REBUS
RE’BUS, an enigmatical representation of a name or thing by using pictorial devices for letters, syllables, or parts of words. The term probably originates from the device speaking to the beholder non verbus sed rebus. Devices of this kind, allusive to the bearer’s name, were exceedingly common in the middle ages, particularly in England. In many instances, they were used by ecclesiastics and others who had not a right to armorial ensigns. Thus, on the rector’s lodgings at Lincoln College, Oxford, erected in the 15th c., to which Thomas Beckyngton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, liberally contributed, is carved the rebus of that prelate— a becon and tun, with T, the initial letter of his Christian name.
In Westminster Abbey, Abbot Islip’s chapel gives two forms of his rebus—one, a human eye, and a small branch or slip of a tree; the other, a man in the act of falling from a tree, and exclaiming, ‘ I slip ! ‘ Many of the monograms of the artists of the middle ages and early printers were rebuses. That of Ludger you King was the letter L inserted into a ring. A large proportion of the early coats of arms were rebuses on the names of the bearer of them, as, for example, three salmons for the name of Salmon, a lock and heart for that of Lockhart, three skenes or dirks for Skene. Family badges are also frequently of the nature of a rebus, and mottoes, as Ver non semper viret of the Vernons.