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Burs and Roses:
the tokens of Thomas Burrowes in Nottingham reconsidered
by Robert Thompson
The name Burrowes occurs on two main types of Nottingham token. The second reads:
Obv. ·THOMAS·BVRROWES around a Boar passant or statant
Rev. ·IN·NOTTINGHAM·I667 around HIS|HALF|PENY.
It is best illustrated by No. 71 on Plate 4 of Preston-Morley & Pegg, hereafter 'PMP'.(1) Norweb 3531 is not so clear.(2)
The first type may be assumed to be a farthing of the same issuer: (Fig. 1)
Obv. *THOMAS·BVRROWES around a rose and in chief an uncertain spiky shape
Rev. *IN·NOTTINGHAM* around a single tower battlemented of two embrasures.
This variety, from the original dies, is PMP 66 on Plate 2 = Norweb 3528, which PMP date to c.1663. It is followed by a series of local productions illustrated on their Plate 8:
PMP 67, with the B of BVRROWES reversed.
PMP 68 = Norweb 3529.
PMP 69, with the V of BVRROWES inverted to read BARROWES.
PMP 70 = Norweb 3530, from the same obverse die as PMP 69.
There is also a modern forgery, no. 2 at the foot of PMP Plate 8.
The reverse may be compared with the castle (though quadruple-towered) incorporated in the fifteenth-century seal of Nottingham.(3) Therefore the reverse may have been chosen to represent his location. The purpose of this note, however, is to reconsider the obverse device. Williamson described it as 'A rose with sun above',(4) which, as PMP point out on pp. 166-7 = 33-4, derives from an incorrect interpretation of the Stretton specimens by the engravers of the plates for Throsby's edition of Thoroton's Nottinghamshire. The principal charge is certainly a rose, but that in chief has been uncertain. It might well be a canting (or allusive) charge, so that the whole device would represent the sound of 'Burrowes'.
PMP assert on pp. 166 = 33 and note 43 that the obverse device is a Burr over a rose, a burr being the prickly seedling [recte seed-vessel] or flower-head of a plant; and they note that this was also suggested independently by S. H. Monks and R. H. Thompson. In the Norweb Sylloge, p. xxvi at 4.12.6, I demurred at this, in that I merely passed on the suggestion of Simon Monks, and did not myself support it. If PMP mean the green pellets which are hardly noticed until they attach themselves to clothing or to hair, these are too insignificant to stand as a semi-heraldic charge. In his omnium gatherum of seventeenth-century visual knowledge Randle Holme used the term bur in its natural history sense once only, in Book 2, chapter 3, section 10: '...The Quince is full of Burs and bunches...', and what he illustrated was the Quince fruit.(5)
The Norweb Sylloge substituted 'perhaps a boar (?with snout to left on 3528), particularly considering Thomas Burrowes' use of a boar alone on 3531'. That queried interpolation was silly, given the PMP illustration of an undamaged specimen, and I hereby withdraw it. Could the uncertain spiky shape nevertheless be a poor representation of a boar, even a boar statant affronté? That would be a most unusual attitude for a boar, and no specimen seems to have any trace of a boar's snout.
What we have all failed to do is to look thoroughly at the meaning of bur (the preferred spelling). Meaning [1] in the Oxford English Dictionary is:
'Any rough or prickly seed-vessel or flower-head of a plant, esp. the flower-head of the Burdock (Arctium lappa); also, the small seed-vessel of the Goose-grass (Galium aparine) and other plants; the husk of the chestnut.'
A chestnut, yes! The secondary charge is round and spiky, and really does look like a chestnut on all varieties. Could bur have that meaning in the seventeenth century? Yes it could, and the OED quotes from Richard Waller's Essayes of natural experiments made in the Academie del Cimento (London, 1684): 'Like the Burre or Husk of a Chestnut'.
