poliphilo

Kenardington sits on the ridge overlooking the Kent and Sussex marshes. It was once a port- in the days before the marshes were drained and turned into good grazing land- and sufficiently important for the French to raid it in the 14th century and burn the church. Earlier there was a fortified camp here but no-one seems to know whether it was held by the Saxons or the Danes. A farm next to the church is called Battle Farm- which tells its own story.

The Royal arms are those of Queen Anne- and predate the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland which made her the first ruler of Great Britain. The motto, however, isn't hers ("Semper Eadem") but that of her predecessors and successors ("Dieu et mon Droit"). So, either the painter didn't know any better or the arms date from an earlier reign with Anne's monogram replacing that of her uncle Charles II or her father James II.