either Scotland or England. Sometimes the motto is expressed in the patent—in fact this is now the more usual alternative—but the rule is not universal, and to a certain extent the English permissiveness is recognised. Possibly the subject can be summed up in the remark that if any motto has been granted or is recorded with a particular coat of arms in Ireland, it is expected that that shall be the motto to be made use of therewith.
As a general practice the use of mottoes in England did not become general until the eighteenth century—in fact there are very few, if any, grants of an earlier date on which a motto appears. The majority, well on towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, had no motto added, and many patents are still issued without such an addition. With rare exceptions, no mottoes are to be met with in the Visitation books, and it does not appear that at the time of the Visitations the motto was considered to be essentially a part of the armorial bearings. The one or two exceptions which I have met with where mottoes are to be found on Visitation pedigrees are in every case the arms of a peer. There are at least two such in the Yorkshire Visitation of 1587, and probably it may be taken for granted that the majority of peers at that period had begun to make use of these additions to their arms. Unfortunately we have no exact means of deciding the point, because peers were not compelled to attend a Visitation, and there are but few cases in which the arms or pedigree of a peer figure in the Visitation books. In isolated cases the use of a motto can, however, be traced back to an even earlier period. There are several instances to be met with upon the early Garter plates.
Many writers have traced the origin of mottoes to the "slogan" or war-cry of battle, and there is no doubt whatever that instances can be found in which an ancient war-cry has become a family motto. For example, one can refer to the Fitzgerald "Crom-a-boo": other instances can be found amongst some of the Highland families, but the fact that many well-known war-cries of ancient days never became perpetuated as mottoes, and also the fact that by far the greater number of mottoes, even at a much earlier period than the present day, cannot by any possibility have ever been used for or have originated with the purposes of battle-cries, inclines me to believe that such a suggested origin for the motto in general is without adequate foundation. There can be little if any connection between the war-cry as such and the motto as such. The real origin would appear to be more correctly traced back to the badge. As will be found explained elsewhere, the badge was some simple device used for personal and household purposes and seldom for war, except by persons who used the badge of the leader they followed. No man wore his own badge
