the Prince of Wales is the only one who rejoices in the possession of officially assigned badges. The badge of the eldest son of the Sovereign, as such, and not as Prince of Wales, is the plume of three ostrich feathers, enfiled with the circlet from his coronet. Recently an additional badge (on a mount vert, a dragon passant gules, charged on the shoulder with a label of three points argent) has been assigned to His Royal Highness. This action was taken with the desire to in some way gratify the forcibly expressed wishes of Wales, and it is probable that, the precedent having been set, it will be assigned to all those who may bear the title of Prince of Wales in future.
The only instances I am personally aware of in which a real badge of ancient origin is still worn by the servants are the cases of the state liveries of the Earl of Yarborough, whose servants wear an embroidered buckle, and of Lord Mowbray and Stourton, whose servants wear an embroidered sledge. The family of Daubeney of Cote still bear the old Daubeney badge of the pair of bat's wings; Lord Stafford still uses his "Stafford knot." I believe the servants of Lord Braye still wear the badge of the hemp-brake, and those of the Earl of Loudoun wear the Hastings maunch; and doubtless there are a few other instances. When the old families were becoming greatly reduced in number, and the nobility and the upper classes were being recruited from families of later origin, the wearing of badges, like so much else connected with heraldry, became lax in its practice.
The servants of all the great nobles in ancient days appear to have worn the badges of their masters in a manner similar to the use of the royal badge by the Yeomen of the Guard, although sometimes the badge was embroidered upon the sleeve; and the wearing of the badge by the retainers is the chief and principal use to which badges were anciently put. Nisbet alludes on this point to a paragraph from the Act for the Order of the Riding of Parliament in 1681, which says that "the noblemen's lacqueys may have over their liveries velvet coats with their badges, i.e. their crests and mottoes done on plate, or embroidered on the back and breast conform to ancient custom." A curious survival of these plates is to be found in the large silver plaques worn by so many bank messengers. Badges appear, however, to have been frequently depicted semé upon the lambrequins of armorial achievements, as will be seen from many of the old Garter plates; but here, again, it is not always easy to distinguish between definite badges and artistic decoration, nor between actual badges in use and mere appropriately selected charges from the shield.
The water-bougets of Lord Berners, the knot of Lord Stafford, popularly known as "the Stafford knot"; the Harington fret; the ragged staff or the bear and the ragged staff of Lord Warwick (this
