heraldry, © David G. Houser/Corbisthe science and the art that deal with the use, display, and regulation of hereditary symbols employed to distinguish individuals, armies, institutions, and corporations. Those symbols, which originated as identification devices on flags and shields, are called armorial bearings. Strictly defined, heraldry denotes that which pertains to the office and duty of a herald; that part of his work dealing with armorial bearings is properly termed armory. But in general usage heraldry has come to mean the same as armory.
The initial meaning of the term herald is disputed, but the preferred derivation is from the Anglo-Saxon here (“army”) and wald (“strength” or “sway”). In the second half of the 12th century the men who supervised festivities and delivered invitations to guests were often the same minstrels who, after tournaments and battles, extolled the virtues and deeds of the victors. Heralds can be identified in the descriptions of tournaments from about 1170. The duties of minstrels and messengers appear then to have merged, and, as the minstrels recounted the deeds and virtues of their masters and their masters’ ancestors, their interest in genealogy developed. That new skill was related to their tournament duties, which included the necessity to recognize the banners and shields of all those invited to attend. As heraldry developed its elaborate technical language and as armorial display expanded in subsequent centuries, so the importance and consequent status of heralds grew.
Heraldry originated when most people were illiterate but could easily recognize a bold, striking, and simple design. The use of heraldry in medieval warfare enabled combatants to distinguish one mail-clad knight from another and thus to distinguish between friend and foe. Thus, simplicity was the principal characteristic of medieval heraldry. In the tournament there was a more elaborate form of heraldic design. When heraldry was no longer used on body armour and heraldic devices had become a part of civilian life, intricate designs evolved with esoteric significance utterly at variance with heraldry’s original purpose. In modern times heraldry has often been regarded as mysterious and a matter for experts only. Indeed, over the centuries its language has become intricate and pedantic. Such intricacy appears ridiculous when it is remembered that in the earlier periods swift recognition of a coat of arms or badge could mean the difference between safety and death, and some medieval battles were lost through a mistake over the similarity of two devices of opposing sides.
Like all other human creations, heraldic art has reflected the changes of fashion. As heraldry advanced from its utilitarian usages, its artistic quality declined. In the 18th century, for example, heraldry described new arms in an absurdly obtuse manner and rendered them in an overly intricate style. Much of the heraldic art of the 17th to 19th centuries has earned that period the designation “the Decadence.” It was not until the 20th century that heraldic art recovered a feeling for aesthetic beauty. There are still, however, a few drawings of poor quality emanating from official sources.
In western Europe heraldic designs are found in general application from the second quarter of the 12th century. Elsewhere a similar system is found only in Japan, in the mon (emblems), also dating from the 12th century. Heraldic systems are often said to have been produced at other times and places—for example, the symbols of the 12 tribes in ancient Israel or the designs used by the Rajput princes in India. Those and similar instances, however, are more properly considered incipient heraldry, since they did not develop into the complex heraldic practice known in western Europe and Japan.
From 1150 to 1500 the use of heraldry in the West was utilitarian: on armour in warfare and on seals in peace and war. In the latter part of that period, it was used in peaceful ways and had much artistic value. Also, because from the beginning the use of arms had been associated with the higher feudal castes, heraldry acquired in later medieval times an identification with the concept of gentility that has persisted. To bear arms was the mark of a gentleman; therefore, to possess the desirable quality of gentility, a man needed to have armorial bearings. The great majority of those who seek to use coats of arms today are actuated by that motive. In the use of corporate arms, the motive of prestige operates. As long as the possession of arms confers any social distinction, arms will be sought and used. At no time before the present has there been so widespread an employment of heraldic devices.
Courtesy of The Oriental Institute of The University of ChicagoThe use of symbols has been universal among civilized communities, but symbols have not always assumed the character associated with heraldry. Seals, too, which have a prominent place in heraldic practice, are of an antiquity approaching that of the most ancient civilizations. They were in use in the states that from Sumer onward flourished in Mesopotamia. Their use in the Babylonian empire, for example, was the same as in medieval western Europe: to authenticate the documents (possibly of baked brick, later papyrus, later still parchment or vellum) on which they appeared or to which they were appended. All persons, literate and illiterate alike, were able to recognize the representation or symbol of a ruler or other potentate. In 12th-century Europe heraldry first appeared on seals in the representations of persons. There is a clear line of descent from the seals of Assyria and Babylonia to the modern company seal, which is often heraldic.
From its origins in the small half-continent of western Europe, heraldry has become universal, usually—but not only—by way of western European colonization. Heraldry has spread to a considerable degree in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In the former British India, the hereditary princes adopted the use of heraldry. In the numerous independent states formed in Africa from British colonies, official armorial bearings are generally used, and the same is true of the states that were French colonies. In Russia in the 18th century the use of armorial bearings was adopted from the West, and state emblems were not unknown in communist eastern Europe. In the 13th century the Celtic princes of Wales and Ireland and the chiefs of the Scottish Highland clans took up the use of heraldic symbols from the example of the feudal lords and knights of other parts of Europe.
Other kinds of emblematic identification have some similarities with heraldry. An example is the totem system, found among the indigenous peoples of America and Australia, in which an animal, plant, or other object serves as an emblem of family or clan and is often regarded as a reminder of ancestry. Totemism varies greatly in different countries, as do the theories that have been advanced to explain it. The totem poles used by the Native Americans of the northwest coast of North America contain an heraldic element in their employment of a hereditary symbol for a family or tribe. They therefore come under the heading of approaches to heraldic designs and may be termed semi-heraldic in character.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The Japanese mon, or monshō, is very definitely an heraldic symbol, having many parallels in its use with the armorial bearings of Europe. It was used on helmets, shields, and breastplates but was never, as in Europe, large enough to identify the wearer of the armour at any considerable distance. When identification was desired, the mon was displayed on a flag. The mon has been wrongly equated in English with “crest” and in some European languages has been translated erroneously as “coat of arms,” but “emblem” is a more accurate equivalent. It most closely resembles the heraldic badge (distinctive mark used by retainers), however, which in Europe often antedated armorial bearings. Further resemblances to European heraldry in the use of the mon include the decorative use of the symbol on clothes, furniture, and houses, the use on the clothes of retainers of great lords, the legal requirement of registration of the mon (dating from the 17th century), and the reservation of the chrysanthemum mon to the emperor, with junior members of the imperial family using a different variety of the flower. That last distinction corresponds exactly to the rules of heraldic precedence that apply to the European royal families. That areas so far removed from each other as western Europe and Japan should have developed a system of hereditary symbolism independently of one another is not surprising, for in both areas feudalism was the prevailing medieval political and social system. As in Europe, Japanese heraldry survived the obsolescence of armour and remains in widespread use today.
Despite some uninformed opinion to the contrary, tartan has no connection with heraldry. It is simply a pattern of weaving cloth that is by no means restricted to the Scottish Highlands. Armorial bearings were adopted by Highland chiefs in imitation of the Lowland chivalry from the 13th and 14th centuries. The badge of the chief was adopted and used extensively by the members of his clan.
Flags can be heraldic. That of the United Kingdom is certainly so, for it is formed by the amalgamation of the flags of England, Scotland, and Ireland, those showing respectively the Crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, all of which are displayed heraldically. The U.S. flag has a quasi-heraldic character and appears to owe its principal ingredients to the armorial bearings of the first president, George Washington. The flag representing the republic of France, by contrast, is not heraldic, being merely an arrangement of the national colours.
In addition to national flags, there are banners, rectangular pieces of cloth showing the armorial bearings of the owner, and standards, strips of cloth that taper gradually to the end and usually bear heraldic badges. In the hoist (the part of the flag nearest to the staff) a standard will bear either the national cross (e.g., that of St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, or St. Denis) or the owner’s arms.
An early development was the extension of heraldic design from its use by persons or families to its employment by institutions and associations of various kinds, an outgrowth of the concept that an assembly or body of people can be personified as an individual, much as a limited company or corporation is viewed as a legal “person.” Medieval times provided numerous examples of arms borne by municipalities, churches, and colleges. The arms assumed by or granted to an individual are regarded as being a peculiarly personal possession; therefore caution must be used in speaking of family arms. That question can be best dealt with in connection with the royal arms of the sovereign of the United Kingdom.
Those arms are borne in their entirety only by the reigning king or queen. No other member of the royal family is permitted to bear the arms without introducing a “difference,” a mark that will show without doubt that the bearer is not the reigning sovereign. By analogy, the same condition holds for all so-called family arms, which belong to the head of the family; all other members should strictly bear them differenced—that is, with some mark of cadency (a sign indicating the position of the bearer with respect to the head of the family). In Scottish heraldry that rule is very rigidly enforced, but in England and elsewhere it has been allowed to fall into decay, except in the case of the royal family.
Probably the next development in the scope of heraldry was its use by ecclesiastics. The bishops and the abbots of the monasteries used arms on their seals from the 12th century onward. In that variety of heraldic usage, the arms were not those of individuals but of the body they temporarily represented—as also with arms borne by political units such as nations and cities or by educational establishments, many of which date from the Middle Ages.
