of crest and helm was commonly covered, especially after the beginning
of the 15th century, by a torse or "wreath" of silk, twisted with one,
two or three colours. Coronets or crowns and "hats of estate" often take
the place of the wreath as a base for the crest, and there are other
curious variants. With the wreath may be considered the mantle, a
hanging cloth which, in its earliest form, is seen as two strips of silk
or sendal attached to the top of the helm below the crest and streaming
like pennants as the rider bent his head and charged. Such strips are
often displayed from the conical top of an uncrested helm, and some
ancient examples have the air of the two ends of a stole or of the
_infulae_ of a bishop's mitre. The general opinion of antiquaries has
been that the mantle originated among the crusaders as a protection for
the steel helm from the rays of an Eastern sun; but the fact that
mantles take in England their fuller form after our crusading days were
over seems against this theory. When the fashion for slittering the
edges of clothing came in, the edges of the mantle were slittered like
the edge of the sleeve or skirt, and, flourished out on either side of
the helm, it became the delight of the painter of armories and the seal
engraver. A worthless tale, repeated by popular manuals, makes the
slittered edge represent the shearing work of the enemy's sword, a fancy
which takes no account of the like developments in civil dress. Modern
heraldry in England paints the mantle with the principal colour of the
shield, lining it with the principal metal. This in cases where no old
grant of arms is cited as evidence of another usage. The mantles of the
king and of the prince of Wales are, however, of gold lined with ermine
and those of other members of the royal house of gold lined with silver.
In ancient examples there is great variety and freedom. Where the crest
is the head of a griffon or bird the feathering of the neck will be
carried on to cover the mantle. Other mantles will be powdered with
badges or with charges from the shield, others checkered, barred or
paled. More than thirty of the mantles enamelled on the stall-plates of
the medieval Garter-knights are of red with an ermine lining, tinctures
which in most cases have no reference to the shields below them.
[Illustration: Shield and crested helm with hat and mantle of Thomas of
Hengrave (1401).]
_Supporters._--Shields of arms, especially upon seals, are sometimes
figured as hung round the necks of eagles, lions, swans and griffons, as
strapped between the horns of a hart or to the boughs of a tree. Badges
may fill in the blank spaces at the sides between the shield and the
inscription on the rim, but in the later 13th and early 14th centuries
the commonest objects so serving are sprigs of plants, lions, leopards,
or, still more frequently, lithe-necked wyvers. John of Segrave in 1301
flanks his shields with two of the sheaves of the older coat of Segrave:
William Marshal of Hingham does the like with his two marshal's staves.
Henry of Lancaster at the same time shows on his seal a shield and a
helm crested with a wyver, with two like wyvers ranged on either side of
the shield as "supporters." It is uncertain at what time in the 14th
century these various fashions crystallize into the recognized use of
beasts, birds, reptiles, men or inanimate objects, definitely chosen as
"supporters" of the shield, and not to be taken as the ornaments
suggested by the fancy of the seal engraver. That supporters originate
in the decoration of the seal there can be little doubt. Some writers,
the learned Menetrier among them, will have it that they were first the
fantastically clad fellows who supported and displayed the knight's
shield at the opening of the tournament. If the earliest supporters were
wild men, angels or Saracens, this theory might be defended; but lions,
boars and talbots, dogs and trees are guises into which a man would put
himself with difficulty. By the middle of the 14th century we find what
are clearly recognizable as supporters. These, as in a lesser degree the
crest, are often personal rather than hereditary, being changed
generation by generation. The same person is found using more than one
pair of them. The kings of France have had angels as supporters of the
shield of the fleurs de lys since the 15th century, but the angels have
only taken their place as the sole royal supporters since the time of
Louis XIV. Sovereigns of England from Henry IV. to Elizabeth changed
about between supporters of harts, leopards, antelopes, bulls,
greyhounds, boars and dragons. James I. at his accession to the English
throne brought the Scottish unicorn to face the English leopard rampant
across his shield, and, ever since, the "lion and unicorn" have been the
royal supporters.
