these. A document of the first importance is the description by John of
Marmoustier of the marriage of Geoffrey of Anjou with Maude the empress,
daughter of Henry I., when the king is said to have hung round the neck
of his son-in-law a shield with golden "lioncels." Afterwards the monk
speaks of Geoffrey in fight, "pictos leones preferens in clypeo." Two
notes may be added to this account. The first is that the enamelled
plate now in the museum at Le Mans, which is said to have been placed
over the tomb of Geoffrey after his death in 1151, shows him bearing a
long shield of azure with six golden lioncels, thus confirming the
monk's story. The second is the well-known fact that Geoffrey's bastard
grandson, William with the Long Sword, undoubtedly bore these same arms
of the six lions of gold in a blue field, even as they are still to be
seen upon his tomb at Salisbury. Some ten years before Richard I. seals
with the three leopards, his brother John, count of Mortain, is found
using a seal upon which he bears two leopards, arms which later
tradition assigns to the ancient dukes of Normandy and to their
descendants the kings of England before Henry II., who is said to have
added the third leopard in right of his wife, a legend of no value. Mr
Round has pointed out that Gilbert of Clare, earl of Hertford, who died
in 1152, bears on his seal to a document sealed after 1138 and not later
than 1146, the three cheverons afterwards so well known in England as
the bearings of his successors. An old drawing of the seal of his uncle
Gilbert, earl of Pembroke (_Lansdowne MS._ 203), shows a cheveronny
shield used between 1138 and 1148. At some date between 1144 and 1150,
Waleran, count of Meulan, shows on his seal a pennon and saddle-cloth
with a checkered pattern: the house of Warenne, sprung from his mother's
son, bore shields checky of gold and azure. If we may trust the
inventory of Norman seals made by M. Demay, a careful antiquary, there
is among the archives of the Manche a grant by Eudes, seigneur du Pont,
sealed with a seal and counterseal of arms, to which M. Demay gives a
date as early as 1128. The writer has not examined this seal, the
earliest armorial evidence of which he has any knowledge, but it may be
remarked that the arms are described as varying on the seal and
counterseal, a significant touch of primitive armory. Another type of
seal common in this 12th century shows the personal device which had not
yet developed into an armorial charge. A good example is that of
Enguerrand de Candavene, count of St Pol, where, although the shield of
the horseman is uncharged, sheaves of oats, playing on his name, are
strewn at the foot of the seal. Five of these sheaves were the arms of
Candavene when the house came to display arms. In the same fashion three
different members of the family of Armenteres in England show one, two
or three swords upon their seals, but here the writer has no evidence of
a coat of arms derived from these devices.
From the beginning of the 13th century arms upon shields increase in
number. Soon the most of the great houses of the west display them with
pride. Leaders in the field, whether of a royal army or of a dozen
spears, saw the military advantage of a custom which made shield and
banner things that might be recognized in the press. Although it is
probable that armorial bearings have their first place upon the shield,
the charges of the shield are found displayed on the knight's long
surcoat, his "coat of arms," on his banner or pennon, on the trappers of
his horse and even upon the peaks of his saddle. An attempt has been
made to connect the rise of armory with the adoption of the
barrel-shaped close helm; but even when wearing the earlier Norman
helmet with its long nasal the knight's face was not to be recognized.
The Conqueror, as we know, had to bare his head before he could persuade
his men at Hastings that he still lived. Armory satisfied a need which
had long been felt. When fully armed, one galloping knight was like
another; but friend and foe soon learned that the gold and blue checkers
meant that Warenne was in the field and that the gold and red vair was
for Ferrers. Earl Simon at Evesham sent up his barber to a spying place
and, as the barber named in turn the banners which had come up against
him, he knew that his last fight was at hand. In spite of these things
the growth of the custom of sealing deeds and charters had at least as
much influence in the development of armory as any military need. By
this way, women and clerks, citizens and men of peace, corporations and
colleges, came to share with the fighting man in the use of armorial
bearings. Arms in stone, wood and brass decorated the tombs of the dead
and the houses of the living; they were broidered in bed-curtains,
coverlets and copes, painted on the sails of ships and enamelled upon
all manner of goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work. And, even by warriors,
the full splendour of armory was at all times displayed more fully in
the fantastic magnificence of the tournament than in the rougher
business of war.
