Transcript

of

Wyke Arms

Devon & Cornwall Notes and Queries vol. IX, (January 1916 to January 1917), pp. 123-4.

by

Ethel Lega-Weekes

Prepared by Michael Steer

There is the ancient coat-of-arms of the Wyke family. It is "Ermine, 3 Danish battle-axes, sable,". It is the same, with change of tincture, as the ancient coat of the Danish kings. There is no coat more eloquent in its allusiveness, and yet, like most of the ancient coats, it is full of simplicity and expression. It is unmistakable as to the martial deeds it symbolises. They are manifestly in the clash of arms and the close conflict of bloody battle. And it is equally unmistakable that the heroes of these martial deeds claimed a Danish origin. The Note’s author questions an assertion that a rather similar coat displayed on a memorial in Sutcombe Church is the Wyke coat of arms. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Note 105. WYKE ARMS. - Miss Edith K. Prideaux, in her admirable account of Sutcombe Church and its Builders (Appendix to D. & C. N. & Q., Jan. and Apr., 1914), having set forth in her "Appendix I. "the second marriage of Alice, daughter of Stephen Gifford, of Theuborough, by Joan, daughter and heiress of John Spencer, of Spencerscombe, to William Prideaux, of Adeston, remarks in a footnote that their daughter Jane married William Wyke, of North Wyke and Cocktree, " hence the Wyke arms in Sutcombe Church: Ermine, 3 battle axes erect in pale" [sic.] In another "Appendix" the back of the bench numbered 46 in the plan of the church is stated to be carved with "Wyke of Cocktree Arms," and on p. 27 the illustration (No. 22) of this carving is referred to by Miss Prideaux as the three battle axes erect in pale [sic] of the Wyke family.

The photograph clearly shews on a field without ermine spots three battle axes in fess, not in pale, which would have been the correct description had they been disposed one the other in a vertical row. Curiously the blades are turned towards the sinister instead of the dexter side, while a capital E in the adjoining compartment is also reversed, as if the carver had used a tracing turned wrong side out.

Thus neither the blazon given by Miss Prideaux nor the design on the bench back represents truly the arms of Wyke, of North Wyke and Cocktree, which are Ermine, three battle axes sable. * I have never seen the battle axes described as in pale or in fess for Wyke ; they are generally - and so far as I know, always - disposed "two and one," as on the reredos of the tomb of "Warrior Wyke" in South Tawton Church and over a window of the domestic chapel at North Wyke. I am aware of the Wyke-Prideaux marriage, but is Miss Prideaux sure that the carving in Sutcombe Church does not commemorate an alliance with some family other than Wyke bearing the same charges on a plain field ? Papworth gives a long list of such, e.g., Batten, co. Devon ; Denys, or Dennis, co. Devon ; Gibbes, Devon, Derby, etc. ; Hall, Kent ; Hicks ; Lewston, co. Dorset. (In the last case the axes are stated to be in pale).         ETHEL-LEGA WEEKES. 

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* See Carew's Scroll of Arms (ed. by J. Brooking-Rowe), No. 516; Note Book of Tristram Risdon (ed. by J. Dallas), p. 50; the Lysons' History of Devon, p. ccxxv.; and Westcote, p. 557.