Scala/Art Resource, New YorkA great extension of medieval heraldry was connected with what came to be called the livery companies. Those were guilds or associations of men in trades whose object was to uphold high standards of craftsmanship. Most of them obtained charters from the crown and were granted arms. Among numerous examples in Britain are the Grocers, the Mercers, and the Glaziers companies. Membership in those still-existing companies no longer entails practice of their particular trades, but they possess property and have great charitable interests as well as considerable social esteem. Their armorial bearings are of great antiquity and are much displayed on their halls, letterheads, glass, silver, and so forth. Obviously, armorial bearings were assumed in the Middle Ages by such military bodies as the Knights Templar, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Teutonic Knights, and the great Spanish orders. Military heraldry has continued to the present: the British military, for example, have badges and in some cases coats of arms, which are in the care of officers of the College of Arms. The newest of the British armed forces, the Royal Air Force, alone makes use of more than 1,000 armorial designs, both coats of arms and badges.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.In the 20th century the development of corporate heraldry went far beyond anything known before. Throughout the world, banks, insurance companies, and many other great commercial concerns were using arms, as were an ever-increasing number of professional, educational, and trade associations. Two events that clearly illustrate the scope of contemporary heraldry are the grants made by the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the Kingdom of Denmark of armorial bearings to two presidents of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, respectively. Because arms are hereditary and their owners are regarded heraldically as of noble status, the grants amounted to a recognition of the nobility of the head of one state by the head of another state.
Drawing by Wm. A. Norman, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The shield is the essential part of an armorial achievement; without it there can be no full heraldic display, except for those of ladies and some senior churchmen, distinctions that call for special treatment. The word shield can be used to describe the coat of arms but in modern times is seldom employed in that way, except in a poetic context. Armorial bearings are generally referred to more briefly as arms or as a coat of arms, a term derived from the surcoat of silk or linen worn over the armour to keep off the rays of the sun and to delay the formation of rust on the armour. The surcoat was a waistcoatlike garment on which were shown the same heraldic insignia as on the shield.
Every other object in a full heraldic achievement is dependent upon the shield or coat of arms. There can be, and quite often is, a coat of arms consisting solely of a shield without any other object, such as a crest surmounted. The heraldry of the Churchills of Muston, a branch of the family to which Sir Winston Churchill belonged, has no crest. The reason is that such families possessed arms before the crest became fashionable and its absence proclaims their ancient status.
In heraldic illustrations shields may be found in many shapes, some quite absurdly unfit for use in battle. The shape used in the illustrations accompanying this article is that of the classic “heater,” the most elegant and, for a mounted knight, the most realistic.
A crest is the object placed on top of the helmet and bound to it by what is known as a “wreath of the colours,” a twist of cloth (part of the mantling) of the two principal colours of the arms. Sometimes, instead of the wreath, the crest will use a coronet or a chapeau (a velvet cap of maintenance lined with ermine). Crests were at first made of leather, later of light wood, and yet later of more valuable materials. They were at first borne in tournaments, and they became general in families in England from the 16th century when the venal heralds of that period persuaded crestless families to acquire the addition for a payment. Today a crest is automatically included in any grant of arms made in England, Scotland, or Ireland.
When horse-drawn carriages were in use, it was the rule to show the whole heraldic insignia on the coach or carriage door. With the advent of motorcars and their smaller door space, the arms were usually omitted and only the crest and motto shown. That development may be the reason for the mistake frequently encountered in which the whole armorial achievement is described as a “crest.” While a coat of arms can exist without a crest, the existence of a crest without a coat of arms is almost an impossibility (the one exception known having been caused by the death of a grantee whose crest had been approved but who still had outstanding when he died a query on a small detail of his arms).
On top of the shield is placed the helmet, upon which the crest is fastened by a wreath, coronet, or chapeau. Originally everything in heraldry was strictly utilitarian. As armorial bearings were used with armour, there had to be a helmet. In later centuries rules for the depiction of the helmet were elaborated to show the rank of the bearer; some helmets were displayed in profile and some in full face, with different metals and accoutrements, to indicate status. The shape of the helmet has varied greatly in heraldic representation. While the basic features of heraldry remain unchanged, the modes in which the insignia are shown have been subject to change and to fashion. The barrel-shaped helmet was used in the 13th century. The tournament helmet, especially popular during the period known as “the Decadence,” was of a different type altogether, its shape resembling that of a soup tureen and often drawn at an absurdly small size and with ridiculous proportions, impossible to wear.
From the helmet hangs the mantling, or lambrequin. When worn, that was made of linen or other cloth and performed the useful function of shielding the wearer from the sun’s rays; it also served to snare or deflect sword cuts. The mantling, or mantle, is painted with the principal colour of the arms, while its lining is of the principal metal. More elaborately styled mantles are used for kings and sovereign princes.
The mantling was one of the components to suffer most from the exaggerated effects of the decadent art of the 17th to 19th centuries, the modest slashing of earlier times being so exaggerated as to make the mantling resemble seaweed. Modern artists have reverted to the elegant and realistic mantling of the classical period.
These are usually emblems of the rank of the bearer. With the abolition of most of the great European monarchies, the study of crowns has become principally of historical and antiquarian interest. The most famous royal crown remaining in use is that of the United Kingdom; it appears in the sovereign’s arms upon the royal helmet and on the crest of the golden lion crowned. Coronets (small crowns specifying the bearer’s rank in the peerage) are emblems of rank that are shown, when depicted, between shield and helmet. In Britain there are different coronets specified for the ranks of baron, viscount, earl, marquess, and duke. On the European continent a much wider use of coronets has prevailed. Among the relics of such usage is the crest coronet, a coronet that supports the crest either instead of the wreath or in addition to it and resting upon it. That is often a ducal coronet, but it does not indicate rank. Another relic is the chapeau, or cap of maintenance, a cap with ermine lining that was once worn on the helmet before the development of mantling and that is sometimes used instead of the wreath to support the crest. In Scotland the chapeau indicates the rank of a feudal baron.
Myths have grown around mottoes—time and again, a phrase or short sentence that began life as an inspiration or exhortation acquired a fantastic explanation. Most of those can be dismissed. Some mottoes are old war cries. Others are puns on the owner’s name or title, such as the Seton war cry of “Set on.” French and Latin are the most popular languages, but Gaelic and Greek also appear.
A motto is not a part of the arms and can be varied in most countries at the owner’s pleasure, though it is included in a modern grant of arms. In Scotland a change of motto requires the approval of the Lord Lyon, the head of the Scottish heralds. More than one motto may be used by the same family, and many mottoes are used by more than one family. In Scottish arms the motto is usually shown above the crest, but in all other countries it appears beneath the shield and always on a scroll.
These are the figures on either side of the shield of arms and are borne (in English heraldry) by peers and by other bearers of orders of the highest class, such as Knights of the Garter, of the Thistle, and of St. Patrick and by Knights Grand Cross. In former times supporters were used more widely, and a few English families still claim the right. In Scotland their use is much more frequent, being allowed, for example, to the heirs of feudal barons who were liable to be called to Parliament before 1592 and to the chiefs of clans and old families.
The ground or foundation on which the supporters stand is called the compartment. In Scotland it is usually a rock or piece of ground and is often strewn with some heraldic object. In England the compartment ought to be shown in the same way, and today it often is, with the scroll of the motto beneath it; but in the debased heraldic art of the 18th and 19th centuries the supporters were generally shown as standing on a piece of ironwork or on the scroll.
The term achievement, properly armorial achievement, means the whole display showing shield, helmet, crest, mantling, wreath, and, if appropriate, additaments such as a motto and supporters. In addition, an achievement may include representations of various knightly orders or companionships of knightly orders to which the owner of the arms is entitled. For example, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, British field marshal and World War II military leader, could show the symbol of the Order of the Garter around his shield; persons with lesser distinctions such as the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and the Order of the British Empire may have the decorations shown pendent from their shields. As distinctions of that kind are not hereditary, on the death of the bearer the successor to the arms must not use representations that show those honours.
Drawing by Wm. A. Norman, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The badge is older than the heraldic system. Such a symbol identifying a person, a body, or an impersonal idea can be found from ancient times. The eagle of Rome was one of the state’s symbols and was the special device of the legions. Many such symbols bring to mind the country they represent; e.g., winged bulls with human faces at once recall Assyria. On Trajan’s Column in Rome, devices sometimes bear resemblance to later heraldic designs. On Etruscan vases are seen what reasonably could be described as demi-boars or bulls’ heads caboshed (facing the viewer and cut off behind the ears). Nearer to heraldic times, the planta genista, or broom plant, which gave its name to the Plantagenet dynasty of England (1154–1485), was a badge of the counts of Anjou before that family had armorial bearings. With the growth of heraldry, badges naturally assumed an heraldic character. They could be varied at the will of the holder, who often had more than one. Badges persist to the present and sometimes accompany grants of arms.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Commonly seen examples of heraldic badges today are those identifying property or institutions of the British government and those worn by Scottish clansmen. The former are usually royal badges many centuries old and include the portcullis, now used by both houses of Parliament, the broad arrow stamped on items of government property, and the crowned harp of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Scotsmen take the crest from the achievement of their chief and encircle it with a strap and buckle, on which is blazoned the chief’s motto or the clan war cry, to form a badge worn on the bonnet or plaid.