[Illustration: Arms of William, Lord Hastings, from his seal (1477),
showing shield, crowned and crested helm with mantle and supporters.]
[Illustration: Badge of John of Whethamstede, abbot of St Albans (d.
1465), from his tomb in the abbey church.]
[Illustration: Rudder badge of Willoughby.]
An old herald wrote as his opinion that "there is little or nothing in
precedent to direct the use of supporters." Modern custom gives them, as
a rule, only to peers, to knights of the Garter, the Thistle and St
Patrick, and to knights who are "Grand Crosses" or Grand Commanders of
other orders. Royal warrants are sometimes issued for the granting of
supporters to baronets, and, in rare cases, they have been assigned to
untitled persons. But in spite of the jealousy with which official
heraldry hedges about the display of these supporters once assumed so
freely, a few old English families still assert their right by
hereditary prescription to use these ornaments as their forefathers were
wont to use them.
[Illustration: Badge of Dacre of Gilsland and Dacre of the North.]
_Badges._--The badge may claim a greater antiquity and a wider use than
armorial bearings. The "Plantagenet" broom is an early example in
England, sprigs of it being figured on the seal of Richard I. In the
14th and 15th centuries every magnate had his badge, which he displayed
on his horse-furniture, on the hangings of his bed, his wall and his
chair of state, besides giving it as a "livery" to his servants and
followers. Such were the knots of Stafford, Bourchier and Wake, the
scabbard-crampet of La Warr, the sickle of Hungerford, the swan of
Toesni, Bohun and Lancaster, the dun-bull of Nevill, the blue boar of
Vere and the bear and ragged staff of Beauchamp, Nevill of Warwick and
Dudley of Northumberland. So well known of all were these symbols that a
political ballad of 1449 sings of the misfortunes of the great lords
without naming one of them, all men understanding what signified the
Falcon, the Water Bowge and the Cresset and the other badges of the
doggerel. More famous still were the White Hart, the Red Rose, the White
Rose, the Sun, the Falcon and Fetterlock, the Portcullis and the many
other badges of the royal house. We still call those wars that blotted
out the old baronage the Wars of the Roses, and the Prince of Wales's
feathers are as well known to-day as the royal arms. The Flint and Steel
of Burgundy make a collar for the order of the Golden Fleece.
[Illustration: Ostrich feather badge of Beaufort, from a garter
stall-plate of 1440. The silver feather has a quill gobony silver and
azure.]
_Mottoes._--The motto now accompanies every coat of arms in these
islands. Few of these Latin aphorisms, these bald assertions of virtue,
high courage, patriotism, piety and loyalty have any antiquity. Some
few, however, like the "Esperance" of Percy, were the war-cries of
remote ancestors. "I mak' sicker" of Kirkpatrick recalls pridefully a
bloody deed done on a wounded man, and the "Dieu Ayde," "Agincourt" and
"D'Accomplir Agincourt" of the Irish "Montmorencys" and the English
Wodehouses and Dalisons, glorious traditions based upon untrustworthy
genealogy. The often-quoted punning mottoes may be illustrated by that
of Cust, who says "Qui Cust-odit caveat," a modern example and a fair
one. Ancient mottoes as distinct from the war or gathering cry of a
house are often cryptic sentences whose meaning might be known to the
user and perchance to his mistress. Such are the "Plus est en vous" of
Louis de Bruges, the Flemish earl of Winchester, and the "So have I
cause" and "Till then thus" of two Englishmen. The word motto is of
modern use, our forefathers speaking rather of their "word" or of their
"reason."