[Illustration: PLATE I.
PART OF A ROLL OF ARMS PAINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 14TH
CENTURY. THE NAMES HAVE BEEN ADDED BY A SOMEWHAT LATER HAND, AND ARE IN
MANY CASES MISTAKEN AND MIS-SPELLED.
_Drawn by William Gibb for the_ ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA.]
There can be little doubt that ancient armorial bearings were chosen at
will by the man who bore them, many reasons guiding his choice. Crosses
in plenty were taken. Old writers have asserted that these crosses
commemorate the badge of the crusaders, yet the fact that the cross was
the symbol of the faith was reason enough. No symbolism can be found in
such charges as bends and fesses; they are on the shield because a broad
band, aslant or athwart, is a charge easily recognized. Medieval wisdom
gave every noble and magnanimous quality to the lion, and therefore this
beast is chosen by hundreds of knights as their bearing. We have already
seen how the arms of a Candavene play upon his name. Such an example was
imitated on all sides. Salle of Bedfordshire has two _sal_amanders
_sal_tirewise; Belet has his namesake the weasel. In ancient shields
almost all beasts and birds other than the lion and the eagle play upon
the bearer's name. No object is so humble that it is unwelcome to the
knight seeking a pun for his shield. Trivet has a three-legged trivet;
Trumpington two trumps; and Montbocher three pots. The legends which
assert that certain arms were "won in the Holy Land" or granted by
ancient kings for heroic deeds in the field are for the most part
worthless fancies.
Tenants or neighbours of the great feudal lords were wont to make their
arms by differencing the lord's shield or by bringing some charge of it
into their own bearings. Thus a group of Kentish shields borrow lions
from that of Leyborne, which is azure with six lions of silver. Shirland
of Minster bore the same arms differenced with an ermine quarter.
Detling had the silver lions in a sable field. Rokesle's lions are azure
in a golden field with a fesse of gules between them; while Wateringbury
has six sable lions in a field of silver, and Tilmanstone six ermine
lions in a field of azure. The Vipont ring or annelet is in several
shields of Westmorland knights, and the cheverons of Clare, the
cinquefoil badge of Beaumont and the sheaves of Chester can be traced in
the coats of many of the followers of those houses. Sometimes the lord
himself set forth such arms in a formal grant, as when the baron of
Greystock grants to Adam of Blencowe a shield in which his own three
chaplets are charges. The Whitgreave family of Staffordshire still show
a shield granted to their ancestor in 1442 by the earl of Stafford, in
which the Stafford red cheveron on a golden field is four times
repeated.
_Differences._--By the custom of the middle ages the "whole coat," which
is the undifferenced arms, belonged to one man only and was inherited
whole only by his heirs. Younger branches differenced in many ways,
following no rule. In modern armory the label is reckoned a difference
proper only to an eldest son. But in older times, although the label was
very commonly used by the son and heir apparent, he often chose another
distinction during his father's lifetime, while the label is sometimes
found upon the shields of younger sons. Changing the colours or varying
the number of charges, drawing a bend or baston over the shield or
adding a border are common differences of cadet lines. Beauchamp, earl
of Warwick, bore "Gules with a fesse and six crosslets gold." His
cousins are seen changing the crosslets for martlets or for billets.
Bastards difference their father's arms, as a rule, in no more striking
manner than the legitimate cadets. Towards the end of the 14th century
we have the beginning of the custom whereby certain bastards of princely
houses differenced the paternal arms by charging them upon a bend, a
fesse or a chief, a cheveron or a quarter. Before his legitimation the
eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swinford is said to have borne
a shield party silver and azure with the arms of Lancaster on a bend.