Drawing by Wm. A. Norman, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Arms in the Middle Ages were often displayed on fork-tailed pennons attached to lances. If the forked ends were cut away, the resulting flag was similar in shape to a small banner. Especially valorous conduct could be recognized in that way, and the knight thus distinguished was known as a knight banneret. The banner bears its owner’s arms as if it were a square shield, and today most jurisdictions allow anyone who possesses arms to have an heraldic flag in that form. Those can sometimes be seen in Great Britain flying over a house. No banner is mentioned in the grant of arms made to U.S. President Kennedy, but in due course an armorial banner was made for the occasion when his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, carried it to the top of a mountain in Yukon named Mount Kennedy by the Canadian government in memory of the president. The banner bore the Kennedy arms. The maker of the banner added a long white streamer on which he placed a badge based on the Kennedy crest.
On the standard, the principal colours of the arms are shown with the owner’s badge or badges, and in the hoist (the part next to the staff) is shown either the owner’s national cross or the owner’s arms.
Occasionally are seen square flags bearing a full achievement. Those are heraldic flags, but they are not banners or standards. The flag popularly known as the British Royal Standard is really the Royal Banner, and, if it is to be called a standard, then technically it is a square standard. The Royal Standard is a very long, narrow flag whose minimum length of eight yards is laid down by statute. Queen Elizabeth II does not have a royal standard.
In England flags are often seen flying above churches. When those show the flag of St. George (England’s patron saint), white with a red cross, they may carry on a canton the arms of the diocese in which the church is situated. Heraldic flags also fly in some countries in Continental Europe in a similar manner. With the disestablishment of heraldic offices in most European countries, contemporary flags became for the most part nonheraldic.
Provided that a few elementary principles are grasped, enough knowledge of heraldry can be acquired in a relatively short time to enable the student to understand the structure of coats of arms. The multitude of terms used in heraldry need not be worrisome: once the rudiments are learned with some 50 of the terms, the meaning of the large remainder can be ascertained as the occasion arises. For example, when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, some beautifully carved figures were made of the different badges that had been used by her ancestors, figures now displayed at Hampton Court Palace. They include one very rare badge—a yale. The yale is a mythical heraldic animal. Anyone unfamiliar with it could easily ascertain its meaning from the various heraldic glossaries. It is therefore unnecessary to burden the memory with hundreds of terms (an heraldic glossary generally contains about 800 terms).
The language of heraldry has a curious look. Azure three wheat sheaves or has been known to prompt the question, “Or what?” When it is remembered that or is the French for gold, the difficulty diminishes. Much heraldic terminology is a quasi-French, archaic language. In the Middle Ages the French language was used by the ruling class in much of western Europe, so it was not unnatural that heraldic terms should be French. In England by about 1400, English words usually were used in preference. Much modern heraldic terminology, however, is so obscure that it seems purposely designed to puzzle the uninitiated.
The terms dexter and sinister mean merely “right” and “left.” A shield is understood to be as if held by a user whom the beholder is facing. Thus the side of the shield facing the beholder’s left is the dexter, or right-hand side, and that opposite it is the sinister, or left-hand side.
In a blazon (verbal description) of the arms, their field, or background layer, appears first. It may be one of the metals or (gold) or argent (silver), one of the colours gules (red), azure (blue), vert (green), purpure (purple), or sable (black), or one of the furs ermine (a white field with black spots), ermines (a black field with white spots), erminois (gold field with black spots), pean (black field with gold spots), or vair (alternating blue and white figures mimicking the fur of a species of squirrel). Two other colours appear occasionally in British heraldry, murrey (a tint between red and purple) and tenné (orange-tawny). Gold and silver may be represented by yellow and white.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.That background layer may be composed of a mixture of metals, colours, and furs. It may be divided by a line—straight, curved, or jagged—and have perhaps silver on one side of the line and red on the other or blue on one side and ermine on the other. A field of one tincture bearing a single charge of, for example, a lion rampant could be blazoned argent a lion rampant azure, meaning a silver field on which is placed a blue lion standing on one hind leg with its forepaws raised and its head in profile. (Those were the arms used by the first of the Bruce family.)
A colour is very rarely placed upon a colour, a metal upon a metal, or a fur upon a fur. The arms of the kingdom of Jerusalem (argent a cross potent between four crosses or) are the most famous exception to the rule, and the very small number of other known exceptions date from very early times when the error occurred through ignorance rather than, as is sometimes claimed, because the placement was not then thought to be an error. The principle on which that rule is based is one of visibility, and that rule, which bans combinations that are difficult to see, was known before heraldry’s rules came into force.
The field is said to be “charged” with an object. Heraldic objects are of a large and increasing variety; as more arms are devised, new objects appear as charges—telescopes, aircraft, rolls of newsprint, and so on. Charges have been divided into two classes: the honourable ordinaries and other geometric shapes that belong to their subdivision the subordinaries, and what might be described as the other charges. It is best to recognize immediately that the distinction is not of much more than academic interest save in one respect—the ordinaries are the rectilinear figures that have precedence in blazon. So, for example, if a blue shield has a thick golden horizontal strip across its centre and two silver stars above the strip and one below it, the blazon would read azure a fess or between three mullets argent and not azure three mullets argent 2 and 1 a fess or. The fess is an honourable ordinary; the adjective alludes to the ordinary’s precedence, the noun to its geometric simplicity. The division containing the other charges is relatively large, comprising animals, birds, and monsters, human bodies and human parts, reptiles, and an unending list of inanimate objects. Individual commentators seldom agree on the contents of the classifications. A bordure (border) is an ordinary in England, but in Scotland it is never a charge, being reserved for cadency (see below). Some count the roundel as a subordinary, while others consign it to the “others” category as a simple charge.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The honourable ordinaries and subordinaries may be generally agreed as numbering about 20. Among them are: the chief, being the top third of the shield; the pale, a third of the shield, drawn perpendicularly through the centre; the bend, a third of the shield, drawn from the dexter chief to sinister base (when drawn from the dexter base to sinister chief, it is a bend sinister); the fess, a third drawn horizontally and taking up the centre of the shield; and the chevron, resembling an inverted stripe in the rank badge of a noncommissioned officer. It should be noted that the bar is a diminutive of the fess, of the same shape, and can be placed in any part of the shield. The term bar sinister is often incorrectly used in fiction as a symbol for illegitimacy. It has no such significance, illegitimacy being denoted heraldically in several other ways, and a bar, being horizontal, cannot be either dexter or sinister. Since the European nations were Christian when heraldry was invented, the cross appears in many forms in heraldry. The cross in a coat of arms does not imply, however, that the original bearers were Crusaders (although it appears probable that some returning alive added small crosses to their arms to record their gratitude to the specific saints to whom they had prayed).
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The border, or bordure, is in Scotland used as a mark of difference, and in English heraldry since the mid-18th century a bordure compony (alternating sections of two tinctures) has been used to signify illegitimacy. The orle is an inner border, not touching the sides of the shield; the field is seen within and around the orle, giving it the appearance of a shield with the middle cut out (voided, in heraldry). The tressure, much used in Scottish heraldry, is an orle gemel, which suggests twins, and it may indeed be described as an orle divided into two narrow orles set closely together. The small shield used as a charge is an inescutcheon and often is used to bear the arms of an heraldic heiress (a daughter of a family of no sons). The quarter occupies one-fourth of the shield; the canton, smaller than the quarter, is one-third of the chief. Checky, or chequy, describes the field or charge divided into squares of two tinctures, like a checkerboard. Billets are oblong figures. If their number exceeds 10 and they are irregularly placed, the field is described as billetté. The pall, or shakefork, is the upper half of a saltire (St. Andrew’s cross) with the lower half of a pale, forming a Y-shape. The pile is a triangle pointing downward. The flaunch, or flanch, is a segment of a circle drawn from the top of the shield to the base. The lozenge is a parallelogram having equal sides and two acute and two obtuse angles, and a mascle is a lozenge voided. Lozengy is the field divided by diagonal lines intersecting to give the appearance of alternate small lozenges, and the fret is a mascle interlaced with a saltire. The roundel is circular in form and is given different names according to its colour (gold is a bezant, silver is a plate, red is a torteau, blue is a hurt, etc., and if of alternate silver and blue wavy lines it is a fountain).
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.A field is said to be powdered or semé when strewn with minor charges; when charged with drops of liquid, it is gutté. Partition lines divide the shield. The most common ones are straight. Impalement means the division of the shield into two equal parts by a straight line from the top to bottom. That method is used to show either the arms of husband and wife, the arms of the husband being in the dexter half, or certain types of official arms, as the arms of a bishop’s see impaled with his family arms, those of the see being in the dexter half. When dimidiated, the dexter half of the husband’s arms are placed to dexter and the sinister half of the wife’s arms are placed to sinister, the result sometimes producing such charges as the front of a lion joined to the rear of a boat (the arms of the Cinque Ports), while at others producing new arms that appear to be those of a single man. The practice of dimidiation was discontinued. The shield is divided into four quarters when one coat of arms is quartered with another, as when the children of an heraldic heiress use their mother’s arms with their father’s.
Other divisions of a shield are: party per pale (or, simply, per pale), division of the field into two equal parts by a perpendicular line (that resembles the impalement just mentioned but does not serve the same purpose of combining arms); party per fess, division into two equal parts by a horizontal line; party per bend; party per chevron; party per saltire; and gyronny of eight. When the partition lines are not straight, they can be of several varieties.
