"Mount Paladore" is the presumed British name of Shaftesbury, from paladr, which, in Welsh, signifies the shaft of a spear or pillar. Michael Drayton make it the name of the hill, not the town:"And boast my birth from great Cadwallader,
From old Caer-Septon, in Mount Pallador." (Heroic Epist., Owen Tudor to Queen Catherine.) [See Hutchins, iii. I.] The late Rev. W. Barnes ("the Dorset poet") in the glossary to the last edition of his "Poems in the Dorset Dialect," published in 1879, says that "Paladore" is the traditional name of Shaftesbury--the British Caer-Paladr, said by British history to have been founded by Rhun Paladr-bras, "Rhun, of the stout spear"--and he alludes to it in his poem of "Shaftesbury Feäir," commencing: "When hillborne Paladore did show." The arms on the reverse of the token appear on the Coroporation Seal for warrants dated 1570, an engraving of which is given in Hutchins (iii. 17). Also a slightly different rendering of them appears, together with other arms, on the circular top of one of the two iron maces belonging to the Corporation, an engraving of which is also given on p. 15. No explanation is given of these somewhat curious armorial bearings. The parish registers do not commence until 1695, which accounts for the paucity of the information to be obtained concerning the issuers of the following tokens. |