After his legitimation in 1397 he changed his bearings to the royal arms
of France and England within a border gobony of silver and azure. Warren
of Poynton, descended from the last earl Warenne and his concubine,
Maude of Neirford, bore the checkered shield of Warenne with a quarter
charged with the ermine lion of Neirford. By the end of the middle ages
the baston under continental influence tended to become a bastard's
difference in England and the jingle of the two words may have helped
to support the custom. About the same time the border gobony began to
acquire a like character. The "bar sinister" of the novelists is
probably the baston sinister, with the ends couped, which has since the
time of Charles II. been familiar on the arms of certain descendants of
the royal house. But it has rarely been seen in England over other
shields; and, although the border gobony surrounds the arms granted to a
peer of Victorian creation, the modern heralds have fallen into the
habit of assigning, in nineteen cases out of twenty, a wavy border as
the standard difference for illegitimacy.
Although no general register of arms was maintained it is remarkable
that there was little conflict between persons who had chanced to assume
the same arms. The famous suit in which Scrope, Grosvenor and Carminow
all claimed the blue shield with the golden bend is well known, and
there are a few cases in the 14th century of like disputes which were
never carried to the courts. But the men of the middle ages would seem
to have had marvellous memories for blazonry; and we know that rolls of
arms for reference, some of them the records of tournaments, existed in
great numbers. A few examples of these remain to us, with painted
shields or descriptions in French blazon, some of them containing many
hundreds of names and arms.
[Illustration: Shield from seal of Robert de Pinkeny, an early example
of parted arms.]
[Illustration: Shield of Joan atte Pole, widow of Robert of Hemenhale,
from her seal (1403), showing parted arms.]
To women were assigned, as a rule, the undifferenced arms of their
fathers. In the early days of armory married women--well-born spinsters
of full age were all but unknown outside the walls of religious
houses--have seals on which appear the shield of the husband or the
father or both shields side by side. But we have some instances of the
shield in which two coats of arms are parted or, to use the modern
phrase, "impaled." Early in the reign of King John, Robert de Pinkeny
seals with a parted shield. On the right or dexter side--the right hand
of a shield is at the right hand of the person covered by it--are two
fusils of an indented fesse: on the left or sinister side are three
waves. The arms of Pinkeny being an indented fesse, we may see in this
shield the parted arms of husband and wife--the latter being probably a
Basset. In many of the earliest examples, as in this, the dexter half of
the husband's shield was united with the sinister half of that of the
wife, both coats being, as modern antiquaries have it, dimidiated. This
"dimidiation," however, had its inconvenience. With some coats it was
impossible. If the wife bore arms with a quarter for the only charge,
her half of the shield would be blank. Therefore the practice was early
abandoned by the majority of bearers of parted shields although there is
a survival of it in the fact that borders and tressures continue to be
"dimidiated" in order that the charges within them shall not be cramped.
Parted shields came into common use from the reign of Edward II., and
the rule is established that the husband's arms should take the dexter
side. There are, however, several instances of the contrary practice. On
the seal (1310) of Maude, wife of John Boutetort of Halstead, the
engrailed saltire of the Boutetorts takes the sinister place. A
twice-married woman would sometimes show a shield charged with her
paternal arms between those of both of her husbands, as did Beatrice
Stafford in 1404, while in 1412 Elizabeth, Lady of Clinton, seals with a
shield paled with five coats--her arms of la Plaunche between those of
four husbands. In most cases the parted shield is found on the wife's
seal alone. Even in our own time it is recognized that the wife's arms
should not appear upon the husband's official seal, upon his banner or
surcoat or upon his shield when it is surrounded by the collar of an
order. Parted arms, it may be noted, do not always represent a husband
and wife. Richard II. parted with his quartered arms of France and
England those ascribed to Edward the Confessor, and parting is often
used on the continent where quartering would serve in England. In 1497
the seal of Giles Daubeney and Reynold Bray, fellow justices in eyre,
shows their arms parted in one shield. English bishops, by a custom
begun late in the 14th century, part the see's arms with their own. By
modern English custom a husband and wife, where the wife is not an heir,
use the parted coat on a shield, a widow bearing the same upon the
lozenge on which, when a spinster, she displayed her father's coat
alone. When the wife is an heir, her arms are now borne in a little
scocheon above those of her husband. If the husband's arms be in an
unquartered shield the central charge is often hidden away by this
scocheon.
