The Wiki page on Royal Badges of England - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Badges_of_England - lists, among other things, "the Cornysshe chawghe" as being a badge device for Henry VI. This is probably incorrect, since it seems to a be a reference to a Cornish person, one John Trevilian, who was an esquire of the body and usher of the King's chambers in the 1440's.
See here, "Letter Containing Intelligence of the Proceedings of the Court and Nobility, at the Commencement of the Year 1454: Accompanied by Some Remarks", by a Frederic Madden. https://books.google.com/books?id=V7hPAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=Cornysshe+chawghe&source=bl&ots=S6swG5uTmD&sig=1rhjgTxdlvELPRfOHhAsjhQCXzk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z6OLVPiEPIHugwTQoIGQCQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Cornysshe%20chawghe&f=false
Madden, who wrote this in 1842 as a scholarly work, claims that Trevilian was mentioned in connection with the following satiric verse:
"The Cornysshe chawge offt with his trayne
Hath made our Egull (ie the King) blynde "
All spellings and asides as in the original, which is quoted by Madden.
In the footnotes, Madden specifies that the "trayne" is a "fraudulent device", which I regard as a flat out tease.
So what the heck is going on here? Does it have anything to do with Royal Badges? What does the word "chawge" mean? What was Trevilian's trayne? How was Henry blinded by it? Who wrote those verses and what was their point?
Thanks in advance for your infos!
"Chough Usually blazoned as a Cornish chough, this one common bird is a member of the crow family and is black with red legs and bill." Illustration captioned "A chough, badge of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, woven into a college tie". Stephen Friar, A Dictionary of Heraldry, 1987. (No references to jackdaws and other corvids on reddit, please.)
'There is also the “Cornish chough” (pronounced “chuff”), in form identical to the crow, and only distinguishable when “proper”: it is then black with red beak and feet. Its most famous use is in the arms of Cardinal Wolsey, c.1520 [Wagner 66]. The chough may sometimes be blazoned a “beckit” for canting purposes [Parker 136].' The Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry: Crow
Henry Bedingfeld (Rouge Croix Pursuivant), Peter Gwynn-Jones (Lancaster Herald), Heraldry, show the (modern) supporters of the arms of the Duchy of Cornwall as two choughs, but that duchy is for the eldest son/heir apparent of the king. Pp. 124-129, they carefully show the badges of the Black Prince, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VII, and mentions Richard III's white boar, Yorkist and Lancastrian, Edward I, Edward III ... but never Henry VI! P. 117 lists supporters used by kings:
Henry VI displayed two white antelopes, sometimes a lion and a panther, or antelope or heraldic tyger; Edward IV a black bull and white lion, a gold lion and a black bull, or a white lion and hart, or two white lions; and Tichard III a white lion and a white boar, or two white boars.
But I haven't a source to hand on royal badges per se.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ph8IAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA65 has a copy of the poem, but I've not looked very closely at the commentary. The commentary seems to be saying that the identification of the bearers of each badge was written in the original source, and John Trevelyan is IDed as "Trevilian". But it's really ambiguous, and it might also be saying that the printed copy had it.
"Heraldic Badges", rather badly OCRed at http://archive.org/stream/heraldicbadges00foxd/heraldicbadges00foxd_djvu.txt, has
Trevilian, John, Esquire. Badge -- a Cornish chough.
"The Cornysshe chawghe ofFt w* his trayne."
[Political Poem, 1449 — "Excerpta Historica."]
I think the verse is using "trayne" in the sense of a group of followers (as used in Shakespeare where a prince or nobleman often enters or exits " with all his train").
The image I think the verse is trying to summon is a group of crows " mobbing" an eagle or other raptor- flying close to it cawing loudly in order to drive it off. They can do this in great numbers as seen here. As far as I know, they don't actually try to strike at the eagle's eyes but maybe medieval folklore said otherwise?