The Flemish Origins

A better known junior holder of the crescents was David, grandson of Roger of Lilford, on the river Nene. Walter the Fleming was the Domesday lord at Lilford, and Roger must have been either Walter’s son or Hugh’s. The family’s surname here gradually changed from Holy Ford, Lilford, Olifard to Oliphant. Young David Oliphant acquired his Christian name from his godfather, the king of Scotland; and perhaps the tithe of the mill at Crailing, Roxburghshire, which that monarch bestowed on him was in the nature of a christening gift.

Yorkshire crescents, specifically those of Boynton and Ryther, spring from descendants of Lambert de Lens at Whitby and Staithes, from which latter place, once called Seaton Staithes, their family name of Seaton/Seyton/Seton appears to have been derived.

We have to keep in mind the declining fortunes of both Flanders and Boulogne over the 12th and 13th centuries, and the many misfortunes which overtook and ultimately overwhelmed their ruling houses. There can be little doubt that the destruction of the traditional homeland gave Flemish exiles in both England and Scotland an extra urge to preserve their heritage. How they held on to the armorial devices of a disappearing identity is an object lesson in tenacity. How they divided up the old signs and colours among an ever-expanding list of those eligible to hold them reveals a medieval mastery of the principles of heraldry which has not been equaled since. The passion with which they clung to their emblems, the fervour which accompanied the display of family arms on, for example, the famous ceiling of Samson’s Hall at Seton Palace, East Lothian – throughout it’s life the headquarters of the descendants of Lambert of Lens – all reflected a nostalgia for lost dynasties, old greatness, past links with the mighty world of Charlemagne, that later generations have signally failed to understand. There was nothing of pomp about the display of such arms – indeed, the emotion came nearer to humility.

Simon de Senlis V, disallowed, as his father had been, from inheriting any of the honours of his uncle, rightful Earl of both Huntingdon and Northampton, married his kinswoman, Anne de Seaton, descendant of Ernisius the Crossbowman of Lens; and both took her surname and adopted Ernisius’s arms, which were the Martlets of a fourth son of Boulogne. Doubled (presumably to show a double descent), these arms are still borne by English Seatons, who also retain the Lens family motto, Hazard Warily, an Anglicised – and inaccurate – version of the ancient Flemish motto still used by the Setons in Scotland, Hazard Zet Fordward, which may be translated as Push the Hazard Forward – a rather different maxim.

Beryl Platts
The Origins of Heraldry
The Proctor Press, Greenwich, London, UK
1980.