the Marshal was deputed the ordering and arrangement of the various bodies of troops, regiments, bands of retainers, &c., which ordering was at first facilitated and at length entirely determined by the use of various pictorial ensigns, such as standards, banners, crests, cognisances, and badges. The due arrangement and knowledge of these various ensigns became first the necessary study and then the ordinary duty of these officers of the Marshal, and their possession of such knowledge, which soon in due course had to be written down and tabulated, secured to them an important part in mediæval life. The result was that at an early period we find them employed in semi-diplomatic missions, such as carrying on negotiations between contending armies on the field, bearing declarations of war, challenges from one sovereign to another, besides arranging the ceremonial not only of battles and tournaments, but also of coronations, Royal baptisms, marriages, and funerals.
From the fact that neither King of Arms nor Herald is mentioned as officiating in the celebrated Scrope and Grosvenor case, of which very full particulars have come down to us, it is evident that the control of arms had not passed either in fact or in theory from the Crown to the officers of arms at that date. Konrad Grünenberg, in his Wappencodex ("Roll of Arms"), the date of which is 1483, gives a representation of a helmschau (literally helmet-show), here reproduced (Fig. 12), which includes the figure of a herald. Long before that date, however, the position of a herald in England was well defined, for we find that on January 5, 1420, the King appointed William Bruges to be Garter King of Arms. It is usually considered in England that it would be found that in Germany armory reached its highest point of evolution. Certainly German heraldic art is in advance of our own, and it is curious to read in the latest and one of the best of German heraldic books that "from the very earliest times heraldry was carried to a higher degree of perfection and thoroughness in England than elsewhere, and that it has maintained itself at the same level until the present day. In other countries, for the most part, heralds no longer have any existence but in name." The initial figure which appears at the commencement of Chapter I. represents John Smert, Garter King of Arms, and is taken from the grant of arms issued by him to the Tallow Chandlers' Company of London, which is dated September 24, 1456.
Long before there was any College of Arms, the Marshal, afterwards the Earl Marshal, had been appointed. The Earl Marshal is now head of the College of Arms, and to him has been delegated the whole of the control both of armory and of the College, with the exception of that part which the Crown has retained in its own hands.