[Illustration: Shield of Beatrice Stafford from her seal (1404), showing
her arms of Stafford between those of her husbands--Thomas, Lord Roos,
and Sir Richard Burley.]
[Illustration: Shield of John Talbot, first earl of Shrewsbury (d.
1453), showing four coats quartered.]
The practice of marshalling arms by quartering spread in England by
reason of the example given by Eleanor, wife of Edward I., who displayed
the castle of Castile quartered with the lion of Leon. Isabel of France,
wife of Edward II., seals with a shield in whose four quarters are the
arms of England, France, Navarre and Champagne. Early In the 14th
century Simon de Montagu, an ancestor of the earls of Salisbury,
quartered with his own arms a coat of azure with a golden griffon. In
1340 we have Laurence Hastings, earl of Pembroke, quartering with the
Hastings arms the arms of Valence, as heir of his great-uncle Aymer,
earl of Pembroke. In the preceding year the king had already asserted
his claim to another kingdom by quartering France with England, and
after this quartered shields became common in the great houses whose
sons were carefully matched with heirs female. When the wife was an heir
the husband would quarter her arms with his own, displaying, as a rule,
the more important coat in the first quarter. Marshalling becomes more
elaborate with shields showing both quarterings and partings, as in the
seal (1368) of Sibil Arundel, where Arundel (Fitzalan) is quartered with
Warenne and parted with the arms of Montagu. In all, save one, of these
examples the quartering is in its simplest form, with one coat repeated
in the first and fourth quarters of the shield and another in the second
and third. But to a charter of 1434 Sir Henry Bromflete sets a seal upon
which Bromflete quarters Vesci in the second quarter, Aton in the third
and St John in the fourth, after the fashion of the much earlier seal of
Edward II.'s queen. Another development is that of what armorists style
the "grand quarter," a quarter which is itself quartered, as in the
shield of Reynold Grey of Ruthyn, which bears Grey in the first and
fourth quarters and Hastings quartered with Valence in the third and
fourth. Humphrey Bourchier, Lord Cromwell, in 1469, bears one grand
quarter quartered with another, the first having Bourchier and Lovaine,
the second Tatershall and Cromwell.
[Illustration: Shield of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, from his
garter stall-plate (after 1423). The arms are Beauchamp quartering
Newburgh, with a scocheon of Clare quartering Despenser.]
The last detail to be noted in medieval marshalling is the introduction
into the shield of another surmounting shield called by old armorists
the "innerscocheon" and by modern blazoners the "inescutcheon." John the
Fearless, count of Flanders, marshalled his arms in 1409 as a quartered
shield of the new and old coats of Burgundy. Above these coats a little
scocheon, borne over the crossing of the quartering lines, had the black
lion of Flanders, the arms of his mother. Richard Beauchamp, the
adventurous earl of Warwick, who had seen most European courts during
his wanderings, may have had this shield in mind when, over his arms of
Beauchamp quartering Newburgh, he set a scocheon of Clare quartering
Despenser, the arms of his wife Isabel Despenser, co-heir of the earls
of Gloucester. The seal of his son-in-law, the King-Maker, shows four
quarters--Beauchamp quartering Clare, Montagu quartering Monthermer,
Nevill alone, and Newburgh quartering Despenser. An interesting use of
the scocheon _en surtout_ is that made by Richard Wydvile, Lord Rivers,
whose garter stall-plate has a grand quarter of Wydvile and Prouz
quartering Beauchamp of Hache, the whole surmounted by a scocheon with
the arms of Reviers or Rivers, the house from which he took the title of
his barony. On the continent the common use of the scocheon is to bear
the paternal arms of a sovereign or noble, surmounting the quarterings
of his kingdoms, principalities, fiefs or seigniories. Our own prince of
Wales bears the arms of Saxony above those of the United Kingdom
differenced with his silver label. Marshalling takes its most elaborate
form, the most removed from the graceful simplicity of the middle ages,
in such shields as the "Great Arms" of the Austrian empire, wherein are
nine grand quarters each marshalling in various fashions from three to
eleven coats, six of the grand-quarters bearing scocheons _en surtout_,
each scocheon ensigned with a different crown.
_Crests._--The most important accessory of the arms is the crested helm.
