Society in 1776. A portrait of him in oils, presented by his son to the British Museum, hangs in the board-room. There is also an engraving (1817), by W. Sharp, of a portrait medallion of Planta by Pistrucci. Another by Engleheart, and engraved by H. Hudson in 1791, is mentioned by Bromley.
Planta published: 1. ‘An Account of the Romansch Language,’ London, 1776, 4to (Phil. Trans. of Roy. Soc. lxvi. 129). 2. ‘The History of the Helvetic Confederacy,’ 2 vols. London, 1800, 4to; 2nd edit. 1807, 8vo (chiefly based on the work of J. Von Müller). 3. ‘A View of the Restoration of the Helvetic Confederacy,’ London, 1821, 8vo (a sequel to No. 2).
[Memoir by Archdeacon Nares in Gent. Mag. 1827, pt. ii. pp. 564–5; Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the Brit. Mus. pp. 516 ff.; Statutes and Rules of the Brit. Mus. 1871; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vii. 677; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
PLANTA, JOSEPH (1787–1847), diplomatist, was born on 2 July 1787 at the British Museum, of which institution his father, Joseph Planta [q. v.], was an official. He was educated by his father (Gent. Mag. 1827, pt. ii. p. 565), and at Eton, and in 1802, when only fifteen, was appointed by Lord Hawkesbury a clerk in the foreign office. In 1807 Canning promoted him to the post of précis writer, and employed him as his private secretary till 1809. Planta was an intimate friend of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and made a tour of the English lakes with him in 1813. He was secretary to Lord Castlereagh in the same year, during the mission to the allied sovereigns, which terminated by the treaty of Paris in 1814. He attended Castlereagh at the congress of Vienna in 1815, and brought to London the treaty of peace signed at Paris in November 1815. He was also with Castlereagh at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. From May 1827 till November 1830 he was one of the joint secretaries of the treasury, and in 1834 was made a privy councillor. He was elected M.P. for Hastings in 1827, 1830, 1837, and 1841. In 1844 he resigned his seat through ill-health, and his death took place in London on 5 April, 1847. By his will Planta left his entire property to his wife, and recommended the destruction of his papers. He lived in London for many years, at No. 10 Chandos Street, Cavendish Square (Walford, Old and New London, iv. 447), and about 1832 resided at Fairlight House, near Hastings in Sussex. Lord Stratford describes Planta as ‘an amiable, kind-hearted friend, and an excellent man of business.’
[Gent. Mag. 1847, pt. ii. pp. 86, 87; Lane-Poole's Life of Stratford Canning.]
PLANTAGENET, Family of. Inveterate usage has attached the surname Plantagenet to the great house which occupied the English throne from 1154 to 1485, but the family did not assume the surname until the middle of the fifteenth century. It was originally—under the form Plante-geneste—a personal nickname of Geoffrey, count of Anjou, father of Henry II (cf. Wace, Roman de Rou, ed. Andresen, ii. 437; Historia Comitum Andegavensium in Chroniques d'Anjou, pp. 229, 334), and it is traditionally derived from Geoffrey's habit of adorning his cap with a sprig of broom or planta genista. This explanation cannot be traced to any mediaeval source (cf. Bouquet's Recueil, xii. 581 n.) According to Miss Norgate, 'the broom in early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold;' but tradition hardly justifies an association of the name with Geoffrey's love of hunting over heath and broom (Mrs. Green, Henry II, p. 6). Another version ascribes it to his 'having applied some twigs of the plant to his person by way of penance' (Vestigia Anglicana, i. 266). There is, it should be noted, a village of Le Genest close to Laval in Maine (cf. Du Cange, s.vv. genesteium, geneta, and planta).
Geoffrey transmitted no surname, and Henry II, his son, the founder of the 'Plantagenet' dynasty, took from his mother the name Henry Fitz Empress, by which he was commonly known when his titles were not used. His descendants remained without a common family name for three centuries, long after surnames had become universal outside the blood royal. They were described by their Christian name in conjunction either with a title or a personal epithet, as John 'Lackland,' or Edmund 'Crouchback;' or with a territorial appellation derived from their place of birth or some country or district with which they had connections, as John 'of Ghent,' Richard 'of Bordeaux,' Edmund 'of Almaine,' Thomas 'of Lancaster.' If the younger branches had been longer-lived, these latter would no doubt have passed into surnames, as that 'of Lancaster' actually did for three generations (Complete Peerage, v. 5). In the early part of the fifteenth century the king's sons were often referred to simply as 'Monsieur John' or 'Monsieur Thomas.'
Matters stood thus when Richard, duke of York, desiring to express the superiority of his descent in the blood royal over the Lancastrian line, adopted Plantagenet as a surname. It makes its first appearance in formal records in the rolls of parliament for 1460, when Richard laid claim to the throne, under
