that the tomb is also mentioned in his paper on Crediton church in vol. x. of the Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society.

In the knight's effigy the Garter of the Order is omitted, but the three chevronels gules are still visible on his surcoat, and as regards these arms the following entries are made in Scipio Squyer's Armorial of 1607, now in the British Museum, "No. 10. Argent, 3 chevronels gules. This coat standeth in Kirton Church, & on his toomb is writt dñus Jo. de Syllye vide 24 E. 1. The Barony of Torrington was his 20 E. 3. Erat miles ad arma potens 4 E. 3.

"No. 12 Ermine, 3 chevronels gules. This coat stands. also in Kirton Church & in St. Peters in Exon & was borne by the name of Syllye or Swilley, and yet there is an antient toombe of freeston in Kirton, these armes painted all over him & in divers windowes of ye Ile: ad pedes a lyon gt impaling a lyon pt gt" [part gilt]. In an old Armorial in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, No. 3531 in Mr. Stuart A. Moore's Calendar of their archives, the same two blazons are given as the arms of Sir Walter Sully who "lived Ed. I.," and in the Catalogue of Arms of 1689 in the Plymouth Proprietary Library the arms of Sully or Scilley are entered as Ermine 3 chevronels gules. The arms of the de Clares, Earls of Gloucester, were Or 3 chevronels gules, and it would appear probable that the same arms with a different tincture for the field were adopted by the Sullys, with the consent of the Earls, under whom they held. The arms, however, borne by Sir John de Sully in the Dunstable tournament were described as "D'ermyn ond trois torteaux de Gules," while Mr. Beltz, in page 146 of the Memorials, states that his arms were Ermine, four bars Gules," and refers in note 1 in the same page to a “Plate' (with the inscription of 'Sir John Sulby')" remaining in St. George's chapel in the ninth stall on the prince's side." The discrepancies I am unable to explain.

1

On lately mentioning the subject of the present paper to several of my friends I have found that Sir John's name has passed out of memory, but I venture to hope that you will consider the tough old knight to be deserving of a place on the roll of Devonshire worthies.

As the names of Sir John's father and paternal grandfather are given in the Frithelstock deed it will be well to

4 Sir Walter de Sully, who died in 14 Edw. I., in about 1286, had a share of the barony of Torrington, but Sir John does not appear to have owned any land there.

state that, according to page 175 of the printed copy of the Placita de quo waranto, his grandfather, Sir Henry de Sully, before the justices in Eyre, sitting in Exeter on the Octave of St. Martin, 9 and 10 Edward I. (18th November, 1281), claimed the usual manorial rights in the manor of Iddesleigh (there called Yedolveslegh) which had been given to him by Sir Walter de Sully, then present (of whom he was, perhaps, a younger son); and that in a lease which I lately found at Killerton, dated Monday, in the week of Pentecost, 13 Edward I., 1285, he was described as lord of the manor of Ash Reigny. The inquisition taken after his death is not extant, so that the date of his death cannot be given; but Dame Joan, as his widow, presented to the rectory of Iddesleigh on or shortly before 5th September, 1310, and he must have died in the interval between that date and Pentecost 1285. As to William, Sir John's father, the Frithelstock deed seems to be the only document in which his name has been recorded, and, as it is there given without the prefix of "dominus," it is probable that he died before his father; and it will be seen by Appendix A that his widow, Magota (or Margery, as she is called in the Frithelstock deed), presented to the rectory of Ash Reigny on or shortly before, 14th February, 1336-7.

In Iddesleigh church there is the effigy of a cross-legged knight in ring-mail, which is mentioned in Mr. W. H. H. Rogers's paper on the sepulchral effigies in the parish churches of North Devon, in vol. ix. of The Transactions of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society, and a reproduction of the lithograph of it appended to Mr. Rogers's paper, which has been obtained with his permission and that of the Secretary of the Society, will be found in Plate 2 at the end of the present paper. Mr. Rogers classes the effigy within the dates of 1240 and 1310; but Risdon, in p. 262, and Westcote, in p. 324, and Dr. Oliver in note § p. 76 of his Monasticon, all refer to the tomb as the cenotaph of Sir John de Sully, who was buried at Crediton, and they failed to see that the effigy at Iddesleigh and Sir John's effigy at Crediton are of widely different periods, and that a knight who died in 1387 could not be represented as a crusader, when the last crusade was begun more than ten years before Sir John's birth, and was abandoned by Edward I. in 1272, in order to return to England to take possession of the throne after his father's death. The armour of the Iddesleigh effigy closely resembles that of Peter Earl of Richmond in the plate opposite p. 110 in

vol. i. of Sir S. R. Meyrick's Ancient Armour, to which the date of 1248 is assigned, and it also resembles that of the knights in the painting on the tomb in Westminster Abbey of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, the second son of Henry III., who accompanied his elder brother Edward to Palestine, and died in 1296, and a copy of which painting is given in plate 57 of the 1838 edition of John Carter's Ancient Sculpture and Painting; and it is clear that Sir Henry de Sully, Sir John's grandfather, is the latest member of the family to whom the effigy can be assigned.

I am unable to give any connected account of the earlier members of the Sully family, but it appears highly probable that they originally came from the hamlet and manor of Sully in the parish of Lydney, which lies in the part of Gloucestershire on the west side of the Severn, and were of the same stock as Sir Rannould [or Reginald] de Sully, who, according to Rice Merrick's Book of Glamorganshire, assisted Robert Fitz-Hamon in the conquest of the lowland part of Glamorganshire. The conquest was begun in about 1093, as admitted by the late Mr. E. A. Freeman in the second volume of his Reign of William Rufus, but the best account of it is given by Mr. G. T. Clark in five articles, in vols. 34, 35, 36, and 37 of the Archæological Journal, which was supplemented in 1885, '90 and '91 by his three volumes of Carta et alia munimenta quæ ad dominium de Glamorgan pertinent, and in 1886 by his Genealogies of the older Families of the Lordships of Morgan and Glamorgan. FitzHamon was lord of the Honour of Gloucester, which included manors in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, and Devon, and many if not most of those who joined him in the invasion held their estates, or some portion of them, of the Honour, or were connected with landowners under it; and Mr. Clark states, in page 30 of his first article, that "Sully

5 Sully is, probably, a corruption of South Leigh (South Pasture), which is the name of a parish in East Devon, and other counties; and Sudely, the name of a castle and manor adjoining Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, seems to be also a corruption of the same name, and to be identical with the "Sudlage" mentioned in p. 169 of v. i. of the printed copy of Domesday. The castle, in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., was the seat of Sir Bartholomew de Sutley, or de Suleye, whose ing. p.-m. was taken 13th July, 8 Edward I., 1280, and who left Sir John de Sutley, his only son and heir, who was then 22 years old, and so born in about 1258. They were in succession peers of Parliament, and bore for their arms "Or, two bends gules," and had no connection with Devonshire or Wales.

6 Rice Merrick was Clerk of the Peace for Glamorganshire, and his MS. of 1578 was first printed by the late Sir Thomas Phillips, Bart., in 1825.

It is said by Lysons in p. 562 of their Devonshire, that Winkleigh was the chief seat of the honour in that county.