SAMUEL HICKSON.

September 18. 1850.

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THE COLLAR OF ESSES.

I shall look with interest to the documents announced by Dr. ROCK (Vol.
ii., p. 280.), which in his mind connect the Collar of Esses with the
"Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" of the Salisbury liturgy: but hitherto I have
found nothing in any of the devices of livery collars that partakes of
religious allusion. I am well aware that many of the collars of knighthood
of modern Europe, headed by the proud order of the Saint Esprit, display
sacred emblems and devices. But the livery collars were perfectly distinct
from collars of knighthood. The latter, indeed, did not exist until a
subsequent age: and this was one of the most monstrous of the popular
errors which I had to combat in my papers in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. A
Frenchman named Favyn, at the commencement of the seventeenth century,
published {330} a folio book on Orders of Knighthood, and, giving to many
of them an antiquity of several centuries,--often either fabulous or
greatly exaggerated,--provided them all with imaginary collars, of which he
exhibits engravings. M. Favyn's book was republished in English, and his
collars have been handed down from that time to this, in all our heraldic
picture-books. This is one important warning which it is necessary to give
any one who undertakes to investigate this question. From my own experience
of the difficulty with which the mind is gradually disengaged from
preconceived and prevailing notions on such points, which it has originally
adopted as admitting of no question, I know it is necessary to provide that