Fanciful explanations have been advanced to account for heraldic colours and charges: for example, argent to denote purity, the bend derived from the military cross belt—the cross a sign of a Crusading ancestor—and so on. Since no one wrote about heraldry until it had existed for more than 200 years, those explanations of its symbolism can be discounted. With very few exceptions, the origin of the charges is unknown. One of those exceptions is the Stourton arms (sable a bend or between six fountains), which refer to the six springs in the park of the ancestral estate that are the source of the River Stour. An heraldic fountain does not resemble a real fountain but is put in the form of roundel wavy argent and azure (a silver and blue circlet of wavy lines), unless it is expressly stated that the fountain is proper—i.e., a natural fountain. The word proper is always used to denote a charge shown in its natural colours or natural form.
Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, London; photograph, Patrick RossmoreThe derivation of heraldic charges is more easily discerned in the augmentations of honour, as they are called, when something has been added to a coat of arms by the (British) crown in recognition of services rendered. The arms of the British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson show new heraldic charges added to his ancestral arms as his victories were won. Within the past 300 years, augmentations have generally been recorded. An example is the augmentation granted by Queen Victoria to commemorate the discovery by the English explorer John Hanning Speke of the sources of the Nile. The honour, granted posthumously, consisted of the addition to the existing arms of a chief azure upon which appeared a representation of flowing water proper superinscribed with the word Nile in gold lettering. Numerous historical instances of augmentations of honour occurred in continental Europe, especially in connection with the Holy Roman emperors. Frederick II, for example, granted to Conrad Malaspina an augmentation of a chief of the empire, thereby adding an eagle displayed sable to the Malaspina arms of per fess gules and or overall a thorn branch vert with five flowers argent in pale.
Heraldic descriptions are called blazons. The term is derived from the French blason, the etymology of which is uncertain. Originally it denoted the shield of arms itself and still retains that meaning, but it is now generally used in a derivative sense as meaning the description of the arms. Blazon is thus a noun, and there is also the verb to blazon—i.e., to describe a coat of arms.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.There are four generalizations that are useful in the deciphering of blazons. First, early coats of arms are simple because they were original and there were so few of them that elaborate differentiation was not required. As time brought many more coats of arms into being, simple coats became more rare, and the passing of warlike usage allowed arms to become much more complex. Second, punning, or canting, arms are very common as, for example, trumpets for Trumpington, or a spear for Shakespeare. It is notable, however, that many armorial allusions that were formerly obvious now require research for elucidation. Other allusions have been lost entirely. Third, in grants of arms to people bearing the same name but having no relationship with each other, difference marks were included. Again, in consequence, blazons have become much more complicated. Finally, in the course of centuries and frequent intermarriages among arms bearers, many quarterly and grandquarterly coats have appeared. Quarterly and grandquarterly coats are more difficult to describe than the simple coats.
Apart from the ordinaries and those other charges that here have been mentioned incidentally, there are some peculiarities of heraldic charges that need to be noted. Mythical birds and animals are much used, the product of ancient and medieval natural history—or the lack of it. Such are the dragon, griffin, wyvern, harpy, phoenix, and martlet. In addition, there are some creatures bearing the names of real animals but not resembling them in all respects. The heraldic tiger is more like a lion or a wolf in some features. When the real tiger became known to heraldry, it was described as a Bengal tiger. The heraldic description of animals is very important. Rampant means on the hind legs with the head in profile, while rampant guardant is the same posture but full-faced. Reguardant means looking back; passant, walking. Combattant signifies two animals fighting on hind legs. Couchant is lying down; dormant, sleeping; and sejant, sitting. A beast of the hunt is called at gaze when looking full-face, trippant when at trot with one foot raised, and statant when standing. Part of an animal may be a charge, e.g., a demilion or demiwolf or the gamb (foreleg) of a lion or bear. Heads are described as erased when cut off by a jagged line, couped when cut by a straight line, and caboshed when the severed head looks straight forward out of the shield and has no neck. A bird shown with wings expanded is said to be displayed. Creatures placed back-to-back are addorsed. A fabulous bird, the phoenix, is known to heraldry; also known is the legendary pelican that fed her young on her own blood and was then called “in her piety,” being considered an emblem of Jesus Christ, who fed or redeemed his flock with his own blood. The martlet is another fabulous bird, widely known outside heraldry because of John Milton’s reference to the herald’s martlet, which has no legs or beak. It is a frequent charge, resembling a swallow, and is used in cadency to denote the fourth son. Other terms have special heraldic significance. Armed is used of the horns, teeth, or claws of a beast, or the beak or talons of a bird, and of the human being when in armour. The term slipped applies to flowers and fruit when the stalk is seen. Counterchanged refers to arms with a field of two tinctures, a metal and a colour, when one is the background for charges of the other tincture on one side of the shield but the relationship is reversed on the other side. An example is the Warner arms: per bend argent and gules two bendlets between six roses all counterchanged, where the three roses on argent will be gules and the three on the gules will be argent.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.A method has been devised to indicate heraldic colours in black-and-white illustrations. Known as the system of Sylvester Petra-Sancta, an Italian herald, it makes use of the following equivalents: argent is denoted by a plain field, or by dots or points, gules by perpendicular lines, azure by horizontal lines, vert by lines from dexter chief to sinister base, purpure by lines from sinister chief to dexter base, and sable by crossed lines horizontal and perpendicular. Furs are depicted with black or white spots on the appropriate ground; vair and countervair are shown by alternate lines and plain surfaces.
The describing, or blazoning, of arms must always begin with an identification of the field of the shield, such as argent or gules or ermine. For a lady who is not married, the arms normally appear on a lozenge, not a shield, but the field or ground in that instance, too, must be the start of the blazon. Then come the charges. A typical blazon is thus: sable a chevron ermine between three lions rampant argent crowned or (arms ascribed to a man of the name of Hinstoke). The field is black, the chevron is a fur, and the lions are silver, appear above and below the chevron, and have gold crowns. One important feature in heraldic writing is economy of words. Technically it should be possible to avoid punctuation marks, thus azure a fess between three stags trippant or (Hind). Here both fess and stags are in gold. When three beasts are depicted, they are shown in the most convenient way around the main charge—that is to say, two in the upper part of the shield and one below. A straightforward coat with only one charge on the field is that of the Italian Segni family of Agnani, which gave to the church the Popes Innocent III, Gregory IX, and Alexander IV: gules an eagle displayed chequy sable and or. Economy, however, may confuse the student, as in the following: azure a lion rampant double queued barry of ten argent and gules armed and langued of the last crowned or, within a bordure of the second and third (Mountbatten). Here is an example of a usage that grew up in past centuries and was designed to avoid repetition of the name of a tincture but may be difficult for the newcomer. Of the last means that the lion’s claws and tongue are in red, or gules. Of the second and third means simply argent and gules, the second and third tinctures to be mentioned.
The helmet is the next item to be characterized, although in blazons it is usually taken for granted and left undescribed. When it is mentioned, it is said to be befitting his degree. Although the helmet need not appear in written descriptions, it always should be depicted in illustrations of a man’s arms. It is bad heraldry when the helmet is absent and the crest is airborne above the shield, unsupported. In formal blazons the wreath (also called the torse) is given as well; thus, crest—on a wreath of the colours, a wolf passant proper (Trelawny). The wreath is not usually mentioned, however, because like the helmet it is always assumed to be there. The term colours refers to the two principal colours of the arms. As with the shield, the older the crest, the simpler it will be. Most people can envisage on a knight’s helmet the figure of a wolf walking, but it is difficult to picture someone in armour wearing on his head the stern of a Spanish man-of-war on waves of the sea all proper thereon inscribed “San Josef” with the motto above, “Faith and Works” (Nelson). That latter example belongs to the period of decadent heraldry in the late 18th century and 19th century in England.
The mantling, or lambrequin, is mentioned in formal descriptions but not in general usage. The supporters and compartment pertain only to a few classes of arms bearers, and in descriptions the supporters are blazoned after the crest (or crests). The compartment is not usually described but sometimes has to be, as in the arms of the earl of Perth: supporters (two savages, which means two ancient Caledonians) stand on a compartment strewn with caltraps (from caltrops, iron instruments designed to maim horses’ feet and used by the Scots with great effect in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn).
The motto comes at the end of the description. The badge is rarely found, except among very ancient families (and, by a strange inversion, in some 20th-century grants), but when it occurs it, too, comes at the end of the blazon. It can be very simple, as with that of Lord Mowbray, Segrave, and Stourton—a sledge or. It may be very elaborate, as with Constantine—a hurt (i.e., a blue roundel) charged with a leopard’s face and surmounted upon the edge with two fleurs-de-lis in pale or, and as many roses in fess, argent, barbed and seeded proper. In that example the roses are silver but the leaves are proper (lifelike). Coronets of rank are not usually mentioned in English or Scottish heraldry, but caps of maintenance and crest coronets must be blazoned with the crest. Banners and standards are not as a rule mentioned in blazons, though they may be when they occur in a modern grant.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Cadency is the use of various devices designed to show a man’s position in a family, with the aforementioned basic aim of reserving the entire arms to the head of the family and to differentiate the arms of the rest, who are the cadets, or younger members. Heraldic works in the 16th century refer to cadency marks as: a label for the eldest son during his father’s lifetime; a crescent for the second son; a mullet (five-pointed star) for the third; a martlet (a mythical bird), the fourth; an annulet (a small ring), the fifth; a fleur-de-lis, the sixth; a rose, the seventh; and so forth. Those marks were not always used in the Middle Ages. Differences might be shown instead by a change of tincture, by adding small charges to the field, or other alterations. Both on the Continent and in England, rules of cadency have long ceased to be used. It is customary for all members of a family to use the entire arms of the head. There are, however, two exceptions. Very occasionally a crescent is used for difference by a noble family showing descent from a second son. The other exception occurs in the arms of the British royal family, in which the cadency system is strict. The reason is that the royal arms are arms of sovereignty and cannot be shared. The sovereign alone can have the whole undifferenced arms. Nor does any member of the royal family—not even the Prince of Wales—have any right to the use of arms until they have been granted to him by the sovereign. A label of difference with marks is placed on the arms; a three-pronged label for the children of the sovereign, a five-pronged label for grandchildren. The Duke of Windsor, after his abdication as Edward VIII in 1936, was granted arms with a label.