_Coronets of Rank._--Among accessories of the shield may now be counted
the coronets of peers, whose present form is post-medieval. When Edward
III. made dukes of his sons, gold circlets were set upon their heads in
token of their new dignity. In 1385 John de Vere, marquess of Dublin,
was created in the same fashion. Edward VI. extended the honour of the
gold circle to earls. Caps of honour were worn with these circles or
coronets, and viscounts wore the cap by appointment of James I., Vincent
the herald stating that "a verge of pearls on top of the circulet of
gold" was added at the creation of Robert Cecil as Viscount Cranborne.
At the coronation of Charles I. the viscounts walked in procession with
their caps and coronets. A few days before the coronation of Charles II.
the privilege of the cap of honour was given to the lowest rank of the
peerage, and letters patent of January 1661 assign to them both cap and
coronet. The caps of velvet turned up with miniver, which are now always
worn with the peer's coronet, are therefore the ancient caps of honour,
akin to that "cap of maintenance" worn by English sovereigns on their
coronation days when walking to the Abbey Church, and borne before them
on occasions of royal state.
[Illustration: PLATE II.
SIXTEEN SHIELDS FROM A ROLL OF ARMS OF ENGLISH KNIGHTS AND BARONS MADE
BY AN ENGLISH PAINTER EARLY IN THE REIGN OF EDWARD III.
_Drawn by William Gibb._
_Niagara Litho. Co., Buffalo, N. Y._]
The ancient circles were enriched according to the taste of the bearer,
and, although used at creations as symbols of the rank conferred, were
worn in the 14th and 15th centuries by men and women of rank without the
use signifying a rank in the peerage. Edmund, earl of March, in his will
of 1380, named his _sercle ove roses, emeraudes et rubies d'alisaundre
en les roses_, and bequeathed it to his daughter. Modern coronets are of
silver-gilt, without jewels, set upon caps of crimson velvet turned up
with ermine, with a gold tassel at the top. A duke's coronet has the
circle decorated with eight gold "strawberry leaves"; that of a marquess
has four gold strawberry leaves and four silver balls. The coronet of an
earl has eight silver balls, raised upon points, with gold strawberry
leaves between the points. A viscount's coronet has on the circle
sixteen silver balls, and a baron's coronet six silver balls. On the
continent the modern use of coronets is not ordered in the precise
English fashion, men of gentle birth displaying coronets which afford
but slight indication of the bearer's rank.
_Lines._--Eleven varieties of lines, other than straight lines, which
divide the shield, or edge our cheverons, pales, bars and the like, are
pictured in the heraldry books and named as engrailed, embattled,
indented, invected, wavy or undy, nebuly, dancetty, raguly, potente,
dovetailed and urdy.
As in the case of many other such lists of the later armorists these
eleven varieties need some pruning and a new explanation.
The most commonly found is the line engrailed, which for the student of
medieval armory must be associated with the line indented. In its
earliest form the line which a roll of arms will describe indifferently
as indented or engrailed takes almost invariably the form to which the
name indented is restricted by modern armorists.
[Illustration: Mohun.]
The cross may serve as our first example. A cross, engrailed or
indented, the words being used indifferently, is a cross so deeply
notched at the edges that it seems made up of so many lozenge-shaped
wedges or fusils. About the middle of the 14th century begins a
tendency, resisted in practice by many conservative families, to draw
the engrailing lines in the fashion to which modern armorists restrict
the word "engrailed," making shallower indentures in the form of lines
of half circles. Thus the engrailed cross of the Mohuns takes either of
the two forms which we illustrate. Bends follow the same fashion, early
bends engrailed or indented being some four or more fusils joined
bendwise by their blunt sides, bends of less than four fusils being very
rare. Thus also the engrailed or indented saltires, pales or cheverons,
the exact number of the fusils which go to the making of these being
unconsidered. For the fesse there is another law. The fesse indented or
engrailed is made up of fusils as is the engrailed bend. But although
early rolls of arms sometimes neglect this detail in their blazon, the
fusils making a fesse must always be of an ascertained number. Montagu,
earl of Salisbury, bore a fesse engrailed or indented of three fusils
only, very few shields imitating this. Medieval armorists will describe
his arms as a fesse indented of three indentures, as a fesse fusilly of
three pieces, or as a fesse engrailed of three points or pieces, all of
these blazons having the same value. The indented fesse on the red
shield of the Dynhams has four such fusils of ermine. Four, however, is
almost as rare a number as three, the normal form of a fesse indented
being that of five fusils as borne by Percys, Pinkenys, Newmarches and
many other ancient houses. Indeed, accuracy of blazon is served if the
number of fusils in a fesse be named in the cases of threes and fours.
