n8 Examination of an Infcriptwn

of an earlier century ; and on the unifier divifion there is like wife, as I apprehend, a particular which will eftablifh the date of the year I have mentioned. A dragon volant is not indeed any novel object; you find it often fculptured from the times of the Saxons to the prefent days. It was not only the device on the royal ilandard of Weflex, but a bifhop had conducted armies under it . On a Saxon arch in Ditton church in Bucks, under the infcription is a winged-dragon with a fifti's tail, opening its mouth at an angel [0], St. George is frequently difplayed on horfeback trampling on a dragon, and the figure of Martin, abbot of Peterborough, who died in 1158, treads on a double dragon, who bites the pillars of the flowered arch of the canopy of his tombftone [/>] ; and you have obferved that a dragon is fometimes pierced by the crofier of a bifhop in his pon- tificals. In later days, however, this animal was again elevated from a pofture fo humiliated and fubdued. By the command of Henry the Hid, a dragon, in the manner of a ftandard of red famet, em- broidered and otherwife richly adorned, was placed in Weftminfrer abbey [q. And in the family picture of Henry the Vth, which was the altar piece of his chapel at Shene, there was a red dragon flying in the air. One of the banners which Henry the Vllth fet up in Bofworth Field had painted on it a red dragon, in allufion to his defcent from Cadwallader. When he arrived in London he offered it in St. Paul's cathedral as a trophy of his victory, and in commemoration of the fame he inftituted the office of Dragon Purfuivant. King Henry the Vlllth bore his arms at firft fup- ported on the dexter fide by a red dragon, and in the middle of his [] Archaeologia, V. IV. p. 51. [c] Ibid. V. X. p. 168. [/>] Sepulchral Monuments, I. p. 24. Archaeologia, V, III, p. 225. 5 reign