HATCHMENTS
A custom formerly prevailed in England, which at one time was of very
considerable importance. This was the setting up of a hatchment after a
death. No instances of hatchments of a very early date, as far as I am
aware, are to be met with, and it is probably a correct conclusion that the
custom, originating rather earlier, came into vogue in England during the
seventeenth century and reached its height in the eighteenth. It doubtless
originated in the carrying of ceremonial shields and helmets (afterwards
left in the church) at funerals in the sixteenth century, and in the
earlier practice of setting up in the church the actual shield of a
deceased person. The cessation of the ceremonial funeral, no doubt, led to
the cult of the hatchment. Hatchments cannot be said even yet to have come
entirely to an end, but instances of their use are nowadays extremely rare,
and since the early part of the nineteenth century the practice has been
steadily declining, and at the present time it is seldom indeed that one
sees a hatchment _in use_. The word "hatchment" is, of course, a corruption
of the term "achievement," this being the heraldic term implying an
emblazonment of the full armorial bearings of any person.
The manner of use was as follows. Immediately upon the death of a person of
any social position a hatchment of his or her arms was set up over the
entrance to his house, which remained there for twelve months, during the
period of mourning. It was then taken down from the house and removed to
the church, where it was set up in perpetuity. There are few churches of
any age in this country which do not boast one or more of these hatchments,
and some are rich in their possession. Those now remaining--for example, in
St. Chad's Church in Shrewsbury--must number, I imagine, over a hundred.
There does not appear to have been any obligation upon a clergyman either
to permit their erection, or to allow them to remain for any specified
period. In some churches they have been discarded and relegated to the
vestry, to the coal-house, or to the rubbish-heap, whilst in others they
have been carefully preserved.
The hatchment was a diamond-shaped frame, painted black, and {610}
enclosing a painting in oils upon wood, or more frequently canvas, of the
full armorial bearings of the deceased person. The frame was usually about
five feet six in height, and the rules for the display of arms upon
hatchments afford an interesting set of regulations which may be applied to
other heraldic emblazonments. The chief point, however, concerning a
hatchment, and also the one in which it differs from an ordinary armorial
emblazonment, lay in the colour of the groundwork upon which the armorial
bearings were painted. For an unmarried person the whole of the groundwork
was black, but for a husband or wife half was black and half white, the
groundwork behind the arms of the deceased person being black, and of the
surviving partner in matrimony white. The background for a widow or widower
was entirely black. {611}