In Scotland the position on cadency is very different. Since heraldry is regulated in Scotland by acts of the Scottish Parliament before the Union in 1707 with England and is confirmed by the British Parliament, the regulation of arms is very precise. The strict observance of cadency is probably because the Celtic clans formed the original social system in Scotland before the advent of feudalism. Thus only the chief of the name can have the entire arms. He matriculates, or enters his arms, in the registers of the Lord Lyon King of Arms (whose court has jurisdiction over armorial bearings in Scotland). That registration also applies to his eldest son (subject to suitable differencing of the arms), who inherits them in due course. The younger sons must petition for a matriculation of the paternal arms with a suitable difference indicating the position of each in the family. As families from the descendants of the original grantee continue to be established, so there is matriculation and rematriculation, in a carefully prescribed manner.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Arms of ladies are shown during spinsterhood or widowhood on a lozenge or an oval (not on a shield), without a crest (except in Scotland, where a lady who is chief of a clan and head of the name, such as the late Dame Flora MacLeod of MacLeod, is allowed a crest). A lady divorced and not remarried also uses a lozenge or oval, and she reverts to her paternal arms. The current rules allow a married lady to display her arms (either her own arms, if she is a peer in her own right, or her paternal arms) on a shield in any of the following ways: (1) her arms in conjunction with her husband’s by impalement, the division of the shield into two equal portions, the husband’s arms on the dexter and his wife’s on the sinister, (2) her husband’s arms alone on a shield, with the addition of a small lozenge to indicate that they are his arms, or (3) her arms alone on a shield, with a small escutcheon to show that they are her arms. Should she be a heraldic heiress, the arms of her family are placed upon an inescutcheon of pretence (a small shield whose position at the fess point of the husband’s shield gives it precedence over all other parts of the shield). The only exception to those rules for ladies is that of a queen regnant such as Elizabeth II, who, being sovereign and thus herself the source of honour for all her subjects, possesses the full arms of sovereignty of her royal house and kingdom.
In the quarterings and the marshaling (arrangement of more than one coat of arms on the same shield), the position of heiresses must be considered first. The children of an heraldic heiress are entitled on her death to quarter her arms with their father’s (the arrangement is to show the shield divided into four quarters so that quarters 1 and 4 are the father’s arms, 2 and 3 the mother’s). Such positioning of the quarterings is also used in England when an additional surname and arms are taken, almost always in obedience to a will. That is the “name and arms” clause peculiar to British law. Its operation over the past 200 years is responsible for the double- or triple-barreled surname found in England and also in Scotland. Thus in Salusbury-Trelawny, the original Trelawny arms appear in quarters 1 and 4 and the assumed additional arms for Salusbury in 2 and 3. A famous historical case is that of King Edward III of England, who in 1340 claimed the throne of France in right of his mother, daughter and eventual heiress of King Philip IV. He then quartered the lilies of France (the fleurs-de-lis) with the lions (leopards) of England. England might have been placed in 1 and 4, but Edward gave that position to France, recognizing its seniority as a kingdom. In that form, the royal arms continued until 1800, when the empty title of King of France was dropped and the lilies went out with it.
When quarters are inherited from a lady in England, no crest is transmitted with them, because a lady cannot pass on a crest. (The situation in Scotland is different.) The matter alters, however, when additional arms are taken in obedience to a will; then a double crest is likely. There is no reason why a further assumption may not occur, so that triple or quadruple hyphenated names are found: for example, the English county family Sawbridge-Erle-Drax has quarterly arms, 1 and 4 Drax, 2 Erle, and 3 Sawbridge. That type of quartering is not difficult to follow, but a real problem in marshaling several coats in one shield arises when more than one heraldic heiress occurs in the same family. Some families of long descent have often married heraldic heiresses in several generations, acquiring many quarters. A splendid instance of quartering occurred in the achievement of the Holy Roman empress Maria Theresa. Before her accession to the imperial throne she was Queen of Hungary and Bohemia and by marriage Grand Duchess of Tuscany. As a sovereign in her own right she bore a shield on which there were 29 quarters.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.A case that may be unique in English heraldry is illustrated here. A coheiress of the Earl of Louth married the Earl of Howth as his first wife and gave him four daughters, of whom one survived to marry, becoming the first wife of the Earl of Annesley, and to give him one daughter. After parting from their wives (one through her death, one through divorce), the two Earls remarried, and their next wives provided them with heirs male. The daughters of those two Earls thus were heiresses of their maternal lines and could transmit their mothers’ arms to their offspring but not their fathers’ arms. The first of the three lozenges bears the arms of the Earl of Louth as his daughter and coheiress bore them as a maiden. As a wife she placed those arms on an escutcheon of pretence in the centre of her husband’s shield. The second lozenge shows the arms of her daughter as she would bear them after her mother had died and while she was still a maiden. Her father’s arms may be seen on a canton. After her marriage the contents of the lozenge were placed on an escutcheon of pretence on her husband’s shield. The third lozenge shows the arms of the granddaughter after her mother’s death and while a maiden. Her father’s arms may be seen on a second canton.
Sometimes a hundred or more quarters are attributed to the head of a family, but such displays are artificial in that they claim only to show marriage connections over a period of several centuries, and arms in those many quarters are the arms of wives, not of heiresses. That type of display belongs principally to ex libris bookplates of the 19th century but may occasionally be seen engraved on silver.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Even without very large numbers of arms to place, the marshaling of quarterings may still be complicated. An interesting example is the marshaling of several coats of arms for the Cameron-Ramsay-Fairfax-Lucy family of baronets. The arms are said to be quarterly with the arms of Lucy in 1 and 4. Then in 2 the blazon begins grandquarter counterquartered. That means that quarter 2 is itself a quarterly coat, 1 and 4 of which are for Fairfax, 2 for Ramsay, and 3 itself yet another quarterly coat of which 1 and 4 are for Montgomery, 2 and 3 for Edmonstone (and with a crescent for difference at the fess point). The third grandquarter is for Cameron. In the centre of the shield the small inescutcheon bearing the red hand of Ulster indicates that the owner is a baronet.
In modern times in some countries the granting of arms to private persons has ceased, although grants of corporate arms are frequent. Historically it was an easy passage from the arms of individuals to those of corporate bodies. That is particularly evident in the military sphere, where the great Crusading orders led to the creation of important orders of chivalry in the principal European countries. The Elephant of Denmark, the Golden Fleece of Spain and of Austria, the Holy Spirit of France, the Garter of England, and the Thistle of Scotland were all preceded by the orders of military monks, and all have insignia that contain heraldic features and that feature in many armorial illustrations. Most of the older bishops’ sees have official arms; in the Anglican church the missionary bishops as well as the diocesan bishops have arms. In the Roman Catholic church the episcopal sees all have arms; new arms are granted by the Pope, who, as head of the Vatican state, is a temporal sovereign as well as spiritual head of the church. The arms of the popes sometimes contain charges that are added to their personal arms after their election to the papacy or to earlier ecclesiastical office.
Arms of Canada is a protected symbol and is reproduced by the permission of the Government of CanadaDominion and colonial arms are necessarily linked to royal arms, since the British crown in each country is or was the fount of honour and must have granted arms to its various territories. Because of the vast extent of the British Empire, the richest collection of arms of dominion is to be found in the numerous members of the Commonwealth. Canada, for instance, has arms for the sovereign of Canada as authorized by George V in 1921, and the 12 provinces of Canada have similar arms approved by the sovereign. Much the same is true of the former French colonies, though there was no sovereign to grant the arms. The arms of political units are used throughout the Western world. The cities and boroughs of the United Kingdom, for example, have their heraldry, as do the U.S. states.
Many writers argue that it was not until a generation after the First Crusade that unmistakable evidence of heraldic designs appear, but what evidence there is has to be interpreted within the definition of heraldry. If heraldry is to be considered as the tight discipline developed over the following centuries and, in popular perception, centred on shields, then perhaps the beginnings may be seen in 1127 when King Henry I of England hung an armorial shield around the neck of Geoffrey of Anjou, his future son-in-law. However, in Flanders and in northeastern France hereditary symbols later recognized as heraldic were in use on coins much earlier, the colours of heraldry (probably with basic symbols) were employed on banners for the purpose of identity in battle, and some of the shields on the Bayeux Tapestry (sewn in the late 11th century by women unlearned in the science of heraldry) show designs similar to the gyronny shields borne later by Flemish descendants of men who fought at Hastings.
