 The swan
bearing a Tudor rose (the swan and the rose are both symbols of
Aphrodite) represents constancy in love, the theme of
Shakespeare's poem, 'The Phoenix and the Turtle', which he dedicated to the 'true,
noble knight, Sir John Salusbury' (d 1612), brother of my
ancestor, Thomas Salusbury (x 1586). Heraldically the
swan also represents Lohengrin, the Swan Knight of the
Grail Romances, son of Parzival, the Grail King. In more
general terms the swan is also a symbol of innocence and
purity which, in Christian symbology, is associated with
the Cup of the Eucharist.
In personal terms, the
swan refers to my great-great-grandmother, Jane Elizabeth
Senior (1828-1877), one of the great humanitarian women
of the 19th century. She was almost certainly the
inspiration for Dorothea, the heroine of George Eliot's
'Middlemarch', in which Eliot wrote of Dorothea: 'Here
and there a cygnet is reared uneasily amongst the
ducklings in the brown pond.' The Tudor rose refers to
Jane Senior's ancestor, Sir Roland de Velville (d 1536),
Constable of Beaumaris Castle, a reputed natural son of
Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty.
The charges on the shield
represent the following:
Senior:
Note that this is simply
my idea of what the charges might have been intended to
represent based on my knowledge of the family.
The lion's
heads represent the Lions of Judah, an
ancient Jewish symbol (the word 'Jew' is derived
from 'Judah');
The ermine
represents the Senior family's noble Sephardic
and, as is apparently the case (from the fact
that Don Abraham Senior was referred to in a
contemporary source as Exilarch), Davidic
ancestry;
The dolphin,
heraldically king of sea creatures ('chief of
fish'), represents the freedom of the seas.
Throughout history the sea has been a means of
escape for the Jews, who have repeatedly been
forced by persecution to seek out new homelands;
it has often been their only lifeline and,
through trade, the source of their livelihoods.
The dolphin is particularly apt given that Don
Abraham Senior appears to have been one of the
backers of Christopher Columbus' voyage of
discovery to America in 1492 (in this way
contributing to the birth a new nation) and that
the Senior family settled widely in the New
World. A biographer of Columbus, John Boyd
Thatcher, has written that 'the triumph of
Columbus was the triumph of the Converso Luis de
Santangel, visionary and champion of the
perennial lost cause of history, the cause of the
Jews.' Other writers (notably Salvador de
Madariaga and Simon Wiesenthal) have speculated
that the longings of the Conversos who supported
Columbus may have run parallel to the dreams of
the discoverer himself, namely, an obsessive
dream to find a refuge for the Jews in the lands
that he hoped to find across the Atlantic. The
dolphins shown are taken directly from the
original grant of arms to Ascanius William Senior
of 1767.
Milne:
The cross is a
Christian symbol, apparently first adopted as a
heraldic device by Constantine the Great, after
his vision in 312 AD of a fiery cross accompanied
by the message 'In hoc signo vinces' ('By this
sign ye shall conquer'). The cross moline
represents the millrind, 'the iron which supports
the upper millstone of a corn-mill' (OED) and is
'a fit bearing for judges and magistrates, who
should carry themselves equally to every man in
giving justice' (Nisbet quoting Boswell) and is
'a mark of [feudal] superiority and jurisdiction
of a baron, that has tenants and vassals thirled
to their mills, for of old none but barons had
right to erect mills and by some it is carried as
relative to their names, as Milne or Miller'
(Nisbet quoting Menestrier). The cross moline or
(yellow cross) also represents the yellow badge
that Jews have been forced to wear in many
periods in many countries, which was variously a
circle, band, star or cross;
The fleur-de-lys
(lily or iris) is a symbol of kingship that goes
back far into antiquity to the origins of
civilization and is found as such in the
archeology of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Assyria
and other ancient cultures. It has been the
heraldic symbol of the Royal House of France from
the dawn of history and is an allusion to my
grandfather's (Oliver Nassau Senior) descent from
Philippa Plantagenet, Countess of Ulster and of
March (daughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence
(1338-1368), second son of Edward III), from whom
the House of York derived their claim to the
throne. Edward III inherited a claim to the
throne of France through his mother, Isabella,
daughter of Philip IV, King of France, and
therefore quartered the royal arms of France with
those of England. The fleur-de-lys is an ancient
Jewish symbol of the House of David. The lily is
also a symbol of simplicity and purity as, for
example, in the Sermon on the Mount - 'Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto
you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these.'
A swan crest
from the Armorial de Gelre (arms of the Count of Blois).
Back to 'The Descent of Hughes'
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