Story of the Stewarts

22
an exclusiveness and jealousy altogether foreign to later
times. Of the arms of these early days too, the most
characteristic and distinguishing feature was simplicity, and,
without attaching undue weight or importance to the matter,
it can scarcely fail to be regarded as at least singular, and
a somewhat striking additional coincidence, that the simi-
larity found in the family names should also extend to the
family arms. Such, however, is the case, and the " fesse,"
indented in the case of the De Dinans of Bretagne, is per-
petuated in the fesse barry of Fitz-Alan and Fitz-Flaald,
and the fesse cheque" of the Stewarts.
The exact period at which Flaald or his son Alan
emigrated from Brittany to England has not been deter-
mined with certainty. By some writers Flaald is said to
have accompanied the Conqueror to the Battle of Hastings,
but his name does not appear in the Domesday Book,
or in the Roll of Battle Abbey — a very incomplete list,
however — or in any other list of the Conqueror's com-
panions.
It is therefore more likely that their settlement in
England took place at a later date — not improbably in the
reign of Henry I., who, according to the historian Eyton,
in order to strengthen his hold on the Crown to which his
title was not free from challenge, displaced in many cases
the former Norman counsellors, and substituted foreigners in
their room. " Such," he says, " in Shropshire, were Warin