So there are two schools of thought. Those who insist that heraldry did not begin until the 12th century subconsciously define heraldry as the system of hereditary identification that began in the 12th century. The other school points to the undeniable existence of identification for families and battle formations in biblical times, the continuation of such systems during the Roman era, plus their later use by Charlemagne, and this school believes that the allocation of an arbitrary date for a specific stage in the long evolution of heraldry contributes nothing to scholarship.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a pictorial record of everyday life and warfare at the time of the Norman Conquest of England. The English and Norman soldiers are armed alike. In a few scenes some of the invaders have designs on their shields that have a vague heraldic resemblance. In scene VIII of the tapestry, four of the followers of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, have shields with these devices: some kind of creature holding what appears to be a fish in its mouth, a rough design emerging from the left side of the shield, a cross, and an animal resembling a sheep. In scene XII William the Conqueror’s messenger bears a winged creature on his shield, and this reappears in scenes XIII and XV. In scene XVIII a cross or a variant of it is seen on a shield, but this was perhaps a boss (metal protuberance) to strengthen it. Scene LXXV has an invader with a design of a birdlike creature on the shield, but generally Norman shields have only bosses in the middle. It is in the many very different flags that evidence of inchoate heraldry may be discerned, and, although the illustrations were executed by ladies uninformed of heraldic convention, the flags have sufficient detail as to suggest the identity of Boulogne (or three torteaux) and Alost (sable a chief argent) among other Flemish nobles. The Counts of Alost and Boulogne were among the best-rewarded when William shared out England among his army’s leaders, so one would expect the tapestry to recognize the value of their contribution by identifying them with their flags. (The Count of Boulogne appears also, with a flag bearing the arms his sons would later fly above Jerusalem.)
In 1066, at the time of the Conquest, heraldry, by a modern definition, appears not to have existed anywhere outside Flanders and such bordering counties as Ponthieu. The most that can be said is that possibly some of the rudiments owed to the Flemish influence and out of which heraldry emerged were present. Thirty years later, during the First Crusade, the situation was in flux. The Crusade’s commander was Godfrey of Bouillon, brother of the new Count of Boulogne and son of the Conqueror’s ally. His nobles most certainly had banners, but, apart from the one Godfrey would hoist over Jerusalem after his entry, a cross potent between four crosses or, we do not know their blazons.
The Alexiad, the history of Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (reigned 1081–1118) written by his daughter, Anna Comnena, contains a vivid description of the “Frankish barbarians”—as the Crusaders were called by the civilized Byzantines. She gave a careful account of the Crusaders’ armour. She said that Alexius exhorted his archers to shoot at the Franks’ horses rather than at their riders, whose armour rendered them almost invulnerable.
For the Frankish weapon of defence is this coat of mail, ring plaited into ring, and the iron fabric is such excellent iron that it repels arrows and keeps the wearer’s skin unhurt. An additional weapon of defence is a shield which is not round, but a long shield, very broad at the top and running out to a point, hollowed out slightly inside, but externally smooth and gleaming with a brilliant boss of molten brass.
The shields in her description are similar to those depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, and it would appear that none of those she saw bore a design worth noting.
The new student of heraldry may accept that standards bearing symbols have been in use for thousands of years, that their use in battle prompted the need for clear identification based on colour, that the continuation of ancestry and loyalty tended to make the systems hereditary, and that population growth required a larger number of designs and thus small increases in complexity that would allow blood relationships and alliances to be noted. Twelfth-century heraldry emerged from these developments and, although it appears now to have been based primarily on the personal shield (which in battle was soon disfigured by mud and gore), it continued the evolution of flag identification.
The earliest tangible evidence of 12th-century heraldry is in an enamel at the Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, France, made not earlier than 1151, showing Geoffrey IV of Anjou bearing the shield his father-in-law gave him. It is blue with golden lions rampant (the exact number of lions is not discernible because of the position in which the shield is depicted). Seals bearing heraldic devices and dating from 1136 are still in existence.
As body armour became all-enveloping, a means of distinguishing men in full armour acquired greater importance and accelerated the spread of heraldry. Another factor was the Crusades, in which it was useful to distinguish quickly between men from different lands with different languages, men whose liege lords might be pursuing quite different objectives.
Within a few years heraldry spread throughout all Western Christendom. The first English king who indisputably bore arms was the Crusader Richard I (the Lion-Heart; 1157–99). The three gold lions of England have been used by every English royal house since his time.
The earliest body of evidence of heraldic insignia is found in seals, large numbers of which have been preserved in England, France, and Germany, with fewer surviving in Spain and Italy. For the first century of heraldry, seals supply the bulk of information. It is from seals that the rise and development of the English royal arms can be traced. Seals from the first years of Richard I’s reign show the design of a lion rampant to the left side. Some scholars believe that two lions were used, since only half of the shield can be seen. Seals from the end of Richard’s reign bear the three leopards that have been used by all subsequent English sovereigns. (In the early days of heraldry a lion was featured upright or on its four paws according to the number of animals on the shield. One alone fitted the shape of the shield more easily when upright. Three fitted the shape better if their bodies were horizontal. Initially, whatever posture, they were termed lions, but subsequently the horizontal variety was given the name of leopard, the three lions passant guardant of England becoming three leopards guardant. This usage still exists in France and, although now obsolete in England, will often be met in history books.)
Although it was the practice for kings to break the seals of their predecessors and to take new ones for their own reign, the nobles inherited and continued to use their father’s seals. This was advantageous for several obvious reasons and was one of the factors that reinforced the heredity factor in heraldry.
The adoption of the same coat of arms by successors in sovereign dynasties is found also in the royal arms of Sweden and of Denmark; but, unlike the English, those royal families place their family arms on an inescutcheon in the middle of the shield.
Courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries, LondonNext to seals as evidence of heraldic usage come the rolls of arms, which in England date from about 1250. These are lists of the arms of persons who were present on a particular occasion, such as at a tournament or on a military expedition. The rolls contain the blazons (the descriptions of the arms in the heralds’ technical language) and sometimes “tricked” drawings, “tricking” being the use of arrows and abbreviations to denote the tinctures of the arms—the tinctures being the metals, colours, and furs used. England and Belgium (especially Flanders) are rich in the rolls of arms. France, Spain, and Scotland have fewer surviving examples. In place of the rolls, collections of painted books of arms have been preserved in Germany. A notable roll is the Armorial de Berry, dating from about 1445, the work of a French herald, Gilles le Bouvier, who traveled widely and recorded arms borne in France, England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, and other European countries.
Picturepoint, LondonAnother very important source of information on heraldry is to be found in representations on stone, wood, glass, and brass and in books and engravings. Over the gateway of Bodiam Castle in Sussex can be seen the arms cut in stone of three owners of the castle—the families of Bodiam (who took their name from the place), Wardedieux, and Dalyngrygge. Of such arms nothing would be known without these centuries-old memorials. In Rome many examples of the arms of various popes occur in their palaces and other buildings—the bees of the Barbarini pope Urban VIII, for example, in the Palazzo Venezia. Heraldic glass is usually much more recent in origin but of immense value in supplying information as it is always in colour, while other memorials often are not. Very few churches of any great age in western Europe are without armorial illustration. Switzerland in particular has splendid memorials in stained glass; for example, the Protestant cathedral in Bern has windows that are aflame with glorious heraldic colours. Sweden has a fine collection of coloured plaques of arms in the House of Nobility in Stockholm. In the Frederiksborg Castle at Hillerød, Denmark, may be seen the shields of the Knights of the Order of the Elephant, in which can be read the history of heraldry over several centuries.
Brasses in churches provide a major contribution. It was formerly the custom to put a brass tablet over the grave slab, and on this would be shown a figure of the deceased with his armorial bearings. Many fine examples of these are found in old English churches. A very fine collection of floor brasses is in the small church of Stopham in Sussex, which has been the memorial place of the local Barttelot family for many centuries. Also found in churches are hatchments, heraldic paintings on wood that were made for deceased persons and hung over their house doors, to be set up later in the local church where they have often been preserved.
From heraldry’s origin on the fields of medieval tournaments and battles have come the colourful figures of the English College of Arms, who of heralds now alone, save for their Scottish colleagues, possess a high position in the modern world. The Lord Lyon King of Arms, the head of the Scottish heralds, derives his office from a much higher source than do the heralds in other parts of Europe. The Sennachie, or official bard of the king of Scots, was the record keeper of the old Celtic kingdom of Scotland, and from the Sennachie is derived the Lord Lyon, a great officer of state in Scotland.
The older statements found in many books that the medieval heralds were either identical to or in some way connected with the old Greek kēryx or Latin fetialis need only be stated to be dismissed. Since ancient times men have been found who, because their persons were accepted as sacred, were able to carry messages and other communications between nations either hostile or strange to one another. These ambassadors bore several names before the development of a diplomatic corps. In the earlier Middle Ages, for instance, churchmen, monks, or priests were used for this type of service. When William the Conqueror sent a messenger to Harold II of England, it was a monk who carried William’s denunciation of Harold. Heralds, as we understand that term today, did not then exist.
As they ascended the social scale, heralds began to serve as ambassadors between the different courts, a function that was still theirs in the first half of the 17th century. In 1627, for example, Sir Henry St. George was joined in a commission with Lord Spencer and Peter Young to present the insignia of the Order of the Garter to Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden, who then knighted Sir Henry and granted him an augmentation to his arms showing the royal arms of Sweden.
