addition of “a bend sable with three silver scallops thereon.” Phelip, Lord Bardolf, bore “Quarterly gules and silver with an eagle gold in the quarter.”
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| Basset. | Wydvile. | Odingseles. | Ever. |
With the 15th century came a fashion of dividing the shield into more than four squares, six and nine divisions being often found in arms of that age. The heraldry books, eager to work out problems of blazonry, decide that a shield divided into six squares should be described as “Party per fesse with a pale counterchanged,” and one divided into nine squares as bearing “a cross quarter-pierced.” It seems a simpler business to follow a 15th-century fashion and to blazon such shields as being of six or nine “pieces.” Thus John Garther (15th century) bore “Nine pieces erminees and ermine” and Whitgreave of Staffordshire “Nine pieces of azure and of Stafford’s arms, which are gold with a cheveron gules.” The Tallow Chandlers of London had a grant in 1456 of “Six pieces azure and silver with three doves in the azure, each with an olive sprig in her beak.”
Squared into more than nine squares the shield becomes checky or checkered and the number is not reckoned. Warenne’s checker of gold and azure is one of the most ancient coats in England and checkered fields and charges follow in great numbers. Even lions have been borne checkered.
Warenne bore “Checky gold and azure.”
Clifford bore the like with “a fesse gules.”
Cobham bore “Silver a lion checky gold and sable.”
Arderne bore “Ermine a fesse checky gold and gules.”
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| Phelip Lord Bardolf. | Whitgreave. | Tallow Chandlers. | Warenne. |
Such charges as this fesse of Arderne’s and other checkered fesses, bars, bends, borders and the like, will commonly bear but two rows of squares, or three at the most. The heraldry writers are ready to note that when two rows are used “counter-compony” is the word in place of checky, and “compony-counter-compony” in the case of three rows. It is needless to say that these words have neither practical value nor antiquity to commend them. But bends and bastons, labels, borders and the rest are often coloured with a single row of alternating tinctures. In this case the pieces are said to be “gobony.” Thus John Cromwell (14th century) bore “Silver a chief gules with a baston gobony of gold and azure.”
The scocheon or shield used as a charge is found among the earliest arms. Itself charged with arms, it served to indicate alliance by blood or by tenure with another house, as in the bearings of St Owen whose shield of “Gules with a cross silver” has a scocheon of Clare in the quarter. In the latter half of the 15th century it plays an important part in the curious marshalling of the arms of great houses and lordships.
Erpingham bore “Vert a scocheon silver with an orle (or border) of silver martlets.”
Davillers bore at the battle of Boroughbridge “Silver three scocheons gules.”
The scocheon was often borne voided or pierced, its field cut away to a narrow border. Especially was this the case in the far North, where the Balliols, who bore such a voided scocheon, were powerful. The voided scocheon is wrongly named in all the heraldry books as an orle, a term which belongs to a number of small charges set round a central charge. Thus the martlets in the shield of Erpingham, already described, may be called an orle of martlets or a border of martlets. This misnaming of the voided scocheon has caused a curious misapprehension of its form, even Dr Woodward, in his Heraldry, British and Foreign, describing the “orle” as “a narrow border detached from the edge of the shield.” Following this definition modern armorial artists will, in the case of quartered arms, draw the “orle” in a first or second quarter of a quartered shield as a rectangular figure and in a third or fourth quarter as a scalene triangle with one arched side. Thereby the original voided scocheon changes into forms without meaning.
Balliol bore “Gules a voided scocheon silver.”
Surtees bore “Ermine with a quarter of the arms of Balliol.”
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| Clifford. | Arderne. | Cromwell. | Erpingham. |
The Tressure or flowered tressure is a figure which is correctly described by Woodward’s incorrect description of the orle as cited above, being a narrow inner border of the shield. It is distinguished, however, by the fleurs-de-lys which decorate it, setting off its edges. The double tressure which surrounds the lion in the royal shield of Scotland, and which is borne by many Scottish houses who have served their kings well or mated with their daughters, is carefully described by Scottish heralds as “flowered and counter-flowered,” a blazon which is held to mean that the fleurs-de-lys show head and tail in turn from the outer rim of the outer tressure and from the inner rim of the innermost. But this seems to have been no essential matter with medieval armorists and a curious 15th-century enamelled roundel of the arms of Vampage shows that in this English case the flowering takes the more convenient form of allowing all the lily heads to sprout from the outer rim.
Vampage bore “Azure an eagle silver within a flowered tressure silver.”
The king of Scots bore “Gold a lion within a double tressure flowered and counterflowered gules.”
Felton bore “Gules two lions passant within a double tressure flory silver.”
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| Davillers. | Balliol. | Surtees. | Vampage. |
The Border of the shield when marked out in its own tincture is counted as an Ordinary. Plain or charged, it was commonly used as a difference. As the principal charge of a shield it is very rare, so rare that in most cases where it apparently occurs we may, perhaps, be following medieval custom in blazoning the shield as one charged with a scocheon and not with a border. Thus Hondescote bore “Ermine a border gules” or “Gules a scocheon ermine.”
Somerville bore “Burely silver and gules and a border azure with golden martlets.”
Paynel bore “Silver two bars sable with a border, or orle, of martlets gules.”
The Flaunches are the flanks of the shield which, cut off by rounded lines, are borne in pairs as Ordinaries. These charges are found in many coats devised by 15th-century armorists.
