I’m grateful to MHS member Janet Mortimer for drawing my attention to the coats of arms on this building on the corner of South Street and Corn Street in Leominster, Herefordshire. Built in the 1700s, the curved corner and heraldry date only from the 1920s when W H Smith bought the property. All three of these coats of arms are of interest, so I’ll discuss them separately.

The shield on the left. above, is difficult to make out, but there can be no doubt that it is meant to be the arms of the Anglican diocese of Hereford. These arms contain the reversed heads of three leopards, each with a fleur-de-lys going in through the mouth and coming out at the back of the head. Heraldically these are called leopards’ heads jessant-de-lys, the word jessant meaning shooting up or coming forth. But these are not the original arms of the Hereford bishopric. They are based on the arms of Thomas Cantelupe who was bishop of Hereford from 1275 to 1282, and they were adopted by the diocese in the 14th century, following his canonization in 1320. In St Laurence’s church in Ludlow there are two 19th century windows, one showing the leopards’ heads upright and the other with them reversed. Maybe the right hand one, opposite, shows the arms of St Thomas himself, and the leopards’ heads were reversed to create the new diocesan arms. I’d welcome any comments on this point.

There are several versions of the Cantelupe arms and on his seal as bishop of Hereford there are just three fleurs-de-lys. He presumably added the leopards’ heads as a cadency difference and possibly these were reversed later to represent the diocese.

Thomas Cantelupe seems an odd person to have been made a saint. He was an ‘inveterate enemy of the Jews’ and is the person principally responsible for their expulsion from England by Edward I. This was apparently a significant point in his favour when deciding whether he should be made a saint! Although he was praised for pastoral work, he was combative rather than humble, engaging in a ‘great conflict’ with the argumentative ‘Red Earl’ Gilbert de Clare about hunting rights. More seriously, he angered the Archbishop of Canterbury so much that he excommunicated him! Thomas set off to Rome to plead his case but died some way before he got there. His successor at Hereford, Richard Swinfield, pushed for his canonization, but an excommunicated person could not be made a saint. It helped that various impressive miracles began to be attributed to him. In 1307 it was officially ‘proved’ by a council in London that he had actually been absolved by the Pope in Rome, but it took another 13 years until he was canonized, 38 years after his death.

The coat of arms on the right of the group of three at Leominster is that of the City of Hereford. These arms are similarly of very great interest. The city was given its first charter by Richard I in 1189 and Hereford and the City of London are the only cities with the right to incorporate the three lions of England in their coats of arms. Until the 17th century the arms of Hereford were Gules three lions passant in pale argent.

In 1645 the Parliamentarians won a great victory over the Royalists at Naseby. After the battle, King Charles I travelled to South Wales to recruit more soldiers, staying at Hereford en route. The Parliamentarians then sent a Scottish Covenanter army to take Hereford. But this was not to be. Despite having a force of 14,000, the town was successfully defended for a whole month by a garrison of just 1,500 under Barnabas Scudamore. News of Montrose’s victories in Scotland caused the Covenanters to lift the siege and head north. On 16th September 1645 Charles I returned to Hereford. Full of praise for the defenders efforts in saving the city, he knighted Scudamore and granted an augmentation to Hereford’s coat of arms. Around the original arms he added a blue border with ten small silver saltires. The coat of arms of Scotland is Azure a saltire argent and the small saltires on the new shield are said to represent the ten Scottish regiments surrounding the city.