CHAPTER XXI
THE CREST
IF uncertainty exists as to the origin of arms, it is as nothing to the huge uncertainty that exists concerning the beginnings of the crest. Most wonderful stories are told concerning it; that it meant this and meant the other, that the right to bear a crest was confined to this person or the other person. But practically the whole of the stories of this kind are either wild imagination or conjecture founded upon insufficient facts.
The real facts—which one may as well state first as a basis to work upon—are very few and singularly unconvincing, and are useless as original data from which to draw conclusions.
First of all we have the definite, assured, and certain fact that the earliest known instance of a crest is in 1198, and we find evidence of the use of arms before that date.
The next fact is that we find infinitely more variation in the crests used by given families than in the arms, and that whilst the variations in the arms are as a rule trivial, and not affecting the general design of the shield, the changes in the crest are frequently radical, the crest borne by a family at one period having no earthly relation to that borne by the same family at another.
Again, we find that though the occasional use of a crest can (by isolated instances) be taken back, as already stated, to a fairly early period, the use of crests did not become general until very much later.
Another fact is that, except perhaps in the persons of sovereigns, there is no official instance, nor any other authentic instance of importance, in which a crest appears ever to have been used by a woman until these recent and unfortunate days when unofficial examples can be found of the wildest ignorance of all armorial rules.
The foregoing may be taken as general principles which no authentic instance known can be said to refute.
Bearing these in mind, let us now see what other results can be obtained by deduction from specific instances.
The earliest form in which anything can be found in the nature of a crest is the lion upon the head-dress of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou (Fig. 28). This has been already referred to.