At first every great noble had his herald, and the royal heralds were distinguished from the others by the greater importance of their masters. Gradually it came about that a king would form his heralds into a college or corporation. The king of France did so in 1407, but it was not until 1484 that the king of England followed by establishing the College of Arms (now housed for 400 years on the same site in London). Sometimes incorrectly called the Heralds’ College, it has outlived all similarly elaborate establishments in Europe, except that in Scotland. Outside Great Britain, heraldic offices today are found in Sweden, Denmark, the Republic of Ireland, and Spain and, outside Europe, in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
The College of Arms is under the control of the Earl Marshal, an office that has been hereditary in the family of the Duke of Norfolk since the 1660s. The holder of the dukedom is always Earl Marshal. Below him are 13 officers of arms, three kings of arms (Garter, Norroy and Ulster, and Clarenceux), six heralds (Windsor, Richmond, York, Lancaster, Chester, and Somerset), and four pursuivants (Rouge Dragon, Rouge Croix, Bluemantle, and Portcullis). These medieval names are derived from connections with royalty, titles, badges, or orders of knighthood. Pursuivants are “followers,” or junior heralds. In Scotland the Lord Lyon has three heralds (Albany, Marchmont, and Rothesay) and four pursuivants (Carrick, Kintyre, Unicorn, and Ormond). In England the officers are not civil servants but members of the sovereign’s household (although their incorporation in 1484 separated them from the sovereign’s domestic staff, in contrast to Scotland, where the heralds are still the sovereign’s “familiar daylie servitors”). In England the fees earned by the heralds belong to the College of Arms; in Scotland they belong to the government’s treasury. In both countries heralds extraordinary are appointed for special reasons or functions, and in both countries certain high-ranking peers maintain their own pursuivants.
In England an important development came with the heraldic visitations. From 1530 in the reign of Henry VIII to 1686 in the reign of James II, commissions were issued by the sovereign to the heralds directing them to proceed to a county in England or Wales and to inspect the arms in use there. The records of these visitations have been preserved and constitute a valuable body of genealogy as well as of heraldry. From the period of the visitations the heralds compiled huge collections of family history and pedigrees.
For about a half century before the foundation of the College of Arms, the English heralds are found to be issuing grants of arms on behalf of the sovereign. This is some 300 years after the first appearance of heraldry, which obviously much antedated not only royal colleges or corporations of heralds but even the existence of heralds themselves. From this evidence, it seems that in the early days of heraldry men may have assumed arms without reference to any authority. A very simple coat of arms would not be difficult to invent. That three unrelated persons from three different counties could bear the same arms, as is documented in the famous Scrope v. Grosvenor case of the 14th century, is not only not surprising but tends to indicate that the arms were self-chosen. Scrope v. Grosvenor was referred to King Richard II, and his judgment was final. While it is reasonably certain, however, that a majority of ancient arms were probably self-assumed, many early nobles bore arms that clearly referred to the arms of their liege lords—Kirkpatrick, Jardine, and Johnstone toward Bruce, for example—and if this required permission, as seems practical, such permission would have been in the nature of a grant. A progress from this to the king alone making grants would have been natural as the government of the realm became more centralized.
The earliest writing on heraldry extant is a short treatise by Bartolo da Sassoferrato, Tractatus de insigniis et armis (“Treatise on Insignia and Arms”), which was published about 1356. In his small book Bartolo describes the various categories of armorial bearings and how they have been assumed. He refers specifically to arms granted by a prince and gives reasons for their value but asks why one man may not bear arms identical with those of another. In 1355 Bartolo had been sent to Pisa from Perugia as an envoy to the Holy Roman emperor, Charles IV, from whom he received many privileges, including a grant of arms, which were the same as those of the emperor as king of Bohemia but with changed tincture: or a lion rampant with two tails gules. An American scholar, L.M. Mladen, remarked of this grant and others made by Charles IV at the same time:
Charles was in all probability the first ruler ever to grant arms. To my knowledge, no earlier occurrence has been found.
The first English heraldic writer was John of Guildford, or Johannes de Bado Aureo, whose Tractatus de armis (“Treatise on Arms”) was produced about 1394. Then came a Welsh treatise by John Trevor, the Llyfr arfau (“Book of Arms”). Nicholas Upton, a canon of Salisbury Cathedral, about 1440 wrote De studio militari (“On Military Studies”). John of Guildford’s treatise was printed in 1654 with Upton’s work and the Aspilogia of Sir Henry Spelman by Sir Edward Bysshe, Garter King of Arms, who edited and annotated all three works. The whole was in Latin; no complete English version of Upton’s book has been published.
These books are by authorities who were concerned with the realities of heraldry in their own day, but from the end of the 15th century a tendency away from the actual and toward the fanciful and absurd manifested itself. Some of these far-fetched conceits showed themselves in The Boke of Saint Albans (1486) by Juliana Berners, and yet, by comparison with the vast mass of nonsense contained in the folios of the 16th century, such conceits were not entirely unreasonable. The works of Sir John Ferne, Blazon of Gentrie (1586), Gerard Legh, The Accedens of Armorie (1562), and John Guillim, A Display of Heraldrie (1610), not only perpetuate the nonsensical natural history of olden days but are largely responsible for erroneous beliefs about heraldic charges having definite symbolic meanings and their being granted as rewards for valorous deeds—beliefs that today are perpetuated by the vendors of mail-order and shopping mall “family coats of arms.”
Much greater significance was attached in former times to heraldic insignia than is acknowledged today, although the attitude varied from country to country. Heraldry has become more widespread than at any other time, but as a sign of rank in popular perception its value is much reduced.
A distinction may be made between the Continent and Great Britain regarding medieval and later heraldry. The doctrine of seize quartiers (“16 quarters”) prevailed over most of the Continent but not in Britain. This theory required that, in order for a person to claim a specific degree of nobility, all of his 16 great-great-grandparents should have been entitled to bear arms. This, the “proof of the seize quartiers,” was the reason Frederick the Great of Prussia, though professing the views of the Enlightenment in the Age of Reason, diligently scrutinized his courtiers’ quarterings. The principle is based on the rigidity of a noble caste that married only with its own kind. On the Continent every member of a noble family is noble, as is reflected in the enormous numbers of titles. Similarly, the Continental royalty tended to marry only with other royal families. As a result both royal and noble families formed a class apart from the bulk of the people.
Continental heraldic insignia, therefore, from their origins until the late 18th century, provided symbols to indicate a higher caste. Yet, strangely, in several countries heraldry was in wide general use as a means of identification, serving in the same way as a surname. In France, for example, it is abundantly clear that from the 13th century not only the bourgeoisie of the towns but also the peasants bore heraldic arms. The usage had percolated down from the noble class. The earliest example of the use of arms by a peasant is that of Jaquier le Brebiet in 1369; his arms show a punning allusion to his name: three sheep (brebis) held by a girl. In other European lands—e.g., Hungary and the Low Countries—burgher or peasant arms were also found, but neither in these lands nor in France were their possessors regarded as noble.
In France the regulations of arms followed a quite different course from those in England. Although King Charles VI had in 1407 led the way in creating a college of arms, over the next two centuries his heralds lost influence. Unlike their Scottish and English counterparts, they had no power to grant arms, and they gradually faded into insignificance. To overcome the loss, Louis XIII in 1615 appointed a juge géneral d’armes (“general judge of arms”), an official whose powers resembled those of the Lord Lyon in Scotland. But the French royal government was lax about the possession of arms. A decree of Louis XIV in 1696, designed to raise money, ordered all persons who bore arms to register them. Those who were not part of the arms-bearing population were forced to buy arms. Later, in 1760, an ordinance was framed by which the lesser townsfolk, artisans, and peasants were to be excluded from the use of arms—after these classes had borne them for 400 years. But the Parlement of Paris refused to allow the ordinance to be implemented, and then later, during the French Revolution (1789), arms were suppressed as signs of feudalism.
The view of arms was and remains quite different in England. The Continental system of a noble caste has not existed in England since early medieval days, and the past seven centuries have rarely seen the use of caste to prevent vertical movement in society, even though it has usually impeded it. The landed gentry, recognized as Britain’s untitled aristocracy, intermarried with the peerage families and were recognizable as a caste, and a noble caste at that, identifiable by their arms, but its membership was not protected by law and privilege to the degree prevalent on the Continent. Younger sons of the peerage families dropped into the landed gentry with a small legacy or through marriage, and a couple of generations later their younger grandsons might be yeoman farmers or city merchants or professional officers in the army or navy. During that journey they would have passed the wealthy granddaughters of newly landed squires whose own grandfathers had been successful merchants or lawyers or sea captains enriched by prize money. Those rich and fashionable girls were about to marry newly impoverished peers. Britain had a flexible society that allowed success to prosper socially.
In Britain only the reigning peer and his wife are regarded as “noble” as that term is popularly misused, and the rest of the family are commoners, only a few bearing what are called courtesy titles. Moreover, except during the Hanoverian (1714–1837) and Victorian (1837–1901) epochs when British royalty sought to marry foreign royalty, the royal house has tended to marry with the British aristocracy, which is to say the peerage and landed classes (the “nobility” in its correct meaning). As a result, the Continental ideas of seize quartiers never held sway in England. Nor are there in the British Isles non-noble arms. All arms are on the same basis; all are signs of gentility—“the ensigns of nobility.” Arms then have long had a high social significance in England; those who bear them lawfully have social prestige.
The situation tends to be a little different in Scotland, where arms have the same significance as in England but where many are tied to clanship and family solidarity and where their use is controlled tightly by Lyon Court in accordance with the laws of Scotland. To most Scots, arms are more a matter of family or clan than of social status, and they prove their right to them by process of law before the Lord Lyon.
