| ` Are recorded as in use by the university as early as 1276, but the three silver maces currently carried (two at a time) by the Esquire Bedells in university processions are much newer. They were presented to the university by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Chancellor from 1626 until his assassination in 1628. A fourth mace, with a mahogany shaft and silver ends and rings, was carried by the Yeoman Bedell , and was almost certainly presented to the university by Villiers’ successor as Chancellor, Henry Rich, Earl of Holland (beheaded 1649), whose arms it bears. They are described and illustrated in: A. P. Humphry, ‘On the maces of the Esquire Bedells, and the mace formerly borne by the Yeoman Bedell’, Communications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society , iv, 207 (1879) A. E. Shipley, ‘Cambridge University insignia’, Country Life , 6 Dec. 1919, pp. 716-18; R. A. Crighton, Cambridge plate: catalogue of an exhibition of silver, silver-gilt and gold plate at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge , (Cambridge, 1975) and illustrated in H. P. Stokes, Ceremonies of the University of Cambridge , (Cambridge, 1927). |
![[Home]](/images/logo.gif){kind=logo}