Fesses of six fusils are not to be found. Note that bars indented or
engrailed are, for a reason which will be evident, never subject to this
counting of fusils. Fauconberg, for example, bore "Silver with two bars
engrailed, or indented, sable." Displayed on a shield of the flat-iron
outline, the lower bar would show fewer fusils than the upper, while on
a square banner each bar would have an equal number--usually five or
six.
[Illustration: Montagu. Dynham. Percy. Fauconberg.]
While bends, cheverons, crosses, saltires and pales often follow,
especially in the 15th century, the tendency towards the rounded
"engrailing," fesses keep, as a rule, their bold indentures--neither
Percy nor Montagu being ever found with his bearings in aught but their
ancient form. Borders take the newer fashion as leaving more room for
the charges of the field. But indented chiefs do not change their
fashion, although many saw-teeth sometimes take the place of the three
or four strong points of early arms, and parti-coloured shields whose
party line is indented never lose the bold zig-zag.
[Illustration: West.]
While bearing in mind that the two words have no distinctive force in
ancient armory, the student and the herald of modern times may
conveniently allow himself to blazon the sharp and saw-toothed line as
"indented" and the scolloped line as "engrailed," especially when
dealing with the debased armory in which the distinction is held to be a
true one and one of the first importance. One error at least he must
avoid, and that is the following of the heraldry-book compilers in their
use of the word "dancetty." A "dancetty" line, we are told, is a line
having fewer and deeper indentures than the line indented. But no
dancetty line could make a bolder dash across the shield than do the
lines which the old armorists recognized as "indented." In old armory we
have fesses dancy--commonly called "dances"--bends dancy, or cheverons
dancy; there are no chiefs dancy nor borders dancy, nor are there
shields blazoned as parted with a dancy line. Waved lines, battled lines
and ragged lines need little explanation that a picture cannot give. The
word invecked or invected is sometimes applied by old-fashioned heraldic
pedants to engrailed lines; later pedants have given it to a line found
in modern grants of arms, an engrailed line reversed. Dove-tailed and
urdy lines are mere modernisms. Of the very rare nebuly or clouded line
we can only say that the ancient form, which imitated the conventional
cloud-bank of the old painters, is now almost forgotten, while the bold
"wavy" lines of early armory have the word "nebuly" misapplied to them.
_The Ordinary Charges._--The writers upon armory have given the name of
Ordinaries to certain conventional figures commonly charged upon
shields. Also they affect to divide these into Honourable Ordinaries and
Sub-Ordinaries without explaining the reason for the superior honour of
the Saltire or for the subordination of the Quarter. Disregarding such
distinctions, we may begin with the description of the "Ordinaries" most
commonly to be found.
From the first the Cross was a common bearing on English shields,
"Silver a cross gules" being given early to St George, patron of knights
and of England, for his arms; and under St George's red cross the
English were wont to fight. Our armorial crosses took many shapes, but
the "crosses innumerabill" of the Book of St Albans and its successors
may be left to the heraldic dictionary makers who have devised them. It
is more important to define those forms in use during the middle ages,
and to name them accurately after the custom of those who bore them in
war, a task which the heraldry books have never as yet attempted with
success.
The cross in its simple form needs no definition, but it will be noted
that it is sometimes borne "voided" and that in a very few cases it
appears as a lesser charge with its ends cut off square, in which case
it must be clearly blazoned as "a plain Cross."
