The Gallery
From this gallery you can see down into the Great Hall below. Painted on the wall hangings there is a shield featuring a green bird. This is the heraldry of the Thweng family, the noble house to which Lady Joan belonged and William Snawsell married into. The Heraldry was originally granted to Lady Joan’s ancestor, Sir Marmaduke Thweng, after he distinguished himself in battle.
The image of the parrot, or popinjay as it was called at the time, was of particular significance. Parrots were status symbols, difficult to import and notoriously expensive to keep. Even if you didn’t have a real parrot, having one on your heraldry told people you were from a wealthy family. Different birds were associated with different qualities, both real and imagined, and were a popular motif on personal items.
Lions held great symbolic significance. As the ‘king of beasts’ they were present on the arms of English royalty which, from the 12th century, contained ‘three lions passant guardant’. They also appear in the heraldry of Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Estonia, as well as the arms of the Prince of Wales, the county of Flanders, and the historic kingdoms of Leon, Ruthenia and Bohemia, to name just a few. Although not native to Britain, and extinct in Eastern Europe by the 10th century, Lions were kept in menageries to entertain and serve as symbols of their owner’s power.
The medieval affection for symbolism is best exemplified by the Bestiary, several versions of which were produced throughout the period. Here in York, the Benedictine monks of Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, created one such book in the 13th century. The York Bestiary, like all medieval bestiaries, was based upon Greek and Roman texts that had been copied, edited, and passed around the religious community for centuries.
These manuscripts did not seek to simply describe creatures, however. The monks were more concerned with explaining the moral and symbolic nature of the world than they were with factual accuracy. Cats and dogs are featured alongside dragons and unicorns. Many of the entries are accompanied by intricate, colourful illustrations, rendered in vivid and expensive paints. The York Bestiary is the only book from Holy Trinity’s library to survive to the modern day, and it is now cared for by St John’s College, Oxford.
Boar hunting was a dangerous sport as boars are fierce and can grow up to five feet long with twelve inch tusks. Men died facing them and to kill one was considered a great feat. The boar symbolised power and virility and became a popular choice in heraldry. Boar meat was highly prized, although by the later Middle Ages the animals were rare in England, becoming extinct in the wild by the 14th century. You can find out more about hunting in the Parlour.
