Such is the general description of the floors of this apartment:  with regard to the date of the tiles, Ducarel proceeds to state that “it is most probable the pavement was laid down in the latter part of the reign of King John, when he was loitering away his life at Caen, with the beautiful Isabel of Angouleme, his queen; during which period, the custom of wearing coats of arms was introduced.”—­Common tradition assigns the tiles to higher date, making them coeval with the conquest; and this opinion has not been without supporters.  It was strenuously defended by Mr. Henniker Major, who, in the year 1794, printed for private distribution, two letters upon the subject, addressed to Lord Leicester, in which he maintained this opinion with zeal and laborious research.  To the letters were annexed engravings of twenty coats of arms, the whole, as he observes, that were represented on the pavement; for though the number of emblazoned tiles was considerable, the rest were all repetitions[80].  The same observation was found in the inscription attached to a number of the tiles, which the monks kept framed for public inspection, in a conspicuous part of the monastery; and yet some of the armorial bearings in this very selection, differ from any of those figured by Mr. Henniker Major.  The Abbe de la Rue has also many which are not included in Mr. Henniker Major’s engravings.  In one of the coats the arms are quartered, a practice that was not introduced till the reign of Edward IIIrd.  The same quarterings are also found upon an escutcheon, placed over the door that leads to the apartment.  This door is a flattened arch, with an ogee canopy, the workmanship probably of the fourteenth century.

To the same date I should also refer the tiles; and possibly the whole palace was built at that period.  There are no records of its erection; no document connects its existence with the history of the duchy; no author relates its having been suffered to fall into decay.  So striking an absence of all proof, and this upon a point where evidence of different kinds might naturally have been expected, may warrant a suspicion how far the building was ever a royal palace, according to the strict import of the town.  A friend of mine supposes that these buildings may have been the king’s lodgings.  During the middle ages it was usual for monarchs in their progresses, to put up at the great abbeys; and this portion of the convent of St. Stephen may have been intended for the accommodation of the royal guests.

The assigning of a comparatively modern date to the pavement, does not necessarily interfere with the question as to the antiquity of heraldic bearings.  The coats of arms which are painted upon the tiles may have been designed to represent those of the nobility who attended Duke William on his expedition to England:  it is equally possible that they embraced a more general object, and were those of the principal families of the duchy—­De Thou gives his suffrage in