_"Dimidiation" in Impalements_ (Vol. vii., p. 548.).--In reply to your
correspondent's Query as to _dimidiation_, he will find that this was the
most ancient form of impalement. Its manifest inconvenience no doubt at
last banished it. Guillim (ed. 1724) says, at p. 425.:
"It was an ancient way of impaling, to take half the husband's coat,
and with that to joyn as much of the wife's; as appeareth in an old
roll, wherein three lions, being the arms of _England_, are dimidiated
and impaled with half the pales of Arragon. The like hath been
practised with quartered coats by leaving out half of them."
On p. 426. he gives the example of Mary, Henry VIII.'s sister, and her
husband Louis XII. of France. Here the French king's coat is cut in half,
so that the lily in the base point is _dimidiated_; and the queen's coat,
being quarterly France and England, shows two quarters only; England in
chief, France in base.
Sandford, in his _Genealogical History_, gives a plate of the tomb of Henry
II. and Richard I. of England at Fontevrault, which was built anew in {630}
1638. Upon it are several impalements by _dimidiation_. Sandford (whose
book seems to me to be strangely over-valued) gives no explanation of them.
No doubt they were copied from the original tomb.
In Part II. of the _Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the
Neighbourhood of Oxford_, at p. 178., is figured an impalement by
_dimidiation_ existing at Stanton Harcourt, in the north transept of the
church, in a brass on a piece of blue marble. The writer of the _Guide_
supposes this bearing to be some union of Harcourt and Beke, in consequence
of a will of John Lord Beke, and to be commemorative of the son of Sir
Richard Harcourt and Margaret Beke. It is in fact commemorative of those
persons themselves. Harcourt, two bars, is dimidiated, and meets Beke, a
cross moline or ancree. The figure thus produced is a strange one, but
perfectly intelligible when the practice of impaling by dimidiation is
recollected. I know no modern instance of this method of impaling. I doubt
if any can be found since the time of Henry VIII.