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White boar


The White Boar was the personal device or badge of the English King Richard III of England (1452—1485, reigned from 1483), and is an early instance of the use of boars in heraldry.

Livery badges were important symbols of political affiliation in the Wars of the Roses, and Richard distributed very large numbers at his coronation and the installation of his son Edward as Prince of Wales, for which an order of 13,000 badges in fustian cloth is recorded. Edward appears to have shared use of the badge, either from Richard's accession to the throne, or his own appointment as Prince of Wales, both in 1483, to his death the next year. Richard's choice of the badge was no doubt personal, but according to a slightly later document the boar had been a badge of the royal possession the "Honour of Windsor" (an "honour" was a large estate, not necessarily all located around the place from which it took its name). Another suggestion is that the boar was a pun on "Ebor", a contraction of Eboracum, the Latin name for York; Richard was known as "Richard of York" before being created Duke of Gloucester.

Richard was villainized after his death by the Tudor dynasty that followed his brief reign, and most of his badges would no doubt have been hurriedly discarded after his death. Only two examples survived on tomb monuments, one of which was destroyed in the 20th century. The sole remaining example is a pendant white boar on a Yorkist livery collar carved in the alabaster effigy of Sir Ralph Fitzherbert, who died in Richard's reign in 1483. A number of metal badges, for pinning to the chest or a hat, have survived in lead, silver, and gilded copper high relief, the last found at Richard's home of Middleham Castle in Yorkshire, and very likely worn by one of his household when he was Duke of Gloucester.


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