of la Plaunche between those of four husbands. In most cases the parted shield is found on the wife’s seal alone. Even in our own time it is recognized that the wife’s arms should not appear upon the husband’s official seal, upon his banner or surcoat or upon his shield when it is surrounded by the collar of an order. Parted arms, it may be noted, do not always represent a husband and wife. Richard II. parted with his quartered arms of France and England those ascribed to Edward the Confessor, and parting is often used on the continent where quartering would serve in England. In 1497 the seal of Giles Daubeney and Reynold Bray, fellow justices in eyre, shows their arms parted in one shield. English bishops, by a custom begun late in the 14th century, part the see’s arms with their own. By modern English custom a husband and wife, where the wife is not an heir, use the parted coat on a shield, a widow bearing the same upon the lozenge on which, when a spinster, she displayed her father’s coat alone. When the wife is an heir, her arms are now borne in a little scocheon above those of her husband. If the husband’s arms be in an unquartered shield the central charge is often hidden away by this scocheon.
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| Shield of Beatrice Stafford from her seal (1404), showing her arms of Stafford between those of her husbands—Thomas, Lord Roos, and Sir Richard Burley. | Shield of John Talbot, first earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1453), showing four coats quartered. |
The practice of marshalling arms by quartering spread in England by reason of the example given by Eleanor, wife of Edward I., who displayed the castle of Castile quartered with the lion of Leon. Isabel of France, wife of Edward II., seals with a shield in whose four quarters are the arms of England, France, Navarre and Champagne. Early In the 14th century Simon de Montagu, an ancestor of the earls of Salisbury, quartered with his own arms a coat of azure with a golden griffon. In 1340 we have Laurence Hastings, earl of Pembroke, quartering with the Hastings arms the arms of Valence, as heir of his great-uncle Aymer, earl of Pembroke. In the preceding year the king had already asserted his claim to another kingdom by quartering France with England, and after this quartered shields became common in the great houses whose sons were carefully matched with heirs female. When the wife was an heir the husband would quarter her arms with his own, displaying, as a rule, the more important coat in the first quarter. Marshalling becomes more elaborate with shields showing both quarterings and partings, as in the seal (1368) of Sibil Arundel, where Arundel (Fitzalan) is quartered with Warenne and parted with the arms of Montagu. In all, save one, of these examples the quartering is in its simplest form, with one coat repeated in the first and fourth quarters of the shield and another in the second and third. But to a charter of 1434 Sir Henry Bromflete sets a seal upon which Bromflete quarters Vesci in the second quarter, Aton in the third and St John in the fourth, after the fashion of the much earlier seal of Edward II.’s queen. Another development is that of what armorists style the “grand quarter,” a quarter which is itself quartered, as in the shield of Reynold Grey of Ruthyn, which bears Grey in the first and fourth quarters and Hastings quartered with Valence in the third and fourth. Humphrey Bourchier, Lord Cromwell, in 1469, bears one grand quarter quartered with another, the first having Bourchier and Lovaine, the second Tatershall and Cromwell.
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| Shield of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, from his garter stall-plate (after 1423). The arms are Beauchamp quartering Newburgh, with a scocheon of Clare quartering Despenser. |
The last detail to be noted in medieval marshalling is the introduction into the shield of another surmounting shield called by old armorists the “innerscocheon” and by modern blazoners the “inescutcheon.” John the Fearless, count of Flanders, marshalled his arms in 1409 as a quartered shield of the new and old coats of Burgundy. Above these coats a little scocheon, borne over the crossing of the quartering lines, had the black lion of Flanders, the arms of his mother. Richard Beauchamp, the adventurous earl of Warwick, who had seen most European courts during his wanderings, may have had this shield in mind when, over his arms of Beauchamp quartering Newburgh, he set a scocheon of Clare quartering Despenser, the arms of his wife Isabel Despenser, co-heir of the earls of Gloucester. The seal of his son-in-law, the King-Maker, shows four quarters—Beauchamp quartering Clare, Montagu quartering Monthermer, Nevill alone, and Newburgh quartering Despenser. An interesting use of the scocheon en surtout is that made by Richard Wydvile, Lord Rivers, whose garter stall-plate has a grand quarter of Wydvile and Prouz quartering Beauchamp of Hache, the whole surmounted by a scocheon with the arms of Reviers or Rivers, the house from which he took the title of his barony. On the continent the common use of the scocheon is to bear the paternal arms of a sovereign or noble, surmounting the quarterings of his kingdoms, principalities, fiefs or seigniories. Our own prince of Wales bears the arms of Saxony above those of the United Kingdom differenced with his silver label. Marshalling takes its most elaborate form, the most removed from the graceful simplicity of the middle ages, in such shields as the “Great Arms” of the Austrian empire, wherein are nine grand quarters each marshalling in various fashions from three to eleven coats, six of the grand-quarters bearing scocheons en surtout, each scocheon ensigned with a different crown.
Crests.—The most important accessory of the arms is the crested helm. Like the arms it has its pre-heraldic history in the crests of the Greek helmets, the wings, the wild boar’s and bull’s heads of Viking headpieces. A little roundel of the arms of a Japanese house was often borne as a crest in the Japanese helmet, stepped in a socket above the middle of the brim. The 12th-century seal of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, shows a demi-lion painted or beaten on the side of the upper part of his helm, and on his seal of 1198 our own Richard Cœur de Lion’s barrel-helm has a leopard upon the semicircular comb-ridge, the edge of which is set off with feathers arranged as two wings. Crests, however, came slowly into use in England, although before 1250 Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester, is seen on his seal with a wyver upon his helm. Of the long roll of earls and barons sealing the famous letter to the pope in 1301 only five show true crests on their seals. Two of them are the earl of Lancaster and his brother, each with a wyver crest like that of Quincy. One, and the most remarkable, is John St John of Halnaker, whose crest is a leopard standing between two upright palm branches. Ralph de Monthermer has an eagle crest, while Walter de Moncy’s helm is surmounted by a fox-like beast. In three of these instances the crest is borne, as was often the case, by the horse as well as the rider. Others of these seals to the barons’ letter have the fan-shaped crest without any decoration upon it. But as the furniture of tournaments grew more magnificent the crest gave a new field for display, and many strange shapes appear in painted and gilded wood,
