HARNESS PENDANT

Cast copper alloy shield shaped Medieval harness pendant It is decorated on the front face with 3 horizontal lines of towers with 4 on the top line, 3 on the middle and 2 on the bottom. The toweres are picked out in red (gules) enamel. The pendant has a broken attachment loop at the top. Irene Szymanski has seen an image of this item and commented- 'I think these are the arms of Ferrers and the earls of Derby, "vairy or and gules" (attached). The de Ferrers were a powerful and bellicose clan, who married wives of the highest rank; for example, Earl William de Ferrers (died 1254) married Margaret de Quincy, daughter and coheiress of Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester. Of William's sons, his heir, Robert, married first Mary de Lusignan, daughter of the count of la Marche and a niece of Henry III, and after her death, Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun; a younger son, William, married Joan, the daughter of Hugh le Despenser. However, the de Ferrers lost the earldom following Henry III's defeat of the de Montfort rebellion; Robert de Ferrers, after being captured and released once, was captured a second time and lost all his lands with the exception of Chartley in Staffordshire which, upon his death in 1279, passed to his son John. John de Ferrers continued using "vairy or and gules" as his arms in spite of the loss of the earldom; he also continued the family's martial tradition and served against the Scots on numerous occasions, dying in 1312 and leaving his son and heir, John, a minor. I would imagine that your pendant refers to John Ferrers senior, and the occasion of its loss would have been his trip to the area before fighting in Scotland in the late 13th/early 14th century.'