Andrew Harcla, the march-warden, whom Edward II. made an earl and
executed as a traitor, bore the arms of St George with a martlet sable
in the quarter.
Crevequer of Kent bore "Gold a voided cross gules."
Newsom (14th century) bore "Azure a fesse silver with three plain
crosses gules."
[Illustration: St George. Harcla. Crevequer. Latimer.]
Next to the plain Cross may be taken the Cross paty, the _croiz patee_
or _pate_ of old rolls of arms. It has several forms, according to the
taste of the artist and the age. So, in the 13th and early 14th
centuries, its limbs curve out broadly, while at a later date the limbs
become more slender and of even breadth, the ends somewhat resembling
fleurs-de-lys. Each of these forms has been seized by the heraldic
writers as the type of a distinct cross for which a name must be found,
none of them, as a rule, being recognized as a cross paty, a word which
has its misapplication elsewhere. Thus the books have "cross patonce"
for the earlier form, while "cross clechee" and "cross fleurie" serve
for the others. But the true identification of the various crosses is of
the first importance to the antiquary, since without it descriptions of
the arms on early seals or monuments must needs be valueless. Many
instances of this need might be cited from the British Museum catalogue
of seals, where, for example, the cross paty of Latimer is described
twice as a "cross flory," six times as a "cross patonce," but not once
by its own name, although there is no better known example of this
bearing in England.
Latimer bore "Gules a cross paty gold."
The cross formy follows the lines of the cross paty save that its
broadening ends are cut off squarely.
Chetwode bore "Quarterly silver and gules with four crosses formy
countercoloured"--that is to say, the two crosses in the gules are of
silver and the two in the silver of gules.
The cross flory or flowered cross, the "cross with the ends
flowered"--_od les boutes floretes_ as some of the old rolls have
it--is, like the cross paty, a mark for the misapprehension of writers
on armory, who describe some shapes of the cross paty by its name.
Playing upon discovered or fancied variants of the word, they bid us
mark the distinctions between crosses "fleur-de-lisee," "fleury" and
"fleurettee," although each author has his own version of the value
which must be given these precious words. But the facts of the medieval
practice are clear to those who take their armory from ancient examples
and not from phrases plagiarized from the hundredth plagiarist. The
flowered cross is one whose limbs end in fleur-de-lys, which spring
sometimes from a knop or bud but more frequently issue from the square
ends of a cross of the "formy" type.
Swynnerton bore "Silver a flowered cross sable."
[Illustration: Mill-rinds.]
The mill-rind, which takes its name from the iron of a mill-stone--_fer
de moline_--must be set with the crosses. Some of the old rolls call it
_croiz recercele_, from which armorial writers have leaped to imagine a
distinct type. Also they call the mill-rind itself a "cross moline"
keeping the word mill-rind for a charge having the same origin but of
somewhat differing form. Since this charge became common in Tudor armory
it is perhaps better that the original mill-rind should be called for
distinction a mill-rind cross.
Willoughby bore "Gules a mill-rind cross silver."
[Illustration: Chetwode. Swynnerton. Willoughby. Brerelegh.]
The crosslet, cross botonny or cross crosletted, is a cross whose limbs,
of even breadth, end as trefoils or treble buds. It is rarely found in
medieval examples in the shape--that of a cross with limbs ending in
squarely cut plain crosses--which it took during the 16th-century
decadence. As the sole charge of a shield it is very rare; otherwise it
is one of the commonest of charges.
Brerelegh bore "Silver a crosslet gules."
Within these modest limits we have brought the greater part of that
monstrous host of crosses which cumber the dictionaries. A few rare
varieties may be noticed.
Dukinfield bore "Silver a voided cross with sharpened ends."
Skirlaw, bishop of Durham (d. 1406), the son of a basket-weaver, bore
"Silver a cross of three upright wattles sable, crossed and interwoven
by three more."