Could a chestnut stand as a semi-heraldic charge? Yes, it is sufficiently large and emblematic to do so, and under CHÂTAIGNE ET BRANCHE DE CHÂTAIGNIER Count Théodore de Renesse did assemble sixteen European families with arms incorporating chestnuts.(6) None is English, but they include the Castagna or Castanea family of Pope Urban VII, 1590.(7) Although Randle Holme's illustration is not helpful, (Fig. 2) he does include in Book 2, chapter 3, section 46:
He beareth Argent, a Chesnut pendant, with two Leaves, or a Chesnut slipped pendant, with two Leaves. The Nut is covered with a green rough prickly husk.
Chestnuts are too well known, both in town and in country, really to require illustration, but if there is one (Fig. 3) it is taken from the new RHS dictionary. (8)
The conclusion of this note, then, is that the obverse type of Williamson Notts. 58-61, PMP 66-70, and Norweb 3528-30 is A rose and in chief a chestnut (bur). The Norweb Classified Index of Types at 4.12.6 in Part IV should be so amended. One may speculate that Thomas Burrowes changed the sign on his tokens (and on his signboard?) after becoming weary at being asked what the spiky shape was above his rose. By the time he had explained it the effect would have been lost.
When William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms, carried out his Visitation of Nottingham in August 1662 and March 1662/3, Thomas Burrowes was not represented, unless he was related to the disclaimed 'Mr John Boawre';(9) in the published Hearth Tax assessments, however, 'Mr John Boare' with four hearths, plus three 'late Hides', is not close either to Mr Thomas Burrowes with six hearths, or to (a presumably different) Thomas Burrowes with six hearths.(10) If Burrowes had matriculated arms for himself, one may suppose that they would have incorporated a rose and a bur. In that case the chestnut would not have been (except to Randle Holme) apparently unknown in English heraldry.
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Fig 3.
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Fig 2.
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Fig 1.
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1. A Revised Survey of the Seventeenth Century Tokens of Nottinghamshire, [by]
Peter Preston-Morley & Harry Pegg ([London], 1983). Reprinted from the British
Numismatic Journal, 51 (1981).
2. Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, 44: The Norweb Collection... Tokens... Part
IV..., by R. H. Thompson and M. J. Dickinson (London, 1993).
3. Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, by W.
de G. Birch (London, 1887-1900), ii.145, no. 5241.
4. Trade Tokens issued in the Seventeenth Century, by George C. Williamson
(London, 1889-91).
5. The Academy of Armory..., by Randle Holme (Chester, 1688).
6. [Dictionnaire des figures héraldiques, par Théodore de Renesse] Dictionnaire de
Renesse, [ed.] Jan van Helmont (Leuven, 1992), p. 460. Originally published Brussels
1892-1903 in 7 vols.
7. Armorial général, par J. B. Rietstap, 2nd edn. reprinted (London, 1965), i.382.
8. The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening, ed. Anthony Huxley
[et al.] (London etc., 1999), i.533.
9. The Visitation of Nottinghamshire begun in 1662 and finished in 1664, made by
William Dugdale; ed. G. D. Squibb (London, 1986), p. 125.
10. Nottinghamshire Hearth Tax 1664 : 1674, ed. W. F. Webster (Nottingham, 1988),
pp. 137, 140.
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AA
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Burs and Roses: postscript
by Robert Thompson
PMP might have meant the flower-head of the Burdock (Arctium lappa), which 'is so well known', wrote Culpeper, 'even to the little Boys, who pull off the Burs to throw and stick upon one another...'(1). This is mentioned but not illustrated by Randle Holme (1688) in Book 2, chapter 6, section 25, under 'A Tripointed crumpled leaf': 'The Burrdock ... beareth diverse rough heads or burrs, with crooked pointed prickles...'. There seems no more to be said in its favour, no further appearance of the burdock head in heraldry, and nothing to detract from the acceptability of bur in the final meaning given by OED.
1. Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman's Flora, facsimile edn. (London, 1987), p. 385.
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