Like the arms it has its pre-heraldic history in the crests of the Greek
helmets, the wings, the wild boar's and bull's heads of Viking
headpieces. A little roundel of the arms of a Japanese house was often
borne as a crest in the Japanese helmet, stepped in a socket above the
middle of the brim. The 12th-century seal of Philip of Alsace, count of
Flanders, shows a demi-lion painted or beaten on the side of the upper
part of his helm, and on his seal of 1198 our own Richard Coeur de
Lion's barrel-helm has a leopard upon the semicircular comb-ridge, the
edge of which is set off with feathers arranged as two wings. Crests,
however, came slowly into use in England, although before 1250 Roger de
Quincy, earl of Winchester, is seen on his seal with a wyver upon his
helm. Of the long roll of earls and barons sealing the famous letter to
the pope in 1301 only five show true crests on their seals. Two of them
are the earl of Lancaster and his brother, each with a wyver crest like
that of Quincy. One, and the most remarkable, is John St John of
Halnaker, whose crest is a leopard standing between two upright palm
branches. Ralph de Monthermer has an eagle crest, while Walter de
Moncy's helm is surmounted by a fox-like beast. In three of these
instances the crest is borne, as was often the case, by the horse as
well as the rider. Others of these seals to the barons' letter have the
fan-shaped crest without any decoration upon it. But as the furniture of
tournaments grew more magnificent the crest gave a new field for
display, and many strange shapes appear in painted and gilded wood,
metal, leather or parchment above the helms of the jousters. The
Berkeleys, great patrons of abbeys, bore a mitre as their crest painted
with their arms, like crests being sometimes seen on the continent where
the wearer was _advocatus_ of a bishopric or abbey. The whole or half
figures or the heads and necks of beasts and birds were employed by
other families. Saracens' heads topped many helms, that of the great
Chandos among them. Astley bore for his crest a silver harpy standing in
marsh-sedge, a golden chain fastened to a crown about her neck. Dymoke
played pleasantly on his name with a long-eared moke's scalp. Stanley
took the eagle's nest in which the eagle is lighting down with a
swaddled babe in his claws. Burnell had a burdock bush, la Vache a cow's
leg, and Lisle's strange fancy was to perch a huge millstone on edge
above his head. Many early helms, as that of Sir John Loterel, painted
in the Loterel psalter, repeat the arms on the sides of a fan-crest.
Howard bore for a crest his arms painted on a pair of wings, while
simple "bushes" or feathers are seen in great plenty. The crest of a
cadet is often differenced like the arms, and thus a wyver or a leopard
will have a label about its neck. The Montagu griffon on the helm of
John, marquess of Montagu, holds in its beak the gimel ring with which
he differenced his father's shield. His brother, the King-Maker,
following a custom commoner abroad than at home, shows two crested helms
on his seal, one for Montagu and one for Beauchamp--none for his
father's house of Nevill. It is often stated that a man, unless by some
special grace or allowance, can have but one crest. This, however, is
contrary to the spirit of medieval armory in which a man, inheriting the
coat of arms of another house than his own, took with it all its
belongings, crest, badge and the like. The heraldry books, with more
reason, deny crests to women and to the clergy, but examples are not
wanting of medieval seals in which even this rule is broken. It is
perhaps unfair to cite the case of the bishops of Durham who ride in
full harness on their palatinate seals; but Henry Despenser, bishop of
Norwich, has a helm on which the winged griffon's head of his house
springs from a mitre, while Alexander Nevill, archbishop of York, seals
with shield, supporters and crowned and crested helm like those of any
lay magnate. Richard Holt, a Northamptonshire clerk in holy orders,
bears on his seal in the reign of Henry V. a shield of arms and a
mantled helm with the crest of a collared greyhound's head. About the
middle of the same century a seal cut for the wife of Thomas Chetwode, a
Cheshire squire, has a shield of her husband's arms parted with her own
and surmounted by a crowned helm with the crest of a demi-lion; and this
is not the only example of such bearings by a woman.
[Illustration: Ralph de Monthermer (1301), showing shield of arms, helm
with crest and mantle, horse-crest and armorial trappers.]