Drury bore "Silver a chief vert with a St Anthony's cross gold between
two golden molets, pierced gules."
Brytton bore "Gold a patriarch's cross set upon three degrees or steps
of gules."
Hurlestone of Cheshire bore "Silver a cross of four ermine tails
sable."
Melton bore "Silver a Toulouse cross gules." By giving this cross a
name from the counts of Toulouse, its best-known bearers, some
elaborate blazonry is spared.
[Illustration: Skirlaw. Drury. St Anthony's Cross. Brytton.]
The crosses paty and formy, and more especially the crosslets, are often
borne fitchy, that is to say, with the lower limb somewhat lengthened
and ending in a point, for which reason the 15th-century writers call
these "crosses fixabill." In the 14th-century rolls the word "potent" is
sometimes used for these crosses fitchy, the long foot suggesting a
potent or staff. From this source modern English armorists derive many
of their "crosses potent," whose four arms have the T heads of
old-fashioned walking staves.
Howard bore "Silver a bend between six crosslets fitchy gules."
Scott of Congerhurst in Kent bore "Silver a crosslet fitchy sable."
[Illustration: Hurlestone. Melton. Howard. Scott.]
The Saltire is the cross in the form of that on which St Andrew
suffered, whence it is borne on the banner of Scotland, and by the
Andrew family of Northamptonshire.
Nevile of Raby bore "Gules a saltire silver."
Nicholas Upton, the 15th-century writer on armory, bore "Silver a
saltire sable with the ends couped and five golden rings thereon."
Aynho bore "Sable a saltire silver having the ends flowered between
four leopards gold."
"Mayster Elwett of Yorke chyre" in a 15th-century roll bears "Silver a
saltire of chains sable with a crescent in the chief."
[Illustration: Nevile. Upton. Aynho. Elwett.]
Restwolde bore "Party saltirewise of gules and ermine."
[Illustration: Fenwick.]
The chief is the upper part of the shield and, marked out by a line of
division, it is taken as one of the Ordinaries. Shields with a plain
chief and no more are rare in England, but Tichborne of Tichborne has
borne since the 13th century "Vair a chief gold." According to the
heraldry books the chief should be marked off as a third part of the
shield, but its depth varies, being broader when charged with devices
and narrower when, itself uncharged, it surmounts a charged field.
Fenwick bore "Silver a chief gules with six martlets countercoloured,"
and in this case the chief would be the half of the shield. Clinging to
the belief that the chief must not fill more than a third of the shield,
the heraldry books abandon the word in such cases, blazoning them as
"party per fesse."
Hastang bore "Azure a chief gules and a lion with a forked tail over
all."
Walter Kingston seals in the 13th century with a shield of "Two rings
or annelets in the chief."
Hilton of Westmoreland bore "Sable three rings gold and two saltires
silver in the chief."
With the chief may be named the Foot, the nether part of the shield
marked off as an Ordinary. So rare is this charge that we can cite but
one example of it, that of the shield of John of Skipton, who in the
14th century bore "Silver with the foot indented purple and a lion
purple." The foot, however, is a recognized bearing in France, whose
heralds gave it the name of _champagne_.
[Illustration: Restwolde. Hastang. Hilton. Provence.]
The Pale is a broad stripe running the length of the shield. Of a single
pale and of three pales there are several old examples. Four red pales
in a golden shield were borne by Eleanor of Provence, queen of Henry
III.; but the number did not commend itself to English armorists. When
the field is divided evenly into six pales it is said to be paly; if
into four or eight pales, it is blazoned as paly of that number of
pieces. But paly of more or less than six pieces is rarely found.
The Yorkshire house of Gascoigne bore "Silver a pale sable with a
golden conger's head thereon, cut off at the shoulder."
Ferlington bore "Gules three pales vair and a chief gold."
Strelley bore "Paly silver and azure."