CHAPTER XXVI
SUPPORTERS
IN this country a somewhat fictitious importance has become attached to supporters, owing to their almost exclusive reservation to the highest rank. The rules which hold at the moment will be recited presently, but there can be no doubt that originally they were in this country little more than mere decorative and artistic appendages, being devised and altered from time to time by different artists according as the artistic necessities of the moment demanded. The subject of the origin of supporters has been very ably dealt with in "A Treatise on Heraldry" by Woodward and Burnett, and with all due acknowledgment I take from that work the subjoined extract:—
"Supporters are figures of living creatures placed at the side or sides of an armorial shield, and appearing to support it. French writers make a distinction, giving the name of Supports to animals, real or imaginary, thus employed; while human figures or angels similarly used are called Tenants. Trees, and other inanimate objects which are sometimes used, are called Soutiens.
"Menêtrier and other old writers trace the origin of supporters to the usages of the tournaments, where the shields of the combatants were exposed for inspection, and guarded by their servants or pages disguised in fanciful attire: 'C'est des Tournois qu'est venu cet usage parce que les chevaliers y faisoient porter leurs lances, et leurs écus, par des pages, et des valets de pied, deguisez en ours, en lions, en mores, et en sauvages' (Usage des Armoiries, p. 119).
"The old romances give us evidence that this custom prevailed; but I think only after the use of supporters had already arisen from another source.
"There is really little doubt now that Anstis was quite correct when, in his Aspilogia, he attributed the origin of supporters to the invention of the engraver, who filled up the spaces at the top and sides of the triangular shield upon a circular seal with foliage, or with fanciful animals. Any good collection of mediæval seals will strengthen this conviction. For instance, the two volumes of Laing's 'Scottish Seals' afford numerous examples in which the shields used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were placed between two creatures
