Livery collar

A livery collar or chain of office is a collar or heavy chain, usually of gold, worn as insignia of office or a mark of fealty or other association in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards.

One of the oldest and best-known livery collars is the Collar of Esses, which has been in continuous use in England since the 14th century.

Various forms of livery were used in the Middle Ages to denote attachment to a great person by friends, servants, and political supporters. The collar, usually of precious metal, was the grandest form of these, usually given by the person the livery denoted to his closest or most important associates, but should not, in the early period, be seen as separate from the wider phenomenon of livery badges, clothes and other forms. From the collar hung a badge or device indicating the person the livery related to; the most important part of the ensemble for contemporaries. Equally gold collars that had no livery connotations were worn.

Livery collars seem to be first recorded in the 14th century. Charles V of France in 1378 granted to his Chamberlain Geoffrey de Belleville the right of bearing in all feasts and in all companies the collar of the Cosse de Geneste or Broomcod, a collar which was accepted and worn even by the English kings, Charles VI sending such collars to Richard II and to his three uncles. Although he distributed "genet" badges much more widely, only about twenty collars per year were given out, and it was treated somewhat as the sign of a pseudo-chivalric order, although no such order formally existed. The collar of Esses is first recorded earlier than this, as being given by John of Gaunt, and remained in use by the House of Lancaster throughout the Wars of the Roses.

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