in the fantastic magnificence of the tournament than in the rougher business of war.
There can be little doubt that ancient armorial bearings were chosen at will by the man who bore them, many reasons guiding his choice. Crosses in plenty were taken. Old writers have asserted that these crosses commemorate the badge of the crusaders, yet the fact that the cross was the symbol of the faith was reason enough. No symbolism can be found in such charges as bends and fesses; they are on the shield because a broad band, aslant or athwart, is a charge easily recognized. Medieval wisdom gave every noble and magnanimous quality to the lion, and therefore this beast is chosen by hundreds of knights as their bearing. We have already seen how the arms of a Candavène play upon his name. Such an example was imitated on all sides. Salle of Bedfordshire has two salamanders saltirewise; Belet has his namesake the weasel. In ancient shields almost all beasts and birds other than the lion and the eagle play upon the bearer’s name. No object is so humble that it is unwelcome to the knight seeking a pun for his shield. Trivet has a three-legged trivet; Trumpington two trumps; and Montbocher three pots. The legends which assert that certain arms were “won in the Holy Land” or granted by ancient kings for heroic deeds in the field are for the most part worthless fancies.
Tenants or neighbours of the great feudal lords were wont to make their arms by differencing the lord’s shield or by bringing some charge of it into their own bearings. Thus a group of Kentish shields borrow lions from that of Leyborne, which is azure with six lions of silver. Shirland of Minster bore the same arms differenced with an ermine quarter. Detling had the silver lions in a sable field. Rokesle’s lions are azure in a golden field with a fesse of gules between them; while Wateringbury has six sable lions in a field of silver, and Tilmanstone six ermine lions in a field of azure. The Vipont ring or annelet is in several shields of Westmorland knights, and the cheverons of Clare, the cinquefoil badge of Beaumont and the sheaves of Chester can be traced in the coats of many of the followers of those houses. Sometimes the lord himself set forth such arms in a formal grant, as when the baron of Greystock grants to Adam of Blencowe a shield in which his own three chaplets are charges. The Whitgreave family of Staffordshire still show a shield granted to their ancestor in 1442 by the earl of Stafford, in which the Stafford red cheveron on a golden field is four times repeated.
Differences.—By the custom of the middle ages the “whole coat,” which is the undifferenced arms, belonged to one man only and was inherited whole only by his heirs. Younger branches differenced in many ways, following no rule. In modern armory the label is reckoned a difference proper only to an eldest son. But in older times, although the label was very commonly used by the son and heir apparent, he often chose another distinction during his father’s lifetime, while the label is sometimes found upon the shields of younger sons. Changing the colours or varying the number of charges, drawing a bend or baston over the shield or adding a border are common differences of cadet lines. Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, bore “Gules with a fesse and six crosslets gold.” His cousins are seen changing the crosslets for martlets or for billets. Bastards difference their father’s arms, as a rule, in no more striking manner than the legitimate cadets. Towards the end of the 14th century we have the beginning of the custom whereby certain bastards of princely houses differenced the paternal arms by charging them upon a bend, a fesse or a chief, a cheveron or a quarter. Before his legitimation the eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swinford is said to have borne a shield party silver and azure with the arms of Lancaster on a bend. After his legitimation in 1397 he changed his bearings to the royal arms of France and England within a border gobony of silver and azure. Warren of Poynton, descended from the last earl Warenne and his concubine, Maude of Neirford, bore the checkered shield of Warenne with a quarter charged with the ermine lion of Neirford. By the end of the middle ages the baston under continental influence tended to become a bastard’s difference in England and the jingle of the two words may have helped to support the custom. About the same time the border gobony began to acquire a like character. The “bar sinister” of the novelists is probably the baston sinister, with the ends couped, which has since the time of Charles II. been familiar on the arms of certain descendants of the royal house. But it has rarely been seen in England over other shields; and, although the border gobony surrounds the arms granted to a peer of Victorian creation, the modern heralds have fallen into the habit of assigning, in nineteen cases out of twenty, a wavy border as the standard difference for illegitimacy.
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| Shield from seal of Robert de Pinkeny, an early example of parted arms. |
Although no general register of arms was maintained it is remarkable that there was little conflict between persons who had chanced to assume the same arms. The famous suit in which Scrope, Grosvenor and Carminow all claimed the blue shield with the golden bend is well known, and there are a few cases in the 14th century of like disputes which were never carried to the courts. But the men of the middle ages would seem to have had marvellous memories for blazonry; and we know that rolls of arms for reference, some of them the records of tournaments, existed in great numbers. A few examples of these remain to us, with painted shields or descriptions in French blazon, some of them containing many hundreds of names and arms.
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| Shield of Joan atte Pole, widow of Robert of Hemenhale, from her seal (1403), showing parted arms. |
To women were assigned, as a rule, the undifferenced arms of their fathers. In the early days of armory married women—well-born spinsters of full age were all but unknown outside the walls of religious houses—have seals on which appear the shield of the husband or the father or both shields side by side. But we have some instances of the shield in which two coats of arms are parted or, to use the modern phrase, “impaled.” Early in the reign of King John, Robert de Pinkeny seals with a parted shield. On the right or dexter side—the right hand of a shield is at the right hand of the person covered by it—are two fusils of an indented fesse: on the left or sinister side are three waves. The arms of Pinkeny being an indented fesse, we may see in this shield the parted arms of husband and wife—the latter being probably a Basset. In many of the earliest examples, as in this, the dexter half of the husband’s shield was united with the sinister half of that of the wife, both coats being, as modern antiquaries have it, dimidiated. This “dimidiation,” however, had its inconvenience. With some coats it was impossible. If the wife bore arms with a quarter for the only charge, her half of the shield would be blank. Therefore the practice was early abandoned by the majority of bearers of parted shields although there is a survival of it in the fact that borders and tressures continue to be “dimidiated” in order that the charges within them shall not be cramped. Parted shields came into common use from the reign of Edward II., and the rule is established that the husband’s arms should take the dexter side. There are, however, several instances of the contrary practice. On the seal (1310) of Maude, wife of John Boutetort of Halstead, the engrailed saltire of the Boutetorts takes the sinister place. A twice-married woman would sometimes show a shield charged with her paternal arms between those of both of her husbands, as did Beatrice Stafford in 1404, while in 1412 Elizabeth, Lady of Clinton, seals with a shield paled with five coats—her arms
