the original arms of Sir John Clay the elder.

In the book Monken Hadley, Charles Frederick Cass, we have the pedigree of the Green family, which Sir John's Daughter Cecilia married into and it describes Sir John's coat of arms as in the picture above.

We understand that coats of arms normally change as they are passed down except if they go to the eldest son.