The gold collar of SS has since the sixteenth century been an ensign of office of the lord chief justice of England and also (until 1880) of the chief justice of the Common Pleas and chief baron of the Exchequer. There are at least five examples still in existence. In its judicial form the SS are interspersed with knots, similar to those on the collar of the order of the Garter, and in the centre there is a Tudor rose between two portcullises. Collars of SS were in more widespread use in the later Middle Ages and the significance of the SS in such collars has been the subject of much speculation. Several explanatory theories have been offered, including the theory that they have no significance as letters but represent curb-bits, or were merely a convenient shape for linking. It is, however, now generally accepted that the collar of SS originated as a Lancastrian livery collar. The most prevalent explanation for using the letter S is that it represents the Lancastrian motto Souvenez (‘Remember’), rather than the later version Souvent me souvient (‘Remember me often’). Against this it has been objected that there is no evidence for the Souvenez motto being used until the very end of the fourteenth century, and an alternative hypothesis is that the S represents Seneschal, the office of lord high steward held by the earls and dukes of Lancaster from 1265 until the time of Henry IV. Such an allusion seems, nevertheless, inherently unlikely for a collar given as a livery, especially when given by the king.