Livery collar

A livery collar or chain of office is a collar or heavy chain, usually of gold, worn as insignia of office or a mark of fealty or other association in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards.

One of the oldest and best-known livery collars is the Collar of Esses, which has been in continuous use in England since the 14th century.

Various forms of livery were used in the Middle Ages to denote attachment to a great person by friends, servants, and political supporters. The collar, usually of precious metal, was the grandest form of these, usually given by the person the livery denoted to his closest or most important associates, but should not, in the early period, be seen as separate from the wider phenomenon of livery badges, clothes and other forms. From the collar hung a badge or device indicating the person the livery related to; the most important part of the ensemble for contemporaries. Equally gold collars that had no livery connotations were worn.^{[citation needed]}

Livery collars seem to be first recorded in the 14th century. Charles V of France in 1378 granted to his Chamberlain Geoffrey de Belleville the right of bearing in all feasts and in all companies the collar of the Cosse de Geneste or Broomcod, a collar which was accepted and worn even by the English kings, Charles VI sending such collars to Richard II and to his three uncles. Although he distributed "genet" badges much more widely, only about twenty collars per year were given out, and it was treated somewhat as the sign of a pseudo-chivalric order, although no such order formally existed. The collar of Esses is first recorded earlier than this, as being given by John of Gaunt, and remained in use by the House of Lancaster throughout the Wars of the Roses.

This French type of collar, a chain of couples of broomcods linked by jewels, is seen in the contemporary Wilton Diptych portrait of Richard II, with Richard's own device of the white hart hanging below (the angels accompanying the Virgin also wear Richard's livery badges). The same collar was worn by Henry IV on the way to his crowning. During the sitting of the Parliament of England in 1394 the complaints of Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel against Richard II are recorded, one of his grievances being that the king had been wearing the livery collar of his uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and that people of the king's following wore the same livery. To which the king answered that soon after the return from Spain (in 1389) of his uncle, the duke, he himself took the collar from his uncle's neck, putting it on his own, which collar the king would wear and use for a sign of the good and whole-hearted love between them, even as he wore the liveries of his other uncles. Livery collars of the king of France, of Queen Anne and of the dukes of York and Lancaster are recorded among the royal plate and jewels which in the first year of Henry IV had come to the king's hands. The inventory shows that Queen Anne's collar was made up of sprigs of rosemary garnished with pearls. The York collar had falcons and fetterlocks, and the Lancaster collar was doubtless that Collar of Esses used by the duke's son, Henry of Bolingbroke (Henry IV), as an earl, duke and king.

This famous livery collar, which has never passed out of use, takes many forms, its Esses being sometimes linked together chainwise, and sometimes, in early examples, as the ornamental bosses of a garter-shaped strap-collar. The oldest effigy bearing it is that in Spratton church of Sir John Swynford, who died in 1371. Swynford was a follower of John of Gaunt, and the date of his death easily disposes of the theory that the Esses were devised by Henry IV to stand for his motto or "word" of Soverayne. Many explanations are given of the origin of these letters, but none has as yet been established: for example: Souvent me souvien or "Think of me often." During the reigns of Henry IV, his son (Henry V) and grandson (Henry VI), the collar of Esses was a royal badge of the Lancastrian house and party, the white swan, as in the Dunstable Swan Jewel, usually being its pendant.

In one of Henry VI's own collars the S was joined to the broomcod of the French device, symbolizing the king's claim to the two kingdoms. The kings of the house of York and their chief followers wore the Yorkist collar of suns and roses, with the white lion of March, the Clare bull, or Richard's white boar for a pendant device. Henry VIII brought back the collar of Esses, a portcullis or a Tudor rose hanging from it, although in a portrait of him, in the Society of Antiquaries, he wears the rose en soleil alternating with knots, and his son (later Edward VI) had a collar of red and white roses. It was presented to ministers and courtiers, and came to represent more a symbol of office by the time of Elizabeth I.

In modern times the Collar of Esses is worn, on state occasions only, by the Kings and Heralds of Arms, by the Lord Chief Justice and by Serjeants-at-Arms.