Without a monarchy, heraldry can still flourish, but it does not normally do so. The French Revolution abolished arms, which returned with the monarchy, and now, although France is a republic, a person assuming arms to which he is not entitled may be prosecuted. In the same way, it is not permissible to assume a name of a great family (whereas in England, the assumption of the surname Windsor, that of the British royal family, is possible for anyone). There is, however, no recognized heraldic authority in France, nor for that matter in other European countries that have abolished their monarchies. Most such republican states have associations that seek to maintain heraldic standards. Thus in Italy the Collegio Araldico (Heraldic College) consists of experts whose main object is to promote heraldic and genealogical studies. An association of nobles was formed as the National Heraldic Council of the Italian nobility, under the authority of former king Umberto II, and this association tries to regulate the use of arms and titles.
In Soviet-dominated European countries, the study of genealogy and heraldry was suppressed until the fall of communism. From 1956 there had been some relaxation in respect to statistical information, but historic heraldic data (directly associated with the symbolism of nobility) remained inaccessible until 1991. Many heraldic archives had, however, been carefully preserved, and now institutions and societies are being formed to protect and to disseminate their contents.
Two of the republics that emerged from the British Empire—Ireland and South Africa—have established their own heraldic offices. As early as 1382, there was an Ireland King of Arms responsible for all matters armorial in that country. The last holder of the office died in 1487, and in 1553 Edward VI created a new king of arms under the title of Ulster, to control bearings throughout Ireland. His place of business was in Dublin Castle. When the Irish Free State, or Eire (now the Republic of Ireland), was established in 1921–22, the Ulster Office was reserved as an appointment of the British crown with the then-current Ulster to hold office for life. After his death in 1940, an arrangement was made between the British and Irish governments by which the heraldic office in Dublin Castle with its records was acquired by the Irish authorities. Photostat copies were made of the records and sent to the College of Arms, London. The Irish government appointed a Chief Herald of Ireland, and the Ulster Office became known as the Genealogical Office. A civil servant was then appointed as Chief Herald of Ireland. The office of Ulster King of Arms has now been united with that of Norroy King of Arms in the College of Arms in London. The Irish Herald undertakes the duties formerly performed by Ulster in the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland; Norroy and Ulster has jurisdiction over the six counties of Northern Ireland (Ulster) in addition to the English counties north of the River Trent.
In South Africa an act was passed in 1962 under which was established a Bureau of Heraldry and a Heraldry Council for the grants, registration, and protection of coats of arms, badges, and other emblems. A state herald is appointed as head of the Bureau of Heraldry. The Heraldry Council consists of the state herald and at least seven other members appointed by the government minister responsible.
There has been a remarkable evolution of heraldry in the United States. Ever since the American Revolution the use of arms, especially of arms of English families with whom the users were related or whose surname they bore, has continued. The College of Arms in London claims heraldic jurisdiction over persons of English and Welsh descent (Wales has been reckoned with England in this and all other administrative matters since the union of England and Wales, 1542). The Lord Lyon in Scotland claims jurisdiction likewise over persons of Scottish descent throughout the world. In addition the College of Arms at one time claimed a worldwide imperial jurisdiction over anyone who could be brought within the definition of British subject. Under this jurisdiction even the Indian princes were occasionally granted arms by the College of Arms, although they were not British subjects but independent rulers who had entered into treaty relations with the British crown. Many Americans have been granted arms by the college by virtue of their descent from English or Welsh forebears or by the Lord Lyon if they were of Scottish descent. Irish Americans often were granted arms from Dublin, from either the Ulster King of Arms or his successor, the Chief Herald of Ireland. Americans of Northern Irish descent have been granted arms by Norroy and Ulster King of Arms. In addition, there are several states of the United States that were formerly Spanish territory, and the Spanish Kings of Arms, the equivalent of the English and Scottish heralds, exercised an heraldic authority over persons of Spanish descent in the old Spanish Empire. By extension, they have recently granted arms to Americans who are resident in those formerly Spanish states but who are not of Spanish descent.
To these classes of arms obtained by Americans from overseas must be added such instances as the grant of arms to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Denmark. Also, Americans of French, German, Italian, Polish, and other European descent have inherited from their immigrant ancestors arms once granted or recorded by heraldic authorities no longer in existence. All these classes of arms share one feature whatever their origin: they are hereditary honours granted to American citizens by other countries. As they do not carry titles, they do not contravene the principle of the American Constitution on this subject (although, of course, arms are historically “the ensigns of nobility” whose lawful use defines the nobles). An American who receives a knighthood of some foreign state possesses only an honorary knighthood; he does not prefix his forename with the title “Sir.” However, for the citizen of an independent sovereign power to approach and receive from another power a hereditary honour has seemed to many Americans an undesirable procedure. There have been and still are thousands of assumptions of arms by Americans who buy cheaply produced depictions from mail-order firms and in shopping malls, seemingly in the erroneous belief that every surname has its own coat of arms (“names” do not possess arms), but these transactions have no justification in either law or history.
Endeavours have been made to establish American authorities who would not only record but also grant arms. The New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston appointed a Committee on Heraldry that since 1928 has issued rolls of arms, in which have been entered the names and arms of those who have submitted their claims to its judgment. The use of this method of issuing or publicizing arms recalls the usage of visitations previously described, which has not been practiced in Europe for more than 300 years. In the introduction to the second roll (1932) it is stated:
There is certainly no legal reason, perhaps no reason at all, why an American gentleman should not assume in more majorum any new coat that pleases his fancy, but he should not assume an old coat, for if he does, he is very likely denying his own forefathers and he surely is affirming what he has no sufficient reason to be true.
Not only British-derived arms but also continental European arms have been registered. In addition the committee has assisted inquirers in devising new coats of arms, not only for schools, colleges, and other institutions but also for individuals. In the introduction to the first roll a very reasonable view toward heraldry was expressed:
Taking into consideration the early history of coat armour there seems to be no reason in this country at least, why anyone, provided he observes the simple rules of blazon and does not appropriate the arms of another, may not assume and use any coat he desires.
The American College of Heraldry and Arms, Inc., was established in the state of Maryland in 1966. It has two divisions: the American College of Arms, which is concerned with the arms of individuals, their registration, and, more importantly, the granting of arms; and the College of Arms of the United States, which deals with such items as arms, crests, and standards for corporate concerns. Arms were granted to various U.S. presidents in the 20th century.
The work of the American College of Heraldry and Arms may be said to invalidate in America the historic relationship between arms and nobility, an argument which may lead to the concept of two classes—American arms, which are non-noble, and classical arms, which are noble. This is a situation that already exists in some European countries, such as Switzerland, Italy, and France. In the Netherlands there are three classes—noble, patrician (the older and very senior families of the cities), and the patriciate burgher (the newer and richer families of the cities). However, clear distinctions are almost impossible to define. The office of president of state is by the ancient definitions a noble office, and thus the arms of the U.S. presidents may be held to be noble arms.
In 1954 the ancient Court of Chivalry was revived. This was once the court of the Lord High Constable and the Earl Marshal, and it dealt with matters relating to nobility, knighthood, and gentility. Although it was concerned also with matters of military discipline, it was not the forerunner of the modern court-martial in the armed forces. The court gradually declined in the 17th and 18th centuries and had not sat from 1735 until its revival.
The office of Lord High Constable has long ceased to be hereditary or of permanent status in England. During coronations a constable is appointed for the occasion. Therefore, in the revived court that sat in 1954 to deal with a test case, Manchester Corporation v. Manchester Palace of Varieties (in which the City of Manchester succeeded in preventing one of the Manchester theatres from displaying the City’s coat of arms on its stage curtains), the Earl Marshal (the Duke of Norfolk) presided with a surrogate, who was the Lord Chief Justice of England appearing in his capacity as a doctor of civil law. As a result of the sitting, the jurisdiction of the court was confirmed.
The unorganized condition of heraldry in many European countries has spurred private attempts to bring some order into the field. The movement known as the International Congresses of Heraldry and Genealogy began in 1928 with a meeting in Barcelona, Spain. A second Congress was held in Rome and Naples in 1953, and from that time regular meetings occurred at two- or three-year intervals. From these was established the International Institute of Genealogy and Heraldry, with its headquarters in Madrid.
The uses of heraldry, apart from its general significance in providing distinguishing symbols, are considerable. Heraldry explains much history and literature that is otherwise obscure. Heraldry on buildings, in manuscripts, and in paintings is of immense value for purposes of identification. It serves to link one person with another, to connect families, and to disclose origins of states and of institutions. The use of heraldry in connection with genealogy, from which it cannot easily be separated, makes easy to interpret much that was difficult to follow. In every building that contains armorial engravings or other pictures of arms, there is a concise contribution to the details of its background, one that gives a knowledgeable onlooker useful clues to its history.
In Scots law the place of heraldry is very precise. In England, on the other hand, it is more open to interpretation. To understand the latter is to gain an insight into the development of English law.
Similarity of arms does not always demonstrate identity of family. English laws of inheritance allow not only an estate but also a surname and arms to pass by eventual succession to individuals unconnected in blood with the original owner. Thus, in the families of Lytton and Carew and in branches of Trelawny, for example, instances occur in which possession of the name and arms is contrary to a blood relationship.