Are recorded as in use by the University as early as 1276, but the three silver maces currently carried (two at a time) by the Esquire Bedells in University processions are much newer. They were presented to the University by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Chancellor from 1626 until his assassination in 1628. A fourth mace, with a mahogany shaft and silver ends and rings, was carried by the Yeoman Bedell, and was almost certainly presented to the University by Villiers’ successor as Chancellor, Henry Rich, Earl of Holland (beheaded 1649), whose arms it bears. They are described and illustrated in: A. P. Humphry, ‘On the maces of the Esquire Bedells, and the mace formerly borne by the Yeoman Bedell’, Communications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society , iv, 207 (1879) A. E. Shipley, ‘Cambridge University insignia’, Country Life, 6 Dec. 1919, pp. 716-18; R. A. Crighton, Cambridge plate: catalogue of an exhibition of silver, silver-gilt and gold plate at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, (Cambridge, 1975) and illustrated in H. P. Stokes, Ceremonies of the University of Cambridge, (Cambridge, 1927).
